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(Lower Your Electric Bill)
If you’re living alone, like I am, you have one big advantage: You can do whatever you want to do to try to save on your monthly electric bill. Some of the tips listed below might not be practical for someone who is not living alone, but many of them can be applied no matter what your living situation might be.
Okay, so after not paying an electric bill for more than 10 years, I’m about to move into an apartment with heat, water and garbage pickup included in the rent, but not the electricity. What to do? As soon as I walk in the door, the first thing that I do is to turn off all of the circuit breakers! Electrical consumption: zero! Now, just to make sure that they don’t get turned back on by accident, I pull the electric stove away from the wall, and unplug that huge plug. (I do all of my cooking using two microwave ovens!) I do the same for the refrigerator. But I need a refrigerator, so I buy the tiniest one that Walmart™ sells and put it on top of the never-to-be-used electric stove. I then use the big refrigerator, the automatic dishwasher and the electric stove’s oven for storage!
The hot water heater hasn’t been turned on for even a second since I moved in 1½ years ago! What’s the big deal? If I turn a faucet all the way to hot, the water is room temperature because it’s been sitting in the turned off hot water heater. I take a shower every day and they are very quick, not only because the water is relatively cold, but also because I don’t have to take the time to adjust the water temperature. I just turn it all the way to hot, and I’m good to go! (I soap up before I get into the shower by standing in front of the sink and using a Dial™ foam soap dispenser. To save money, I refill the soap dispenser using one part ordinary liquid soap and 3 parts water.)
What about hot water for washing dishes? No problem. Simply let them soak for a day in water containing dish detergent and a capful of bleach. Then everything rinses off easily!
What about hot water for doing laundry? See http://llbest.com/?P=5o.
Here is a summary of the money/energy saving tips that I’ve come up with so far (Most of these tips are fairly obvious, but some, such as #9 and #10, are not so obvious):
1. Turn off the circuit breakers for and/or unplug your: hot water heater, electric stove, electric dishwasher, electric clothes drier, washing machine, and air conditioner.
2. Use electric fans and vacuum cleaners as little as possible.
3. Wherever possible, use compact fluorescent light bulbs, especially 5 watt (25 watt equivalent ceiling fan bulbs). These are available from Walmart. I’ve used the “P3 International P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor” to measure how much electricity the bulb actually uses: 4 watts.
4. In the bathroom, never turn the bright lights above the mirror on except for shaving, or, if you’re a woman, putting on makeup. The rest of the time use a single 4 watt compact fluorescent bulb like the ones mentioned in #3 above. For example, the way that I accomplish this using the 3 light fixture which came preinstalled in my bathroom is as follows: I have the 4 watt bulb screwed into the middle socket and 2 100 watt equivalent bulbs each screwed into a “2 Outlet Socket Adapter / With pull chain light control” (also available at Walmart). This makes the 2 bright bulbs easy to turn on and off individually.
5. Assuming that you have a 3 lamp fixture above your dining room table, use bulbs of 3 different wattages / equivalent wattages. For example: 4/25, 9/40, and 27/100. Using this example, you could select 7 different total wattages by partially unscrewing 1 or 2 of the bulbs as follows:
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Thus you would be able to choose brightnesses all the way from 4/25 to 40/165. With only the 4/25 bulb screwed in all the way, you could even have a simulated “candlelight” dinner! If you don't mind the way it looks, an alternative to partially unscrewing the bulbs would be to screw each of the 3 bulbs into a “2 Outlet Socket Adapter / With pull chain light control.”
6. Use one of the 4 watt bulbs mentioned in #3 above as a bedside lamp.
7. All in-cord power adaptors should be plugged into multiple outlet strips so that they can be switched off (completely disconnected from the AC outlet).
8. Use a computer that has no moving parts and that has an LED backlit display and an LED backlit keyboard, so that you can use it at night without having to turn any lights on. (http://llbest.com/?P=5x)
9. Plug your microwave into a multiple outlet strip. Make sure that the strip is always turned off when you are not using the microwave. This alone saves a significant amount of electricity. Also, leave the microwave’s door partially open whenever it’s not being used so that it can dry out as thoroughly as possible. This will allow it to run more efficiently so the food heats up faster, thus saving even more electricity.
10. Keep your refrigerator as full as possible at all times. Whenever you open your refrigerator door, all of the cold air immediately pours out onto the floor because it is heavier than room temperature air. Therefore, decrease the amount of free air in your refrigerator by keeping it as full as possible, even if it means adding bottles full of water or even plastic bags full of air!
11. The longer an item is kept out of the refrigerator, the warmer it gets, and the more electrical energy is required to cool it again. Therefore, keep things, a carton of milk for example, out of the refrigerator for as short a time as possible.
12. Never use a hot plate, an electric toaster, an electric deep fryer, a waffle iron, or an electric popcorn popper. These appliances are not nearly as efficient as a microwave oven. They all, like an electric stove, waste heat by heating up the surrounding air. Microwave ovens are very efficient, especially if they are kept bone dry inside, because a high percentage of the energy goes directly into heating up the food.
13. Never use a blender or an electric mixer. These appliances don’t save much time anyway, because they create more dishes to wash.
14. Never use an electric can opener. What’s the big deal about using a hand operated can opener? It’s good exercise!
15. Don’t use any AC powered electric clocks. Use clocks, preferably “atomic,” with LCD displays, and which run on AA batteries. If you use alkaline batteries, they will last for years!
16. Do your laundry using 5-gallon buckets using the method described on http://llbest.com/?P=5o. Your clothes will come out cleaner, it’s good upper body exercise to wring them out by hand, it uses no electricity or hot water, and you only have to spend 10 minutes a day doing laundry!
17. If you use the same laptop computer at home as you do at work, at school, or at the library, plug it into the AC when you’re away from home and, as far as possible, run it on the battery at home! This doesn’t actually save any electricity, but it will reduce your electric bill!
18. Use a laptop as a desktop replacement. The Asus U20A is designed for saving power, and it normally only draws about 15 watts! It has both a VGA and an HDMI port so that you can even use two external extended desktop monitors simultaneously! A good choice for an external monitor is the Dell G2210 or the Dell G2410, both of which have amazing power saving abilities. (See http://llbest.com/?P=6e)
What is the result of the above attempt at frugality? Even though electricity costs me approximately 16 cents per kilowatt hour, which, I think, is relatively high compared to America as a whole, a typical monthly electric bill for the winter, when I don’t need to use a fan, is only US$17! In the summer, it’s only US$19!
Email from my oldest son:
From: Michael Best
Date: Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 2:28 PM
Subject: RE: How to Save Electricity
To: Howard Charles Best
Some good advice there. Of course some of those aren’t practical for a family of nine. Here’s some of what we do:
1. We use fluorescent bulbs wherever possible; otherwise we use halogen bulbs.
2. We got the most energy efficient appliances for the money when we remodeled our kitchen. We also made a special built-in spot for our microwave oven in the kitchen.
3. We don’t have any heat or A/C (an advantage of living in Hawaii).
4. Our water is mostly heated by four solar panels (they heat the water directly and store it in a 120 gallon tank on the roof). The system just uses the laws of physics to move water through the panels and doesn’t need a pump.
5. My wife and I both use compact laptop computers that use little power.
6. We’d have a hard time washing our clothes by hand, but a front-loading washing machine is almost as good, and it can wring out the clothes better than by hand.
7. We’ve never used an electric can-opener. With one of these, why would you?
8. We have no carpets, so have no need to vacuum.
Love,
Michael My reply:
From: Howard Charles Best
Date: Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 2:46 AM
Subject: Re: How to Save Electricity
To: Michael Best
Dear Michael, I’m thinking that even a large family, such as yours, could wash their clothes using 5 gallon buckets (http://llbest.com/?P=5o). Not only would this save on electricity, but it would also teach your children responsibility and would build up their bodily strength. You could put shelving units such as the following:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8222430
…in your bathrooms for the purpose for storing the buckets. I have 3 of these wire shelving units. They are very attractive, and are very strong as well. You can even put them on an irregular floor, because each leg has an adjustable foot.
If you put the bottom shelf one notch off of the floor and position all 4 shelves an equal distance apart, they are perfect for storing up to three 5-gallon buckets per shelf. However, I recommend 2 per shelf if the buckets are heavy because 3 is a little cramped. Assuming that you have one bathroom for you and your 4 sons and a different bathroom for your wife and your 3 daughters, 2 shelving units, one in each bathroom would give you room for 16 buckets. This is plenty for your whole family, because the buckets which are used for temporary storage can be shared.
Each shelf is capable of holding 250#. 5 gallons of water only weighs 37.62#, so the weight of the buckets is no problem.
The older and stronger among you could use the upper shelves, and the younger ones could use the bottom shelves.
Love, your father PS: Now what we need are exercise machines which, when plugged into the wall, make the meter go backwards as we exercise! The harder we exercise, the more money we save!
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