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And then there's the fact that so many electronics are never really "off" anymore.  In the UK, devices in "standby" account for nearly 8% of electricity usage in households.  So until that improves, you may want to save some power by unplugging electronics you're not using and that you don't need to wake up on demand.

Last edited by Malkin (2006-07-26 1:53 pm)

justine wrote:

Temetka wrote:

I just got my bill. Hows $465 strike you?

That's right around what my ex pays in the winter. Poor heating design along with single pane windows and bad insulation. Takes A LOT just to get heat to the bedrooms. He has no AC so his summer bills should be a lot lower.

I hear you on that. I just got my house texture coated. I can feel the difference already, it's a few degrees cooler inside. The AC guy is here right now fixing a leak in one of the coolant lines. I can't wait to get my new windows in though. It should really make a difference. As a bonus, SCE and The Gas Company are going to give me discounts on my bills from now on because my home will be more energy efficient.

dude, hot is hot.

More or less isn't that sort of what I'm saying. You'd think a guy from Arizona would get that the wink emoticon is a recognition of how much of a joke that statement is.

Yellowfin wrote:

Just picked up a clothesline two days ago, and it's going to be used until way into October.  Simple savings right there.  It makes me wonder why it's not obvious to more people.

We don't like having to remove all the spiders from our clothes when  we bring them  back inside?

Robert B. wrote:

ScifiterX wrote:

But it's a dry heat! 

For about two-thirds of the summer, yes.

I guess it's all about your preferences: a sticky sauna, or sticking your head in the oven.

But the humidity came 6 weeks early, at least here.

Yellowfin wrote:

Just picked up a clothesline two days ago, and it's going to be used until way into October.  Simple savings right there.  It makes me wonder why it's not obvious to more people.

I'm going to get a spinner from that place Malkin linked to. I don't why they aren't more available here in the US, and less pricey.

Farmerkev wrote:

mtpalms wrote:

I'm going to get a spinner from that place Malkin linked to. I don't why they aren't more available here in the US, and less pricey.

Why not save the money and just use an extra spin cycle on your washer.

Unless it's one of those really fancy washers, a regular washer can't spin anywhere near as fast as a centrifugal spinner at 3100 rpm. The clothes come out nearly dry after a half minute or so. Even in the Netherlands, where moss grows on the sidewalks in summer, my clothes would dry in an hour or two hanging in the house.

I haven't seen one for under $500 here, until I found a link to one for $120 from the cost saving link Malkin posted (they are out of stock, the company will have more in in about 2 months).

Speaking of whom, my kWh usage was 610 last month (June). I can't compare to last year because my meter was dying and the bill says we used 2.00 kWh.

C'mon everybody, post yer killerwatts!

Last edited by mtpalms (2006-07-26 11:37 pm)

Centrifuge spinners are also easier on your clothing than heat dryers on a longer setting.  Then again I won't even put denim in a dryer, only towels and undergarments.

I just got my utility bill for last month, and the electric portion of the bill for our 1200 sq. foot house was $28. Now, if we had A/C or a swamp cooler, it likely would have been higher.

Instead, it's 85� inside the house

I just got my bill today. It went up $18 from last month to $60.54. A small price to pay for comfort.

This is how the bill reads:


Electric Charges:         $57.55
   Baseline Quantity                  372.00000 Kwh
   Baseline Useage                    372.00000 Kwh @ $0.11430
   101-130% of Baseline           111.60000 Kwh @ $0.12989
   131-200% of baseline               2.40000 Kwh @ $0.21981


I think it says the difference between last month and this month was 486 Kwh. This is like reading Chinese, so i have no idea what any of it means. I just pay the bill.

Oh yeah, if it mean anything, my place is 580sf.

I'm bumping this because I got my Kill A Watt and have been shocked (ba dum dum) putting actual numbers to the smurf I'm running in my tiny condo.

Examples:
My 2X1.8 G5 stays on 24/7. It's my music server and I hate waiting for it to wake up from sleep when I want to hear something. Idle, it uses 150 watts! Over 30 days, that's about 100KWH. That's almost a quarter of my smurfing electric bill! Costs me over $20/month to leave that smurf on. Sleeping, it uses about 10W. Sheesh. I guess I'm going to have to take a lesson from this one.

For comparison, my G3 400 web serveruses less than 50W. aight.

Testing just one of my pair of 19" CRTs shows that it uses 75W on average.  That's about $10/month. I knew there was a reason I've been leaving the other one off lately. That's suppowed to be in powersaving mode most of the day. I'm wondering if maybe it's not actually going into it's sleep mode because it's plugged into the KVM? Hmmm.

Here's a good one. I've only been testing a couple hours, but it looks like my fridge is averaging about 100W. My FRIDGE uses less power than my G5

God I'm scared to test my living room electronics. I've got about 250KWH unaccounted for. And we've just started using the A/C. I'm going to hold off testing those til I get some more electric bills to compare to.

Anyhooz, I realize i've been totally ignorant about my power consumption and I'm prepared to change my ways. If I sleep the G5 and instead run my music server on a mini and also replace the CRT with an LCD I figure it will pay for itself in...oh, about 4 years. I can't afford NOT to do it!

Or I could just get more laptops! I tested a G4 iBook, a 15" PBook, and a lamp with a 40W lightbulb for 145 hours (the lamp wasn't on the whole time, obviously) and together they used 1.77 KWH. That works out to about $1.76 per month at my rates. I think I can handle that.

Last edited by pottymouth (2006-08-07 10:33 pm)

I got a Kill A Watt

It'll tell you how many watts the connected device is using at any moment or you can leave it plugged in for many hours or days for a better idea of it's actual usage over time. For instance, i plugged in my laser printer and it jumped up to like 900 watts for about 30 seconds then dropped to 2 and stayed there. It seems to only use juice when it's working on something.