How to Save 25% to 30% on Your Electricity Bills.
There are hundreds of ways to save electricity, especially if you count all of the weatherization and building envelope improvements that you could employ. With all of those choices, it is hard to know where to start. Here are some simple steps to add to your Home Energy Audit to help you prioritize which ones you should do first. By taking them, you could easily slash your electricity bills by 25 to 30%.
The first thing you should do is to simply turn things off when you aren’t using them: TVs, lights, computers, stereos, monitors, and computer speakers. This seems obvious, but many houses are lit up like an operating room, even when there is no one home. With the flick of a switch you can start saving.
Your second step, if you are serious about cutting your electrical bills, is to invest in a Kill-A-Watt moni
tor. Plug your refrigerator, freezer, small appliances and other electronic devices into this handy gadget and it will tell you your electrical costs by the hour, day, week or year for each of these items. This way, you can determine how much you can save by unplugging those devices that are off, but that still draw juice, or how much you will save by replacing that old refrigerator. Make a list of all of these appliances and devices with their corresponding annual costs for your records.
Lighting accounts for about 25% of the average homes electricity bills. So, if your annual electricity bill is a $1,000, you could save about $150 to $200 a year just by replacing your incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. As a rule of thumb a 100 Watt bulb that is left on 24/7/365 will cost about $100 per year to keep lit. Replace incandescent bulbs that are used on a daily basis as follows:
- 100 Watt bulb: 25 minutes or more,
- 75 Watt bulb: 30 minutes or more,
- 60 Watt bulb: 40 minutes or more,
- 40 Watt bulbs: 60 minutes or more, and
- 25 Watt bulbs: 90 minutes or more,
and the savings in electricity will pay for the new bulbs in five years or less.
Calculate your savings: If you would like to calculate your annual savings you will need to list all of the fixtures whose bulbs you replace, the total current watts (Wc), the total new watts (Wn), and the average time in minutes (T) they are on per day. You will also need to refer to your electricity bill to find your electrical rate (R). The formula for calculating your annual savings (S) per fixture is: (Wc-Wn)*T*R*.00608 = S
Change your drying habits. Drying your clothes in a clothes dryer can cost you from $50 to $100 a year. By line drying your clothes, you can reduce this number significantly, and by installing a Clothes Dryer Heat Saver you can recapture the heat from your dryer to help to heat your home during the heating season.
After taking these few steps, you can now determine which electricity saving products and strategies that you should employ first and how much you should expect to save. Take a first step, take the Net 50 Energy Challenge, and cut your electrical bills starting now.
Dan Bossenbroek
October 21, 2009
Tags: CFL's, Energy Conservation, Net 50 Energy Challenge Posted in: Energy Conservation, Home Energy Audit, Net 50 Energy Challenge
One Response
Where are the real green homes? Today’s homes, even when designed to be “green” are much larger than earlier homes and have a much smaller household. Even with efficiency improvements, they are much more wasteful and generate more emissions than the smaller homes of the 50s.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/real-green-houses.html
Canada Guy´s last blog ..Real Green Houses
Leave a Reply