Why Your Electricity Bill Is Higher (Or Lower) Than Usual In Some Months

Like most bills, we pay our electricity bills each month. Logically, we would think that means we can observe our consumption trend on a month-to-month basis simply by looking at our bills, and taking action to reduce our electricity consumption if we find that we are using and paying too much for electricity usage.

For those of us who are responsible for paying the electricity bill, we might have noticed that our bills are higher than usual in some months. But why is this the case?

Before you call up SP or your OEM retailer to complain about this, it’s useful to first know why this occurrence seems to happen more often than it should.

How Often Are Electricity Meter Readings Taken

Let’s start by touching on some basic information about electricity meter readings in Singapore.

Firstly, regardless of whether you are buying your electricity from an OEM retailer or sticking with SP, it’s SP Services that will be responsible for meter readings. The only exception is if you have installed an advanced meter (also known as a smart meter) or if you submit your own meter reading to SP.

Secondly, SP Services only check on the meter reading once every two months. For the months that meters are not read, an estimated amount based on the average consumption from the past two meter readings (a 4-month period) is made.

Another way of thinking about this is that if we only want accurate billing, then the electricity bill should be made bimonthly (once every two months) when SP Services records the reading.

This Leads To Overestimation & Underestimation

Since there are months where bills are estimated, the result is that if there is a change in electricity consumption in that month, an overestimation or underestimation will occur. This is because SP or your OEM retailer will bill you an estimated amount based on your average past usage, and not your actual usage for the month.

Take a look above at the SP reading taken from the SP app. The months of January, March and May with the asterisk (*) were estimated readings.

For the month of May, we can see that while electricity usage has already started trending upward in April, the estimated usage for the month of May was still significantly lower as compared to April because the estimation takes into account the average of the last two meter readings (4-month period).

Likewise, both February and June had readings that vary significantly as compared to the estimated readings in January and March.

For example, June’s reading was extremely high because it took into account the underestimation in May. This was also verified by the bill I received from my OEM retailer for June.

We can see that May usage was actually higher than the initial estimation and that May and June actual electricity usage were not too different from each other.

However, because the reading were only taken in June (27 June) and not May, the initial May bill ($116.78, before GST) was a significant underestimation as compared to what the bill should have been ($194.47, before GST).

Thus, there was an underpayment of $77.69 (before GST) for May.

As such, the OEM retailer would add this underpayment for May to June’s bill.

The result is that I end up paying $308.28 (inclusive of GST) for my next electricity bill for both June ($224.37, including GST) and the May adjustment ($83.91, including GST).

	What was paid (inclusive of GST)	Actual bill (inclusive of GST)
May	$126.12 ( – $83.91)	$210.03
June	$308.28 (+$83.91)	$224.37

Since there was an underpayment in May, it had to be adjusted in June, leading to a higher-than-usual bill.

The main thing to note is that if there is any change in usage habit (e.g. using the aircon more because of hotter weather, more work-from-home days), then you may see a significant increase in your electricity bill not necessarily in the next billing cycle, but in the cycle after that.

If it helps, the way we can think about it is that our electricity bill for the month need not correspond with how much our actual usage for the month is.

Read Also: Complete Guide To Choosing The Best Open Electricity Market (OEM) Plan For Your Home

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