Reducing Electricity Costs -

Over the winter our electricity bill was around $180 for a small home not heated with electricity. Our neighbors pay around $70-80 so we knew something was up. In the winter we don't run our dehumidifiers, A/C and had a hard time figuring out where the $ was coming from. We made some changes and dropped our bill down to $130 which is still too much I think, but much better. Here's what we did...

-We dry our clothes outside most of the time (now that it's warm outside)
-wash on cold (except diapers and sheets/towels), but we did this before
-our water heater is a few yrs old and set to 125 degrees
-changed most incandescents to flourescents
-unplugged all the square transformer plugs that aren't in immediate use (even battery chargers... they are power drains)
-pour our coffee into an airpot caraffe instead of having the burner on all day (literally) :
-shut down our computers at night
-have dh's space heater in the basement office on a timer (he forgot to turn it off a few times this winter while working from home)
-only use A/C at night in the bedroom and we all sleep in there on the hot nights
-put the tv/vcr on a power strip and turn off the strip at night (easy-on or appliances with a remote are always using power to be receptive to the remote's on/off switch)
-discovered and removed the mixing valve on our toilet that allowed hot water to go into the tank to reduce condensation on the tank. That one really bothered me since the toilet also leaked a little and probably was always draining hot water from the tank.
-installed a low-flow shower head on the kids shower to use less hot water (haven't wanted to get rid of mine yet : )
-short dishwasher cycle with no heated dry (or we sometimes handwash if there aren't many)
-in winter we had pans of water on radiators (out of kids reach) to reduce the load of humidifiers and we bought a couple vaporizors (they don't heat up and use less power)
-we cook whatever can fit in the toaster oven in the toaster oven instead of heating up the whole oven. I also bake in batches to maximize the heat of the oven when I do bake.
-use my bread machine often (rather than the oven)
-use the microwave to steam veggies, cook morning oatmeal, etc as it uses less power than the range
-pack the empty space in the large basement freezer with ice. I froze milk jugs full of water on the porch this winter. Freezers run more efficiently when full (now if only I'd defrost it! that helps too, and freezers that have auto defrost use more power and since they heat up, the food doesnt' last as long)

We still have no idea where all our $$ goes.

I'm interested in using solar hot water (black 55 gallon plastic drums) in the summer (and recycling the gray water from showers and the sink into the garden) but that will take time and effort. We also want to get an 'on demand' hot water heater. They don't store hot water like a tank that must use energy to keep the water at temp. It heats it as it's needed. Then we'd use our old water tank to make biodiesel for the furnace and the diesel car dh wants to buy for his commuter vehicle. I considered putting the hot water tank on a timer so that it goes on in the morning before showers and in the evening for baths/dishwasher but wondered if the cost of heating the water from cold to hot would be greater than maintaining a hot temp all day long. Hmm. Anyone know?

I am a total electricity scrooge. Its winter here, and our last bill was $134, so I am pretty happy. To put it in perspective, a summer power bill would be around $70. This is considering it was a wet month last month, and I used the drier a bit just to keep up, and I usually do a warm wash in the washing machine.

Anyway, our tips are....

- Wrap your water cylinder and pipes in an insulator.
- Turn EVERYTHING off at the wall. Computer, TV, stove, microwave etc. Our TV, VCR and Sky decoder all seem to be fine when turned off at the wall.
- Put old towels (or indulge in buying the fabric "sausages") at the base of doors to block draughts and prevent warm air escaping.
- Try to time all oven use to follow on from one thing to another. eg: do your baking in the late afternoon just before you put the pie for dinner in.
- Use the microwave for veges (in glass or crockery)

How about tips for summer time??? We live in an apt. and luckily, don't have to pay for heat in the winter, BUT once the HOT weather hits, we're shelling out $$$ for the a/c. I try to keep electricity usage to a minimum, but I'm clueless when it comes to usage . Yesterday and today, we were able to open the windows b/c the temp dropped back into the 70s, but the beginning of the week and last week... WHEW!!! We HAD to have the a/c on. 90* heat, a hotbox toddler, and pg mama was NOT a good combo for the heat, :LOL. So, I'm checking this thread for tips....

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Thanks for the tips We're already doing all of this, but we have central a/c in our small apt. (1br, a dining rm, liv. rm, kitch, and bath) so it's on in all the rooms. I've read about closing the vents in rooms that aren't in use, but it's such a small apt, we use all the rooms. I also keep the thermostat set at 78*, not as cool as I'd like :LOL but very bearable. I don't think our bill will be as high as last summer, but I'm still looking for ways to cut it even more

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Definately try keeping it "dark" in there, room darkening shades/curtains. It really helps ALOT. Especially in the heat of the day.

: These are awesome tips! I am calling our electric company tomorrow to see what is considered peak time!

i did not know that running your appliances after 7pm would make a difference. i will start doing that

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It's worth a call to your electric co. There is no rate difference for day/night where I live now. I always assumed there was, thinking it was common practice.

We tend to wash dishes at night now because we don't want the house heating up, but the other stuff we do when it's convenient for us, which tends to be in the morning.

Ladies,

We moved into a gargantuan house just over a year ago and I have just been too overwhelmed by life to worry about some daily issues, including our electrical usage. About a month ago I asked my husband for our bill and spent about two full, obsessive days working on reducing it. We've reduced our usage by 45%, but our energy demands are still way too high. I really hate to admit where we started, but I guess it's the first step in recovery.

We started at an average of 50 kilowatt hours per day. My only defense is that this is an enormous house. I don't have much of a defense for living in an enormous house in the first place, but I make myself feel a bit better by thinking that if someone else lived here, they would continue to use 50 kwh/day. My house is here: www.our-craftsman-home-restoration.com And there is a blog where I've put in some entries about this issue.

We changed out some appliances: we got rid of a commercial refrigerator (60 cf) replaced with an energy star 17 cf refrigerator. We had two other refrigerators and two freezers on the property (not all were plugged in). All are gone. We purchased a new energy star freezer. We had an electric water heater and just installed a gas heater. We don't really know yet what the cost of the gas heater will be, but based on costs of electric vs propane here, our cost will be about half to run propane. The old water heater was 14 years old, so the new one will also be more efficient to operate.

We have not yet changed all of the lightbulbs in the house to the more efficient ones. That's my husband's job. He's also supposed to put the TV and DVD player on a power strip so we can turn them off entirely. So while we've done some big things in terms of appliances, we need to do a few little things still.

Our biggest power user remaining that will take a good bit of money is the pump in our 250+ feet deep well. It is an old pump and on its last leg, but new pumps are pretty pricey. Simply replacing the pump should make a big difference. But the system itself is inefficient. It's a pump-on-demand system without any kind of holding tank. We are going to install a holding tank and reduce the horse power of the pump and then just order life around the new system. We may not be able to water all of the garden beds back-to-back on the same day. We may need to spread watering out. Easy changes like that should make it workable.

So at this point, we are down from 50 kwh/day to about 27 kwh/day. I want to hit 15 kwh/day. Even that is a lot, but that's my goal for the next year.

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I think the reason the power companies suggest running heavy-load appliances in the eve/night is to reduce load on the power company, not to save you money. If everyone is running A/C and dryers at the same time, the elect co needs to burn a heck of a lot more coal to keep up with wattage demand. At least here there's no time differential. I've never heard of one.

In some places they do meter by time of day and charge accordingly. Not here however.