Like clockwork, wherever Gringos gather, at the beginning of the month talk turns to electricity bills. Of course, the subject is usually brought up by those of us who have the higher bills. During the Winter, most of my friends have bills in the $300MXN - $500MXN range. Ours has been consistently in the $1,100MXN - $1,200MXN range. This has troubled us off and on, especially since most of our friends have larger houses than we do. Finally, we called in an expert.

There are many stories of neighbors tapping into someone's power and stealing electricity or faulty electric meters, so we asked Bodie Kellogg of Paradise Inspection [4] to come out and do an electrical inspection.

Bodie arrived bright and early with his bag of high tech gadgets and tricks. The first thing he did was have us shut everything down. Then he flipped all of our breakers and checked the meter to see it it stopped spinning. It did, so electricity theft wasn't our problem.

Next he removed our electrical panels and inspected our wiring. Surprisingly, our wiring is pretty good – much better material and workmanship than is seen in most of the old houses around here. He pulled out some of his gadgets and tested a bunch of stuff, and everything came back good, which is really good for us, but still didn't explain the discrepancy between our bill and many other people's.

He started to question us closely about our electrical bills and our appliances. We have one small refrigerator. We have a washing maching and electric dryer, which I run 3-4 times per week. Bodie informed me that it costs me about $10MXN every time I run it. That's a lot, but at my highest use it still only accounted for $160MXN per month, far from our $1,200MXN bills.

Other than the big appliances, our only electricity usage is a clock radio in the bedroom, a few low energy consumption, compact florescent light bulbs after the sun goes down, some fans that we haven't turned on all Winter, and our computers. I don't even own a hair dryer or curling iron. Finally, Bodie asked the critical question, "How many hours a day do you run your computers?" Well, all of them.

We leave the computers on all day because we use them all day. That is our business. We leave them running all night for their health. As I have mentioned many times before, we live very close to the ocean and it is very humid, without the benefit of air conditioners to cool the house or reduce the humidity. Leaving the computers on maintains a higher temperature in the cases and greatly reduces the risk of salty condensation on delicate components.

Electricity is billed on a three tier system here, so the more you use, the more you pay. The first tier, Basico, from 0-75, kWh is billed at $0.64MXN per kWh. The next tier, Intermedio, from 76 to 175 kWh, is billed at $1.05MXN per kWh. The top tier, Excedente, includes anything above 175kWh and is billed at $2.25MXN per kWh, and that's where most of our electricity usage falls. Our bill last month showed 513 kWh.

We rebuilt our computers with lower energy consumption components before we moved down, but they still run at about 100 watts. Bodie did some math and figures it costs us about 1 peso an hour to run all of our computers. When we run them 24 hours a day, that equals $720MXN a month, and there is the difference between our electricity bill and our friends'.

It's nice to know that we don't have any problems and to have the mystery solved. Of course, we will just have to live with the bills. Paying the higher bill is cheaper and easier then replacing components. Good thing the government electricity subsidy just kicked in for the year on May 1st, so for the next 6 months, the government will pay half of our electricity bill.