Need to lower my electric bill!

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laynes69

laynes69

Minister of Fire
Oct 2, 2006
2,677
Ashland OH
I'm currently at a total loss, our electric bill seems like it's too high. I don't know the exact cost, but we are on a lower cost for the winter time. We have an 80 gallon electric water heater, and a 3/4 hp well pump. We use the heated drying option on our dishwasher, and we run an electric blanket each night (my wife is always cold). The blower on our wood furnace is a 1/3 hp 4 speed blower, and we have a chest freezer and a refrigerator freezer. We do have a lot of tech devices charging like tablets and iPods, and 2 outside security lights( 20.00 a month). When we first bought our home, I had electric bills around 100.00 (8 years ago). Now our electric bill has been around 190.00 a month. I've checked the points on the pump, I've turned down the water heater, I tried shutting off the charging devices at night, and nothing seems to reduce it. It's higher now than when we ran a window a/c unit this summer. Any thoughts, any places to look at. It looks like our usage is down from last year, but we keep getting slapped with this high bill.
 
In your list of electricity users, the bigger use items are the refrigerators, freezers, and water heater, the lowest use items will be the electronic gear. One thing you can try, is to keep the electronics and chargers on a strip (they should be on a static discharge/anti-spike strip anyway) and turn it off at night.
If you want to pinpoint high usage items, there are devices which measure the current draw, sold under trade names like the "Kill-O-Watt". There are several threads that talk about them. I'd be curious to know the usage of the electric blanket.. a really nice down comforter might be a better investment.

Also, if you still have a lot of incandescent lights, that can be a big draw. Look into upgrading to CFL's or LED's. My bill dropped about $20/month when I went to mostly CFL's. Though, I first bought some that were this harsh blue (natural daylight?) and I didn't like them. Picked up some other models which give off a softer light. They make some pretty decent LED flood lights now.
 
When we first bought our home, there was about 12 water leaks which was causing the pump to run almost non stop. We fixed those of course, and the bill went down compared to their usage. We also removed around 30 incandescent bulbs and put in CFL's before moving in.
 
80 Gallon water heater WOW I use a 30 Gal for 5-7 people. Never run out. We have 5 people all the time and up to 7 intermittently. My teenage daughter already takes 30-45 min showers. DO i want to lengthen that by putting in a larger WH ? Not a chance. Only LED and CFL lighting, 2 refrigerators, 1 chest freezer, 3 tvs, 5 computers,electric dryer 20 loads a week. Energy star washer,20 loads a week. My bill averages $130 a month. THis month a little higher with 2000 Xmas lights going for a month
 
Yeah, it was free from the local co-op around 10 years ago. I keep it flushed to remove any sediment and try to stay on top of the elements. I know there's something here that's causing our high electric bills, but I can't figure it out. We had a 30 gallon water heater in the old house and we always ran out of hot water. I've also put in low flow fixtures throughout the house.
 
laynes69 said:
We had a 30 gallon water heater in the old house and we always ran out of hot water. I've also put in low flow fixtures throughout the house.
Click to expand...
Lo-flow helps a lot. I never ran out but my daughter does and thats OK with me. The perfect way to conserve and not waste HW. Our showers are usually at different times and most of our appliances are Energy star (washer ,dishwasher) with their own HW heaters built in as both have steam and hi-temp features.
 
What is your actual kwh usage per month? What is the rate you pay per kwh? If your bill has about doubled in the last 8 years, that's about par IMO. Electric rates go up, a fact of energy cost. Do you have any electric space heaters? Electric clothes dryer? Other electric heat appliances?
 
We used 1300 Kwh's this month. 1,000 Kwh's were at .099 and the next 300 Kwh's were at .076. We had a 31.00 distribution charge , a .013 adjustment factor on the 1300 Kwh's, with a 18.00 charge with 2 security lights.

I looked back into 2005's records, and the electric rates then were 2 cents lower per kWh. It looks like we should be around 1100 Kwh's based on previous years. Even previous years the rates were higher but the electric bills were lower. Usage varies between 900-1200 Kwh's throughout the year. Just seems like something is hiking usage and I can't find it. I've been trying to track it down for some time now.

I forgot, we have an electric water heater, and our well pump. The stove, dryer, furnace is gas. We have 3 cell phones, a laptop, a tablet and 4 iPods. Our tv is a rear projection 57" TV, which I read doesn't use much energy and we occasionally run a dehumidifier. The only other cost we might have is the woodfurnace, which runs quite a bit, and it's a 1/3 hp. We have no space heaters, or other things like that.
 
Did you have more people over than normal? I know this adds up quickly on our electric usage as you have many more lights on than normal.

Check your heating elements in your water heater. They may be covered with calcium deposits and not able to heat the water as efficiently as new ones.

Also listen to see if your freezers and refrigerator are not running constantly. You may have a low pressure on the refrigerant on one of those appliances.
 
Just the fan in my dehumidifier is ~50W to circulate air. When the compressor kicks in and actually does work to create a temperature differential to dehumidify the air, it draws ~725W. 5hrs/day = 3.6kWh/day

Heating one gallon of water 70°F requires 0.17kWh. If your house goes through 60 gallons/day, that's just over 10kWh/day.
 
The service charge seems to rise right along with the charge for electricty.

Unless you keep your freezer packed full all the time, you might get away with a bottom pull out freezer/fridge. That's a move we're looking to make.
 
As I'm sitting in the kitchen, I'm hearing the fridge running. I did turn on the dehumidifier for a couple days because water came into the basement and I didn't fire the woodfurnace, it was too warm. I have 3 kids, and it's a struggle sometimes to keep lights off in the house. Sometimes it looks like a hotel lit up. That's why I opted for CFL's. Our chest freezer is almost full most of the time. It very well could be our fridge, it seems to run most of the time. I need to buy a kill o watt meter and keep and eye on things. If it is the fridge, I don't want to tell my wife. She want a fancy side by side $$$ lol. I did recently replace a suspect water heater element that I'm pretty sure was bad. Maybe I should test the other one.
 
It's running on 110, it's been that way for a number of years. I do notice when it kicks in, it will dim the lights a little.
 
Grab your last electric bill to see how much you are actually using. It might be that you are just paying a heck of a lot more per kwh than you used to. Once you find your bill you can see if your actual usage is more than the average house which is something like 900kwh. Knowing if your usage is average doesn't help when the bill comes in, but it's a place to start.

Pick up one of these:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Kill-A-Watt-Electricity-Monitor-P4400/202196386#

You can get them all over the place. I picked one up at Harbor Freight a few years ago.

Figure out how much each appliance uses. Decide if it's worth it for you. Wall worts, like cell phone chargers are little draws that add up if you aren't careful. We unplug or switch off most of the draws in our house. For 220 volt appliances like the water heater, you can buy timers to shut them off during the day when nobody is home.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-40-Am...=202788247&ci_kw=&ci_gpa=pla&ci_src=17588969#


This gives you a way to start figuring out where the electrons are going.

Good luck!
 
In a post above, I explained some of this. I've gone thru my electric usage since 2005, and my usage has been between 900 and 1100 Kwh's. If I'm running the AC then I would expect a higher bill, but not having that many large electrical loads (dryer,stove) it seems awfully high. Rates have gone up, but not by more than a few cents since 2005.
 
Kill-a -watt meter is about $20 ,well worth the cost. Ck each appliance. It wont work on the water heater though. Some older WHs can use a LOT of juice for some reason. One of my new energy star 20 CU Ft refrigerators only uses about 1Kw a day ,about 10c.
 
I would start with the big stuff like the water heater and the well pump. You can buy a clamp-on ammeter to measure the current draw without breaking the circuit. IF the well pump is 120V, I would patch it through a Kill-A-Watt. Anything using that much juice is making heat. You should be able to track it down by putting hands on stuff, or even seeing which rooms are too warm. A malfunctioning pump down a hole, though, can shed a lot of energy stealthily.

Some libraries have Kill-A-Watts you can check out....I would start with the entertainment center...cable/DVR box, older HD TV, etc. My wifi rig uses ~0.5 kWh/day, and it is an 'efficient' model.

All the handheld electronics you mentioned, and their chargers will be less than 0.2 kWh/day in TOTAL, don't worry about that. Modern phone/tablet chargers have very low standby losses (most use DC-DC converters, rather than magnetic transformers). A lot of folks are wasting a lot of effort chasing non-existent vampire loads there, IMO.

In my case....during my family summer vacation, my smart meter reports my house uses 10 kWh/day, with noone in it and no AC. I can justify maybe 3-4 kWh/day. I need to go sleuthing for the rest.
 
Have you cleaned the coils on your refrigerator and freezer lately?
Any new hair dryers and flat irons in the house? Few years back my nice moved in for a few months and I could see the 15 to 17 a month spike and then dropped when she left.

The 25 watt light bulb my wife leaves on in the basement for the cats drives me nuts.
 
I haven't cleaned the coils, actually I've never cleaned them, never gave it a thought. I will now though. No hair dryers or irons. I did get a Bunn coffee maker, but that's been a while ago. I know it cost maybe a couple of dollars a month, but wouldn't trade it for the world.
 
While you are in the mode to pull heavy appliances away from walls... cleaning your dryer vent can have a favorable effect, as well. In addition to significantly shortening drying times if it's plugged with residual lint, it also is supposed to reduce risk of fire.

Good luck!
 
1750 said:
While you are in the mode to pull heavy appliances away from walls... cleaning your dryer vent can have a favorable effect, as well. In addition to significantly shortening drying times if it's plugged with residual lint, it also is supposed to reduce risk of fire.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

That's one thing that I do. I tear down the dryer twice a year to clean it out. I've been in a couple house fires (not from dryers). Most things like that I try to maintain.
 
Great thread, a lot of good info here.

I just bought a house, and I'm adjusting to the higher energy bills. Its double what I used to pay for a 1 bedroom apartment. But seeing how many KWH's other people use I think I am doing fairly well.

For October's billing cycle I used 545 KWH and for November it was 604 KWH.
I'm very curious to see how Decembers bill looks because of all the Christmas lights.
 
boo boo said:
Have you cleaned the coils on your refrigerator and freezer lately?
Click to expand...
Just an FYI for any of you inspired by this thread (as I was) to clean your coils...

You might want to check your manual before doing this. I muscled the great beast away from the wall only to discover that the coils are underneath, accessible by a panel in the front. Had I ever cleaned them before, I would know this... suffice it to say that with the amount of crud I liberated from the coils, this will draw a few less watts going forward.

Also, if your vacuum filter gets changed as frequently as ours apparently does... it's time to clean that puppy, too!
 
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