Energy Saving Tips - Lower Electricity Bills By 30 Percent

TOTAL INVESTMENT:    about $50
TIME:                                 minutes per item
DIFFICULTY:                    Easy
NET RESULT:                    Electricity budget dropped from $158 to $121

DRIVER:                             4 bills went up the same month, we had to do something

No joke. We have cut our electricity usage by 30%, and they were all easy to pull off.  I'm not going to measure time for this job, because each item took literally minutes to perform.  Many of the items require new habits to your lifestyle, but none of the ideas require a hardship.  The mods were done over a period of several months, and I measured the change in power consumption against the same month in the previous year.  I was lucky, because weather was very similar for the years I measured. 

1. Turn off the light!  The picture to the left is our kitchen light fixture.  It's modern, stylish, and doesn't emit the eerie glow of a fluorescent bulb (that was there before).  We loved it.....  and left it on all the time.  I'm not joking.  We would watch movies on Friday night in the basement and just leave the light on for hours.  The bulbs cost $3 each in a multipack, and they blew about every 6 months.  A little cocktail napkin math put the power rating at 200 watts.  My wife and I both had good jobs, so we just paid for it.  With the advent of our first child, my wife left her job, and the new little guy was one of the drivers for our bills going up.  Let's just say we were motivated.  We started making a game out of turning lights off.  At dinner, we turn this light off even today.  I've only replaced one of these expensive bulbs since we've been diligent about turning it off.  Basement lights are off when we're not down there.  We use as few lights as possible, but are far from living in the dark.  Don't we still leave some lights on all the time?  You bet.  What did we do?  Check out the next tip.

2.  The dreaded CFL bulb.  I hate these things.  Did you see my comment about the eerie light in tip #1?  I can't stand to sit under, read, or shave with these lights.  Please don't put them throughout your house.  Put them where it matters.  Install them in lights you leave on all the time.  Where are they in my house?  Keep reading.

My wife wants our outdoor lights left on all night, and I respect her wishes.  I swapped out the 60 watt bulbs for 14 watt CFL's.  I can tolerate the CFL bulbs outside, because my neighbors have to look at them a lot more the I do.  I wonder how much power we would save as a country if everyone put these in their outdoor lights. NOTE: Be careful not to throw these in the trash. They must be recycled properly, and many Lowe's stores will take your old ones.  I started having issues with the CFL bulbs dying all the time, so click here to see what I did to fix it. 

Our laundry room light is the anchor light in the house.  We leave it on, so we can see when we get back home.  I don't spend much time in here, so the CFL's are perfect!!!  We also installed CFL's in the basement flood lights and in the stairwell going down to the basement. 

I'm going to cheat a little bit for one of the light bulbs we replaced.  The cost for this one is not included in the $50 that is listed above.  We never, ever turn off the light over the kitchen sink.  Did I say the bulb was 100 watts?  I tried a CFL, but it didn't fly.  I even bought one of the cool ones that look like a real light bulb.  It sucked.  Enter the LED light.  I'm not even going to tell you how much we spent.  It was ridiculous, but the light looks good.  If you want to know, go to Lowe's and price an LED flood that is 75 watt equivalent.  I replaced this bulb long after all the other mods in this post, and I can honestly say that replacing one bulb in your house doesn't make a hill of beans difference in your power bill.  I couldn't see any noticable difference swapping a 100 watt bulb for an LED that uses 14 watts.  I was disappointed, but get a ton of satisfaction by feeling "greener" with this bulb in my house.  LED's are also supposed to last like 20 years, so maybe I won't have to replace it for a while.  It was expensive enough that I'm going to take this light bulb with me if I ever move. 

3.  Downsize your incandescent bulbs.  When I was replacing a dead bulb in this light fixture, I swapped 60's out for 40's.  I also downsized a light in the dining room from 75's to 60's and don't really notice a difference.

 4.  Turn your computer off when you're not using it.  It uses more power than you think.  My computer has a 500 watt power supply, quad core processor, and 1066 Mhz memory.  What in the heck does that mean?  The lights don't exactly dim when I turn it on, but it uses a lot of power.  If you don't want to deal with a lengthy bootup, email me for tips on getting your PC to start faster.  I'm an IT guy by trade and did my homework after about a month of booting my PC every day.  If you still don't like this idea, just turn off the sucker at night.  It's not as bad as you think.

5.  Put your refrigerators on the middle setting.  We have parties in the basement frequently, and people want cold beer.  At every party, some joker turns my refrigerator to the coldest setting.  Kids also like turning dials around the house if you don't watch them closely.  I check this setting every once in a while.  See the Mexican cokes on the left?  That give me a good reason to check the setting.

6.  Landscape lighting.  I downsized all my bulbs to 4 watts from 8.  Most of my lights were burned out anyway when I was doing this, so I just replaced them all.  I run the front lights until 4 hours after dark.  The rear lights run from 8 until midnight. 

7.  Aquariums.  Remember that we recently had a little buddy?  I quickly realized that maintaining two 125 gallon aquariums was a little too much with the new addition.  I sold one of them on Craigslist, so I ended up saving power on the lighting and filtration.  On the tank I kept, I installed a timer on the lights.  Instead of turning off the lights when I go to bed and turning them on when I get up, they get a consistent 8AM on and 9PM off.  The fish like this, because they get to sleep longer.

8.  Use the timers on thermostats to lower temperature while we sleep. We have gas heat, so the impact isn't very high on electric.  The temp lowers 3 degrees when we sleep and goes back up 30 minutes before my alarm clock goes off.  Yes, we keep the winter temp at 73 degrees during the day.  My wife and I freeze to death in the winter.  When I retire, we're going to live on the equator.

9.  Use LED's for night lights.  2 and 4 year olds are scared of the dark.  You also need a night light in the bathroom for little people who need to pee at night.  I've also got two of these downstairs for our 22 pound cat Squirty.  One by the litter box and the other in the bathroom with his water dish.  Think I'm crazy about the cat?  If you cleaned up cat poop from a night time episode, you'd be buying night lights, too.  The 25 watt night lights and kitty lights were replaced with 0.3 watt LED's.  Sub $2 at Wal-mart.

STOPPING HERE GOT US 25%, AND IT WAS EASY.  IF YOU WANT MORE, READ ON.

I read in the utility bill that TV's and other equipment use 20-30% of their normal power consumption from just being plugged in. That means that if my 55" Mitsubishi is turned off, it's using enough power to run about 5 hours.

10.  Cut power to TV sets.  I initially put timers on my TV in the basement and also on the computer.  The timers would shut off power at night, so I didn't need to remember to turn them off.  Life was good for a while.  Two incidents changed my philosophy.  I was staying up late to work on a project on the computer and <poof> the power went off.  I was staring at a blank monitor.  After a little explicit language, the timer removed from the setup.  I decided to just "remember" to turn off the computer.  Next, I tried using a power strip to cut power the other components (printer, router, speakers, etc), but sometimes my wife uses the laptop and stays up later than me.  After getting the second question, "Did you turn off the computer stuff again?", I gave up and decided to leave the components on all the time. 

The same thing happened during a weekend movie on the TV.  We got to an exciting part and <poof> we were staring at a blank TV.  More explicit words, and the timer was replace with a $2 power strip from Wal-mart.  I also put power strips on the two other TV's in the house.  I've got a nighttime ritual to turn off the power strips on the TV's before going to bed. 

Power strips on TV's

11.  Timer on the basement oil heater (from the previous blog entry).  The heater comes on at 2PM and runs until 10PM weekdays and 8AM - 11PM on weekends.  No bad language if this goes off too soon.  We just get cold.  Before the timer, I had to remember to turn down the heater, and I never did.

12.  Use the timer on your digital photo frame.  Our new HP digital photo frame has a feature to shut down the unit on a schedule.  It's programmed to come on at 7:30AM and run until 9:30PM.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, 10-12 SAVED ANOTHER 5%.

Seriously, we spent about $50 to make all this happen. The power company noticed pretty quick. Our monthly budget went from $158 to $121. We profited after two months. If you've got more ideas, just post a comment.

Before I sign off, I've got one more tip.  When you go on trips, you can shut stuff down for longer.  We unplug the baby wipey warmers, baby monitor, unplug the basement heater, and hit the "HOLD TEMP" button on the thermostat on a lower setting before we leave.  Takes about 5 minutes before we leave and 5 minutes when we get back.

Good luck, and let me know the savings you get.

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