Quote from: minero1 on September 05, 2011, 01:25:17 PM

You got me in one thing, i don't know how to calculate power usage, i just tried to figure it out on my own, i thought that since it is the amount of kW consumed in an hour then it must be KW/h. is that wrong? please correct me if it is.

It is wrong. kWh is the number of kW multiplied by the length of time you consumed them for. Eg. if you draw 0.5kW for 2h, that will amount to 1kWh. You were consuming 0.5kW the first hour, 0.5kW the second hour, yet it was never "0.5kW/h", the total energy consumed was 1kWh.

Quote from: minero1 on September 05, 2011, 01:25:17 PM

What i DO know for sure is how much i pay for the electricity and how much it is per kWh (right?), in the power bill it says 0.1Bs (Venezuelan VEF) per kWh. The exchange rate is fixed by the govt to 4.30VEF per USD but there is the black market rate at 8.60VEF. i think my mistake was using the black market rate because i think it is the REAL/MARKET rate so 0.1/8.6=0.011, but with the govt rate that will be 0.023

At first your calculations look correct. But my friend's power bill, in the US, shows $0.10/kWh, yet he pays $0.17/kWh. This is because in another part of the bill, distribution charges are added ($0.06/kWh), and taxes ($0.01/kWh). My point is, reading all the fine print is hard. I don't know what your bill look like, so I am suggesting something simpler:
- how much did you pay for the last billing period (in VEF)?
- how much did you consume for the last billing period in kWh?
Surely your bill must show these 2 numbers, right? Divide the first number by the second one.

Quote from: minero1 on September 05, 2011, 01:25:17 PM

Nice homework there in the guri dam thing but i live in the west part of the country (the remaining 27%?) where we have gasoline thermoelectric generators and since we pay 0.115VEF each litre of gasoline (yes, that's right 0.05USD each gallon) the price of electricity is a bit on the high side, with a litre of gasoline you could generate up to 9.7kWh (http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density) i guess the rest are operating costs.

This is scarily low, and might explain your rate.

Kind of off-topic, but I am genuinely surprised and confused by this black market rate... I assume the local population favor the dollar over the bolívar, right? Why would they spend 8.6 VEF to get 1 USD on the black market, when they could just bring 4.3 VEF to a bank following the official rate?

Edit: Apparently dollars are rationed by CADIVI, so the population turns to the black market to obtain them. Makes sense...