Utility Madness - Electricity

No smart card here. Just gotta pay for electricity in a special ATM-style kiosk outside the apartment office. I was forced to do this quickly when our electricity went out the second day and the fans for the air-conditioning went out.

We quickly found out that despite the ATM kiosk interface, you had to use a bank card from the Bank of China in order to pay for the electricity. There was no other way to pay! This was Saturday and I wouldn't be able to get a bank account until Monday morning when I went to work (more on that in another post). Luckily, the D. family came to the rescue by letting us use their bank card (Thanks!). I didn't know how much electricity was needed so I got 75 yuan in order to be sure we could get through the weekend and any other delays that might happen. There was NO OTHER WAY to pay for electricity.

Electricity is .48 RMB/kwh. This means about 6 cents/kwh which is approximately the same rate as the US. Again, this means it must be quite an expense on a local salary. I still can't believe that given my possession of a credit card and cash, I was unable to pay for my electricity.

Luckily, it seems our electricity usage is quite low since the air-conditioning only uses it for the fans to blow air. We use just a few kwh/day (appliances, TV, computers, etc.) so I hopefully don't have to recharge it that often. It is interesting to note that since electricity is a pre-paid service, you can pre-pay quite a bit. Apparently, you can pre-pay up to 80000 RMB (what the hell?)! I'm not sure how long it would take to use up $10000 worth of electricity or even how to do it from an apartment but maybe someone is running a server farm