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Electricity costs at Transmitter site

R

Robert Miller

Guest
Was with a friend today who is a wannabe Engineer, we took a ride one day with a friend of his who is a fill in engineer for a class A station. just a transmitter site visit to make sure every thing was o.k. there. I took in all i could see in this little block building and was fascinated with what was there.
later that day my friend (the wannabe) starts telling me that the electric bill is 27K a month! could this be true?

it is a stand alone site, small 12 x 20 masonary block building they are the sole occupants. 1 rack containing 1 stl receiver (Moseley 606) one Moseley limiter, 1 crown amp d-75 to power a pair of EV sentry 100 monitors, 1 Harris THE 1 exciter, 1 Moseley mrc 1600 remote control, a Modulation Sciences Sidekick Sca generator, A QEI 691 Mod monitor, a small Dayton receiver (Fm receiver) and a Harris HT 5 running at 4800 watts. tx is 3 phase.
Air conditioner is i thing a 5 ton unit (its a Heil) pad mounted outside. Tower is 140 ft, no lights. they are the only ones on the tower. one flood light over door to tx building and 2 8ft flourescent lights inside tx building. My friend claims that the stations electric bill for this site is approx 27K per month.

Can this be true? just running all of what is listed above? what would a ballpark figure be on a station of this caliber? 3K month? $800 a month?

let me know.
 
There are many variables which we do not know in this situation (the biggest of which would be location), but I would be surprised if the monthly electric utility bill ran more than $1k.

Sounds like your friend still has a lot to learn. :)
 
I do work for a station with a similar site. You can add up the power used by each device and total it all together and find out how many Kilowatt hours the site uses. Multiply this by 24 and get the number of Kilowatt hours used in a day and multiply that by 30 to get the total kilowatt hours used in a month. Find out what the electric co. charges per Kilowatt hour and multiply the monthly usage by this and you can get a close estimate. Some Items such as air conditioning dont run 24 hours and that makes estimating the usage a little tricky. Our HT5 pulls about 8.5 kw. and cost around $720 just to run the transmitter for a month and the Air conditioner cost about $400 depending on how hot the weather is. There is no way I can see it costing 27k per month. 2.7k would be a lot closer but still I think it would be high. In Alabama we pay around 12 cents per kilowatt hour. I am not sure how much is charged in other states.
 
That figure seems rather high. I take care of a 50kw AM site with dual five ton AC units in the deep South. Monthly bill averages 3-3.5k per month.

RFB
 
A station I contract for has a Nautel V5, average size American Standard air conditioner (not sure the tonnage), backup Kenmore wall unit set to 79 should the main A/C fail (we too are in the deep south), Armstrong STL receiver, Broadcast Tools R/C and lighting on a 500 foot tower. The station owner complains and goes to check thermostats if the bill hits $700 so yes, something isn't right. And to make a more apples to apples comparison, we used to have a Harris FM5K1 which was the model right before the HT5 and was pretty much the same box but with an MX15 exciter. The power bill was around the same or maybe a little less.
 
A 50kW AM in New Jersey runs about $8-9k/month and our electric rates are sky-high.

No way that FM costs $27k/month to run.
 
I kind of figured that number was way out there. I spoke to the actual engineer who oversees the site and in his email he says that it runs them right around $950 a month depending upon the air condition load. He knows who my friend is and said he did not know where he got the 27k figure from.
So.. Thanks to all who responded.
 
I can only guess the 27K is the break-even point for the station. So in an obscure way of think that building (and every thing else) costs $27 K a month to keep the power on.
 
I wonder what the additional power bill will be for a 50kw station that adds HD at -14 dBc.

There are quite a few stations turning off the HD transmitter because it's not worth the electricity to run it.
 
The $950 sounds much closer to reality.

I used to manage a 5 kw AM daytimer with a Harris MW-5A, a lighted 231 foot tower,
and two central AC units, which I believe were Carriers. One unit was for the
transmitter building and the other for the studio building.

The electric bill for both the transmitter block building and the mobile home studios
ran from $700 - $850 on average.
 
rfburns said:
That figure seems rather high. I take care of a 50kw AM site with dual five ton AC units in the deep South. Monthly bill averages 3-3.5k per month.

RFB
Click to expand...

That's surprising...I would have thought a LOT more. I've heard from people in Georgia that home air-conditioning bills are running $250-450 a month there. Not even running a transmitter.
 
As you found, $27K is a bit out of line.

The cost of power varies quite a bit from location to location, especially outside the US, even when purchased from a power utility.

I've see locations where the typical per kWh cost runs upwards of 30 cents and a low end location where the per kWh cost is under a penny.
 
RadioFan2J3 said:
As you found, $27K is a bit out of line.

The cost of power varies quite a bit from location to location, especially outside the US, even when purchased from a power utility.

I've see locations where the typical per kWh cost runs upwards of 30 cents and a low end location where the per kWh cost is under a penny.
Click to expand...

Where is this location? The last figures I read showed the fuel costs to be above a penny for all fuels but coal (9/10's of a cent per kWh) and nuclear being near 0 (save for the admin/government/depreciatioin).
 
TomZ said:
RadioFan2J3 said:
As you found, $27K is a bit out of line.

The cost of power varies quite a bit from location to location, especially outside the US, even when purchased from a power utility.

I've see locations where the typical per kWh cost runs upwards of 30 cents and a low end location where the per kWh cost is under a penny.
Click to expand...

Where is this location? The last figures I read showed the fuel costs to be above a penny for all fuels but coal (9/10's of a cent per kWh) and nuclear being near 0 (save for the admin/government/depreciatioin).
Click to expand...

It is not at a US location. Yes, the cost probably does not reflected the real market price of the production of power, but I know what the billed rate is and the number is accurate.
 
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