Getting Your electric Bill Under Control

In slow economic times it behooves a man like me to pinch pennies. Jobs have been few and far between with no real job security. So, some time ago, I decided to set up my very first real budget. I’ll admit it has been an agonizing process and finding different ways to save still goes on to this day. However, very quickly, one area did emerge where I was sure I could do make some long lasting gains...the electric bill! 

This came home to me when, back in March, I got a bill for $160 and change. I decided, then and there, to get proactive on my own and to see what I could do to bring this cost more into line. First, I needed a plan, so the first thing I did was build a comprehensive map of all the devices in my home. For each item, I put down a brief description, the location, its wattage requirement and how much it was used during an average day. Just by knowing a couple of things, I could arrive at an average monthly cost for that item.

Now, the math for figuring this is pretty simple (see below). Just take the rated wattage , let’s say were looking at a 75 watt bulb ,and divide it by 1000 to get the kilowatt figure (0.75). Next you need to know what the electric company is charging you for a kilowatt hour. Here in southwest Missouri I am charged about 9 cents per kilowatt hour so we multiply 0.075 x 9 cents we get a cost per hour used of  0.675 cents per hour or 16.2 cents per day (assuming we ran the light all day and all night). Therefore , an average months cost would be 30 times 16.2 cents or $4.86 per month.

There is one small fly to this ointment. In the real world, many devices like furnaces, water heaters and fridges run for short or irregular periods of time, thus they can be hard to figure out. (I suppose in the case of the refrigerator you could stand around for a few hours with your ear to the door and then notate how long it hums. Doing something like that would get you an average at least)! However, for me there was a pretty neat device on the market called the ‘Kill-a-Watt’ that can do the work for you. Just plug it into what you want to measure and let an appropriate amount of time pass ( an hour, a day, a week...) and the reading will tell you exactly how much the power is costing you. Pretty neat like I said.

So, after a lot of running around and getting readings from various items, I was able to develop a strategy for saving myself some money. In order to accomplish this, I bought a few timers and multiple outlet devices to allow me to turn off devices at night when they aren’t being used anyway. Included in this category were such items as my cable Hi-definition equipment, surround sound, hubs, computers, printers and servers. I also replaced my old incandescent light bulbs with florescent one that are much more energy efficient. In the basement, I wrapped the water heater in a protective blanket and reduced the temperature at which the water was maintained. Lastly, I adjusted the AC and heat to more reasonable levels and used ceiling fans whenever possible.

My ‘improvements’ took have taken a couple of months to implement, but you can see the difference it has made since March in the form of real savings of about forty plus dollars a month so far. What’s really smashing is that I have not had to change my lifestyle very much. Just a little tweaking here and there.

Now it’s time to ‘kick it up a notch’, so I purchased a TED. That stands for ‘The Energy Detective’ and it is a device which will monitor the entire house in real time. My hope is that this will help me to achieve even greater savings. I plan to write a blog on this in a few weeks.