Electricity

Well, so I whined last month about how expensive many things are here. I got a list a week or so ago from SIL/Wycliffe, whose building I'm staying in, about how expensive electricity really is here. Vanuatu supposedly has the highest electricity cost per kilowatt hour (kWh) in the world. New Zealand is right up there as one of the highest countries so I put them here for reference. This is based on current Idaho power rates at $0.057783/300kWh and on current currency conversions for the vatu and NZ dollar to the American dollar. Check this out! (And you'd better be impressed cuz I had to do an entire notebook page of math and a whole lot of internet searches on appliance electricity usage amounts to figure this all out.)

Ceiling Fan 1 hour usage USA $0.0000096 Vanuatu $0.17 New Zealand $0.03
Refrigerator 1 day usage USA $0.0023 VAN $1.74 NZ $0.27
Computer 1 hour usage USA $0.0008667 VAN $0.22 NZ$0.03

Washing machines aren't even hooked up to hot water here because if they were it would cost $4/load to wash clothes. Just on cold wash the cost is $0.22/load. If you were rich enough to have air conditioning and run it here (some expats here do), the cost here is $2.17/hour. Central A/C would cost $4.35/hour. (Compare this to US costs of $0.06/hour for a window unit and $0.20/hour for central A/C.) Boy oh boy! I could do the same deal here if I was really bored with propane costs here. Because electricity is high, all water heaters and ovens are run on propane instead. I'm not that bored though. :) Anyway, if you are in the US reading this, thank your lucky stars and run your air conditioner while thinking of me. :)