Advice for saving on Electricity

[LillFilly]

Ok, standard 60's ranch-style 3-bedroom home, brick facade, good insulation, double-paned windows, roof in mostly full-sun. This past month we didn't run AC or heat the entire time. Electric bill was over $300. We have 2-fridges (1-side-by-side, unit (newer), 1-top & bottom unit, both on lowest settings) Gas water heater and furnace. We do have a lot of electronics but turn them off and try to unplug when not in use. We do do a lot of laundry, with 5-yo maytag top loading washer and front dryer, high-capacity. We run ceiling fans in 2-rooms. At the front of the house is an outside outlet with xmas lights we run for decoration on a dusk timer for 4-hours. At the rear of the house is a yard-based electrical outlet that we don't use much. The past month was very wet and the sump pump in the basement ran night and day. We are trying to cut back even more and waiting to see what this months bill will be to see if the cause was the sump pump. I've heard of other bills in the area being even higher. We are with MetEd but I hear PPE has better rates. I'd like to see if we have electricity 'leaking' anywhere and maybe installing solar panels. I want to get rid of the older fridge and try turning down the heat on the water heater. Any other advice? I wonder if it would be cheaper to use the laundrymat for drying clothes or something also.

PS. So sorry, added an extra 0 to that; I was tired. 300, not 3000. Hello, proofreading!

[Chromatix]

$3000 in a month is a *lot*. May I ask what your rate per kWh (often called "unit") is? We can estimate the average power draw from that and, for example, compare it to the pump's power rating.

There are plug-in electricity meters available, which you should put on your refrigeration units for a few days to measure their average power consumption. Do this for other major appliances too, including particularly your TV setup.

It's very good that you were able to avoid using both A/C and heating. It also sounds like hot water is provided by gas power, so that's not going to be significant on the electricity bill.

I might be missing something about how houses are built over there, but needing to run a pump continuously to keep the basement dry in wet weather sounds like *really* bad design. You should try to find a way of keeping it dry - or at least drier - passively.

Another trick is to find your main electricity meter and observe the indications of current flow on it - this might be a spinning disc or a flashing lamp. Switch off all appliances that you believe are consuming power, and make sure that the meter has actually stopped. It's safe to unplug even the fridges for an hour for this purpose. If it hasn't, flip the circuit-breakers (or pull the fuses) for individual circuits in turn until you find the culprit(s).

[cleorose]

If you didn't run a 300 electric bill without ac and minimal appliances, call an electrician and see if you got a short somewhere.

[It's me]

Electric dryer can use a lot of electricity. As can a neighbour running an extension cord you your one of your outside outlets.....

[Seshat]

Ok, standard 60's ranch-style 3-bedroom home, brick facade, good insulation, double-paned windows, roof in mostly full-sun.

Insulation between the roof and the house proper? Insulation between the ground and the house?

Double-paned windows is great! How's the curtaining? How about any leaks around the edges of windows and doors? Run a bead of caulk, or a strip of insulation foam, around those edges. Stick weatherstrips along the bottom of the doors.
Have nice heavy curtains available for use in winter; ideally with pelmets. There're guides for how to make your curtains nicely insulating all over the 'net.

Find a way to shade the house in summer (and the hot parts of spring and autumn), especially on the sunward side. If you're in the northern hemisphere, sunward is south; and vice versa for antipodeans like me.
You can get away with just shading the sunward wall for the hottest parts of the day: a simple shade-sail or even just awnings that shade the windows will help.
Make sure you take the shade away when autumn starts to get cold, and put it back when spring starts to get hot.

This past month we didn't run AC or heat the entire time.

If that was because you didn't need it, GREAT!

We have 2-fridges (1-side-by-side, unit (newer), 1-top & bottom unit, both on lowest settings)

Fridges are one of the energy hungry devices, as are freezers. If you're not filling or mostly-filling your fridge and freezer space, you have more than you need.
DO NOT have your fridge/freezer on the lowest setting unless that's the setting that gives you the correct temperature!
Get a fridge/freezer thermometer. Every week or two, check the thermometer, adjust the settings, then put it in a different part of the fridge/freezer. We have one unit, fridge-and-freezer, and we swap between putting the thermometer in the fridge and in the freezer.
Food safety is more important than the scant amount of money you might save by turning the fridge or freezer down: and you could be losing that money in shortened food storage time anyway.
If your fridge/freezer is mostly filled on shopping day, but there's still space for the air to move around the stuff in there, you're doing perfectly.

If you have more fridge/freezer space than you're using, turn the second one off. If it stays unused most of the year, get rid of it. If you use it only at Christmas or some such, you may be better off sticking ice in the bathtub and shoving the chilled soda for the Christmas party in there.

We do have a lot of electronics but turn them off and try to unplug when not in use.

Power strips with 'turn the whole strip off' switches, that can be put conveniently near the front of the electronics, and which power the entire set of electronics for that spot, are very convenient and make it very easy to remember to turn things off/unplug them.

We run ceiling fans in 2-rooms.

Ceiling fans are supposed to be one of the lowest-cost, most eco-friendly ways to keep a house cool. The only better way is houses with breezeways built into the design: and even that only works if there's a breeze.

Unless there's something wrong with your ceiling fans, they're not your culprit.

At the front of the house is an outside outlet with xmas lights we run for decoration on a dusk timer for 4-hours.

Are they incandescent, LED, halogen, flourescent? If they're incandescent, they may be your culprit. LED is probably your ideal for decorative lighting at low wattage.

At the rear of the house is a yard-based electrical outlet that we don't use much.

... but you might want to test the KW/h of what you do use it for.

The past month was very wet and the sump pump in the basement ran night and day.

Obviously, you do need to keep your basement dry.

Is there any way you can use siphoning or gravity to help the pump? Or use ground-level guttering to direct surface water away from the house and towards the city's storm water system?
I know the ground level guttering will only help with surface water, but every little bit might help.

I'd like to see if we have electricity 'leaking' anywhere and maybe installing solar panels. I want to get rid of the older fridge and try turning down the heat on the water heater. Any other advice? I wonder if it would be cheaper to use the laundrymat for drying clothes or something also.

To check for 'leaking' electricity, turn everything off. Everything. Then go to the electricity meter and write down the time, and the current measurements on the meter.

Go away for an hour, or a day. (If you're keeping the fridges off for long, keep them closed. Fridges are very well insulated, and if the doors are closed and the seals clean and effective, they can maintain their internal temperature for a long, long time.)

Come back and check to see if the meter has ticked over at all. If it has, something is still using power! Go look for it.

To test usage for individual items, you can either buy a meter that tests what's running in a given power point or power strip (if such exist, and I'd be surprised if they don't); or turn everything else off and check the main meter. Which is way inconvenient, but ... eh.


You didn't mention your lights. Flourescent or LED lights are your cheapest to run (that I know of).
Your most efficient way to actually light the place is to have general lighting that lights things to a comfortable level for just bumming around and living in the house, and task lighting for specific things. Rows of LEDs under the upper kitchen cabinets can specifically light the workbenches in the kitchen. A light over the dining table, with a dimmer switch, can be turned to about halfway for a normal meal, down for a romantic meal, and up to maximum for doing homework or using the table to do crafts on. Etc, etc.
It's more expensive to set up, I know. But as long as you turn task lights off once you're not using them, it's effective and inexpensive to run.


Turning the heat down on a storage-type water heater can be useful. Take the time now to research types of water heater available to you and choose what you want to have when you replace it.
I've chosen to hope we can afford to replace ours with an on demand, gas powered heater with temperature control panels for the bath and shower (ideally, all the hot water taps). On demand heaters only use power (or gas) when hot water is actually being used, and with the temperature control panels, they only heat it to as hot as we reallytrulyruly want it.
If I lived at a more equatorial latitude, instead of nearly as far south as anyone can live at my longitude, I'd probably go for a solar system.

For your laundry: find a place out of the rain, with good breeze/air, to hang out clothes. If you need to, you can put up a covered area that's a combination covered play area and hanging-out-clothes area. (This assumes you can afford it - it might be a long term plan.)
Put up a clothesline in the covered area. Also put up a clothesline in a bright, sunny place (if you can).
On rain-free days, hang out all your pale clothes (and anything that has a stain you want the sun to bleach) on the sunny clothesline. Dark clothes can be hung out there as well, but you might want to turn them inside out. (Sunlight bleaches clothes, over enough time.)
If you have things you want to let dry in a no-ironing way, hang them on a clotheshanger and hang the hanger onto the line; and arrange the clothes as if you were a dry-cleaner presenting the garment perfectly.
If there's rain, hang things on the covered-area clothesline. On sunny days, if you want to keep your dark clothes dark, use the covered/shaded clothesline.

Even on the wettest, rainiest days, clothes which have been hung out will get dryer. You might need to take them in still damp and dry them in the dryer if the day is just too wet for them to fully dry; but you've saved a lot of power by letting the atmosphere dry them.
On sunny days, they'll dry completely out there. Even in the shade. Bast does our household laundry, and she likes to let the dryer stop at 'mostly dry' and hang clothes out to let the sun and wind fully dry them and leave them smelling of sunshine and our lavender bush.


Last note:

Solar or wind power can be very effective. If your roof is slanted sunwards, and especially if you're at a vaguely equatorial latitude, solar is probably your best bet. If you're in a windy place, a home wind turbine (or two) can make a difference. If you have access to both, you're golden.

[ComputerNecromancer]

If the sump pump isn't permanently wired in, you might want to invest in a watt meter. I know that ham rafdio stores usually have them, but they are probably findable at other places.

You plug it into the outlet, and then plug the appliance or other device into it.

The meter will read out how many watts it is using, with the reading changing as the device's usage changes.

A quick and dirty way to check for overall problems is to kill all the power at the breaker box/fuse box. Check and see if the "wheel" on the electric meter on the house is still turning. If it is, there's a short or something.

Next, make sure everything is turned off or unplugged, and turn breakers back on one at a time (or replace fuses if you have a fuse box). Each time, wait a few minutes and see if the electric meter has started turning.

If it has, there's something on the circuit you just reconnected that's drawing power. Find it.

There's also a useful gizmo that plugs into outlets (and with a simple adapter you can get in hardware stores can be screwed into light sockets as well). It's "paired" with a bigger gizmo you take to the fuse box/breaker panel.

When the handheld part is next to the right fuse/breaker, it lights up. This lets you determine which outlet/socket is on which breaker or fuse.

It might be a thought to get the gizmo *first* and map out which outlets and sockets are on which fuse *first* then do the "turn off everything" test.

[MoonCat]

Not to short circuit (Ha! See what I did there?) any of the good advice in this thread, but just wanted to mention that utility companies will often have someone do a walk-through and test things, they can offer advice on how to be more energy-efficient.

[LillFilly]

Thanks for the input so far. To answer questions, the seals around the windows are great and we do have fairly heavy curtains; I've never seen a breeze get by. On the one plate glass window in front, which gets no sun, we've put the plastic liner over the inside of the window.

The old basement fridge gets no use, only the freezer part of it. We are looking at trashing that and getting a small chest freezer that is estimated to run on $30 of electricity a year; initial investment $150, and store will haul the old fridge away. We mostly freeze packages of meat.

The xmas lights at the front of the house is 1-led string of lights and 1-rope light.

Light bulbs inside the house are basic 60watts incandescents that we are slowly switching to the energy savers as they burn out. These lights aren't used at all during the day; maybe 4-hours in the evening. The basement, however, has several panels of flourescent lights; I'll have to look into that.

The house is recessed into a hill, so the back of the basement is in the hill and the garage door opens up on level ground. Water tends to run down the hill behind us and pool in the back yard. We dug 2-drainage ditches to either side of the house during Storme Irene; before we did that the basement flooded even with the sump pump. If we hadn't diverted the water I think we would have flooded again, so we probably took as much pressure off the pump as possible. I don't know how else we would get the sump water 4-ft up to street level.

I read about turning off all breakers and seeing if the meter is spinning; I want to try that.

I also read that rates have gone up, but PPL is supposed to be lower than MetEd, so I'm looking at switching or maybe joining an energy group.

I do want to try drying my cloths in nice weather.

Our trees are high enough to shade 1/2 the back of the house, without blocking the roof. We want to look at the initial investment of solar power, but probably cannot afford instillation right now.

Being so warm in the house, we've also turned-off the snake's heat lamps and left just the UV lights on; all are halogen bulbs.

[Tama]

Unplug your toasters, etc -- anything you don't use all the time that needs an outlet. Also remember that your charging devices take a lot.

Solar panels might be a good idea, if you can afford them.

[EricKei]

Just random ones that occurred to me - Do you own a large-screen TV? They continue to consume some juice even when "off" - Plasmas are a major offender. Likewise, any video game console of the PS3/360/Wii era, and, to a greater extent, of the PS4/XBONE/WiiU era. The XBONE, iirc, uses something like 45% of its peak power usage when in standby/"off" mode if it's not unplugged; the others aren't a whole lot better, and they use a ton of juice even when playing videos/music/DVDs. Computers can be just as bad at idle, tho when non-laptop systems are turned off, they're generally truly "off."

[otakuneko]

The problem with solar is not the panels but everything that goes along with them. It's expensive and return on investment takes quite a while. It's an extreme long-term investment that you may not ever break even on if you're unlucky.

Turning down the heat on the water heater won't help if it's gas.

Second the motion to ditch the second fridge, if possible.

Try to do laundry less frequently?

Finally, check your options: I'm on a plan where electricity is free between 10pm and 6am. Guess when I crank up the AC and do laundry?

[protege]

Has anyone mentioned those swirly light bulbs? Since fitting them, I've seen my energy bills drop. I live in a 2-bedroom ranch house, and my electric bill is rarely over $100 a month. Most times, it's well below $50

But seriously, I've fitted those bulbs and a ceiling fan in my office. Most of the time, I don't even have to run the A/C. However, I get migraines, and the A/C comes on for a few hours--just to get the heat out of the place. I tell people that my house is a 72 (F) degree paradise all year long Oh, and I turn the heat back to about 60 during the winter at night. I'm under the covers, so I don't need to keep the heat going.

[Seshat]

Has anyone mentioned those swirly light bulbs?

Yes - they're flourescent light bulbs.

I mentioned that flourescent and LED bulbs are both more efficient than incandescent. I'm not sure exactly where halogen bulbs fit in; but I know they produce a lot of heat so they're probably not as efficient as flouros (swirly) or LEDs.

My own experience matches yours, and Filly has said she's swapping to the flouros as the incandescents burn out; so .. yay.


You have a good point regarding both making use of off-peak power, and controlling the use of heating/cooling.

My own guideline: pick an upper and lower limit for your family's comfort zone in the daytime, and at night.

If you have central heating/cooling, set it to the lower limit in winter, and the upper limit in summer. Only heat/cool rooms that are currently in use; unless you're at a climatic extreme. (IE: northern Canadians will probably want to keep their whole house heated to some livable temperature, all winter.)

Use ceiling fans to assist with the cooling; and experiment with using them to drive heated air back down to the human-zone of taller rooms in winter.

If you don't have central heating/cooling, consider sticking a thermometer to the wall in each of your main living areas. If the thermometer doesn't show the room as being 'too cold', put a jumper on instead of turning on the space heater.

Like protege, I don't use a heater in the bedroom. I just sleep under two doonas and three blankets.

[wolfie]

I mentioned that flourescent and LED bulbs are both more efficient than incandescent. I'm not sure exactly where halogen bulbs fit in; but I know they produce a lot of heat so they're probably not as efficient as flouros (swirly) or LEDs.

Halogens are a type of incandescent, but more efficient than regular incandescents, and you DON'T EVER touch the "capsule" (if there's a second glass envelope around the "capsule", that's OK to touch when it's off), even when it's off - BAD THINGS will happen due to the skin oils you leave behind.

Physics lesson: Blackbody radiation refers to the light (visible and not) given off by an "ideal" blackbody (perfect emitter) at a given temperature. The filament of an incandescent lamp is a good approximation of a blackbody. The hotter a blackbody gets, the more light it gives off - and within a specific range of temperatures, the higher the percentage of that light that is in the visible spectrum (i.e. increased efficiency of the light bulb).

Ordinary incandescent bulbs are limited in how hot the filament can get because if it's too hot tungsten will "boil off" and deposit on the inside of the bulb envelope, resulting in short bulb life. A halogen bulb has a fused quartz (can handle high temperatures better than regular glass) "capsule" of a fairly small diameter, with (surprise) halogen gas (usually iodine) inside. The "boiled off" tungsten will react with the halogen gas, producing a tungsten halide. The "capsule" is hot enough that, rather than depositing, the tungsten halide will "boil off" from the capsule surface and float around inside the bulb. Eventually it will reach the filament, where the heat is enough to break up the tungsten halide into tungsten, which re-deposits on the filament, and halogen gas. This "halogen cycle" continues, with tungsten continuously being "boiled off" from and redeposited on the filament, allowing the filament to operate at a higher (i.e. more efficient) temperature than it could in a normal incandescent, where "boiled off" tungsten is gone forever.

[TheSHAD0W]

Please post the details of your electric bill. Many companies have both a usage and a demand charge, and knowing whether your demand is spiking can help figure out what's going on.

I recommend you replace all incandescent bulbs immediately, both normal and halogen. Compact fluorescent bulbs are quite cost-effective now. LEDs are mostly still too expensive to be cost-effective compared to CFs, but you may consider using them in fixtures that are always-on.

Your old refrigerator is a likely culprit; there may be a decal inside telling when it was manufactured. Can you tell us how old it is?