how to reduce monthly electric bill

Thread Starter

krishnainfotech

Joined Feb 22, 2009
2
dear friend
any one tell me how to save electric monthly bill , by using electric saver circuits

thanks
krishnainfotech2003
 
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Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
Just a suggestion, remove the email address. Like all open sites, we are visited by bots that harvest addresses like the one above for purposes of spam.

There is the obvious methods, such as florescent bulbs and LED lights.

Then there are the watt misers, which create a small but measurable reduction in power to electric motors. Not sure how they work, but they are good for fans and refrigerators.

Turning things off is the most effective way I know of.

What are you thinking?
 

KMoffett

Joined Dec 19, 2007
2,918
Then there are the watt misers, which create a small but measurable reduction in power to electric motors. Not sure how they work, but they are good for fans and refrigerators.
I think you will find that the power-factor circuits, if that's what you are referring to, don't work in the home. They work on motors that run continuously, but have varying loads. I can't think of anything in a home that would meet that criteria. And residential billing doesn't account for power factor, as far as I know.

Turning things off
That's the big one.

Ken
 

subtech

Joined Nov 21, 2006
123
Sometimes it is not enough to just turn things off. There are items that continue to waste energy even when the switch is turned off. I made a trip to friends home recently and showed her that the following items continued to wast energy while "turned off".

1. Coffee Maker (switch was off, but it kept water hot for the next pot even though that wouldn't be until the next day)
2. Cell phone charger (had not been used for three days, but was warm to the touch)
3. DVD player wasn't on, but you'd be surprised how much you pay just to have that clock on the front lit up. You know, the one you never look at?)
4. Television (the instant on kind. Boy do you pay for that convenience!)
5. Computer in standby (and connected to the internet!) that nobody had used since early that morning.
6. A chest type freezer on the back porch that had absolutely nothing in it but had been left plugged in.
7. When I came in her door, there were 8 separate light fixtures on in the house. She was in the kitchen and her husband was in the living room. There were 5 lights on in rooms where neither of them had been in hours. 300 watts worth of incandescant lamps were on for no good reason.
8. We checked the temps in her refrigerator and freezer(s). All were set excessively cold.
9. An electrically heated dog water bowl outside of her back door was plugged in. The temp outside was 40 deg. F, and the water in fido's dish was almost 80 deg. Perhaps a bad thermostat?
10. The water heater in this home is electric. The water temp at the kitchen sink measured 136 deg. F. Not only is this very wasteful of electrical energy, but it is outright dangerous.

The moral of the story is, if you aren't using it unplug it. Learn to look, and think about all your electrical usage with a critical eye. If you aren't sure about how something works, research and learn.
Google is a massively powerful learning tool if you will just use it.
 
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italo

Joined Nov 20, 2005
205
LED lighting is the beginning a 45 watt lamp can be replaced by a 3.5watt LED lamp. For the patio also remove those 80watt lamps and use solar LED or use the wiring and replace the lamps with LED. Save money by not buying any gadget that supposedly save you money on appliance. The big savings is airconditioning set the air conditioning a few degrees lower is big n=money. another trick is house insulation and sun shields. I live in a desert i put the airconditioning at 65 ° in the 6 am and let it run. then I shut it off all day because of insulation the heat does not get higher then 80 at 5pm. by setting at 70 ° and running all day I found out is costly.[SIZE=+0]Stand by TV or other appliances does not really uses much power. so forget shutting down everything to save just go after the big usage. May I add that a simple clamp meter $7 [harborfreight.com] can be used to find where the power is wasting away.[/SIZE]
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
When I bought my home theater system, I go a "free" 'Monster Cable Audiophile Grade Power Conditioner' outlet strip (A $300 Value! :rolleyes:)... Whatever the heck 'Audiophile Grade' outlets are, I have no idea. It has a watt/amp display, and shows the system drawing about 11 Watts with everything "Turned Off".

There is also a product called "Kill-A-Watt", which goes in between the wall outlet and your device to see how much power is being used on a per-unit basis. You only need one. Use it to go around the house and identify/unplug anything that draws power while 'off', and you do not use frequently. Battery chargers, stereos, cell phone chargers are the most common offenders.

There are many "enhancers" that claim to reduce the consumption of your water heater or other major appliance, but the effectiveness is questionable, and the savings aren't as large compared to numerous small loads.
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
Mine and my next door neighbour's electric power meters were replaced at the same time. After a few months now hers reads double the number of kW as mine.

She is by herself. I have my wife and her mother stays with us frequently.
I use compact fluorescent light bulbs and my neighbour heats the city with incandescent ones.
 

wr8y

Joined Sep 16, 2008
232
I have had an idea for energy savings that I will implement this summer.

This house has an old gas water heater - and it's gonna start leaking sooner or later. So, this summer I"m buying a new electric, 30 gallon water heater.

I live alone and use hot water for my shower every night - but seldom use hot water any other time (the dish washer heats its water on it's own and I wash laundry in cold water).

So, the line to the heater will have a large relay in it controlled by a timer. The electricity will be on each night from 8 to 9 pm. I shower sometime after 9 pm. This way, I won't be "storing" hot water that isn't used 24 hours a day.

Sure, I'll have a manual over ride switch to close the relay when needed...

Here in Georgia, gas is kinda expensive but electricity is 7 cents a kWh (and in the winter, it's less than 4 cents after the first 600 or 700 kWh a month).

I'll see how much I save, later this year.
 

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
About the electric water heater - it's 100% efficient in converting electricity to heat, but you might want to monitor the usage daily bringing it back up to heat.

Efficiency in a water heater can be increased by an extra layer of insulation, and breaking the thermosiphon in the inlet & outlet. Hot water rises, and if allowed to rise out of the tank, just heats the pipes. If you add some copper to turn the outlet at a right angle, run over to the side, and then make a U before joining with the distribution pipe, it keeps a lot more heat in the tank. Same for the inlet pipe.

It may be less expensive to do the above than reheating daily.
 

wr8y

Joined Sep 16, 2008
232
Actually, the pipes already run out of the existing heater and down the wall to the crawl space! The heater inlet and outlet are the highest point in the system, by far.

I'll check back in this summer after I make the conversion.

I guess I COULD just run the thing continuously for two months THEN try changing to my plan. I STILL say turning it off for 23 hours a day is the way to go. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to make up the cost of the timer and relay.
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
One big means of saving electricity is to NOT heat with electricity. If one must heat with electricity (rentals, etc.) then cover the windows with quilts and stuff pillows at the bases of the doors.
 

wr8y

Joined Sep 16, 2008
232
One big means of saving electricity is to NOT heat with electricity.
Not so sure about that. I mean, at one time I thought that anyone who would heat with electricity was an idiot ---- but our EMC, in the winter, charges 7 cents a kWh for the first 600 then they drop to lower than 4 cents a kWh!

That's prettty cheap, since gas is now between $1.07 and $1.69 a therm/CCF. I mean, gas prices are unstable, but electricity's price is stable.

I'm not ready to go electric, just saying....
 

thingmaker3

Joined May 16, 2005
5,083
I once had an apartment with a bunch of 2Kw baseboard heaters. Five of them for five hours each meant 50Kw-H per night. I started living in the bedroom to get it down to 10Kw-H per night. Putting a quilt over the window let me drop that to 8 per night.
 

wr8y

Joined Sep 16, 2008
232
Electric cars won't save the planet. Electricity (in the USA anyway) is produced primarily by coal and oil/gas. Our lean-burning gas cars are cleaner (or at least, no worse) than coal and oil fired electric plants.


If we went all Nuclear for electric production, then I'd agree with you. But in the USA, this will never happen.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
can someone come up with e-cars a bit faster pleazzzz!........... lest we will lose our planet faster then we say green.
Yep. The GM Atom gets 150mpg when running off the batteries! Too bad they somehow manage to never state how many kWH are needed to charge them. They seem to pretend that electricity is free. These are the same people that want to ban incandescent light bulbs, transformers, inefficient Air Conditioners, etc. :rolleyes:

I went through the A123 battery page, and it has a calculator on how much you would save by buying their multi-thousand dollar battery pack for an existing electric car. It never once asks for the cost of power. Only "Do you have a plugin available at work?", which isn't used in the cost at all, but to keep the battery full enough to commute back home. Then it shows a short commute as being free, and needing to gas only once a year, and 4 digit savings on fuel.
 
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