Do It Yourself Electric Cost Analysis: Electricity Savings Today

By admin • February 2nd, 2009

I think the electric bill that you get tells your own electricity story. I am in Texas, where prices are at times higher than average for the U.S. But just the same, I think sometimes you just have to take your electricity bill and usage into your own hands.

I just received my LAST ELECTRIC BILL from, my Texas electricity supplier. Now I have been using the very same electricity savings ideas that I blog about here at Cheap Texas Electric Rates .com , but, when I opened my bill I was not impressed at my electricity savings at all. These ideas really have to work, yet my bill was about the same. And, actually it should have been lower because we went out of town for several days, and we had almost everything turned off.

So why was the electric bill the same?

Here are some of the things we did to conserve electricity.

1). We heated only the bedrooms at nite with “safe” space heaters. The idea being just heat a smaller area, not the larger ones that aren’t used at nite.

2). Turn off the central air/heater. This has to be costly and I know it is relatively inefficient on air conditioning. True it’s winter now, but the machine is old.

3). Keep heaters off during the day when we aren’t here. We do keep the central heater on standby at about 65 degrees. But we don’t expect it to come on.

4). On weekends, and afternoons when someone is here, open the curtains on the south side and let the sun heat through the windows.

5). Generally keep things cooler, especially under 78 degrees.

We expected these changes to have made a difference, even a significant one. True, we will start getting lower bills because we recently changed our Texas energy provider, but if we can lower our usage before that happens, we will get a double savings.

So, Why is the kWh the same? Why is the kilowatt hour usage the same?

I had to investigate. Here is what I did.

I know that the electric meter outside should be fairly reliable, but just to make sure, I read the meter to make sure the current reading was higher than the last reading showing on my bill. That is to rule out something like, “The electric company just estimated this month instead of reading the meter.” And I found that this didn’t happen.

So, I took my cell phone out and went to “stopwatch”. What I did was test my Central air, central heat, both of my infra red space heaters, and all the computers being on at the same time (3).

What I discovered was this. (Remember, when I tested things, I turned everything else off but the refrigerator, but I made sure it wasn’t actively cooling when I did my tests).

I found that during 30 seconds of use, the following items made the electric meter spin around “so many” times.

1).  The two infra red space heaters in 30 seconds   8 1/2 spins

2).  1 small infra red heater   in 30 seconds  1 spin.

3). 1 Large infra red heater  in 30 seconds 7 1/2 spins.

4). Central Heater in 30 seconds 10 spins.

5).  Central Air in 30 seconds 8 spins.

6). All computers in 30 secs  1/2 spin.

During this experiment the router, TV and refrigerators were not un-plugged at any time.

My attention went directly to the 2 space heaters. The smaller one was a 1000 watt unit, The larger one is a 1,500 watt unit. Yet we seem to pay a huge price for going from 1,000 watts to 1,500.  The smaller unit used 1 spin in 30 seconds, but the large one used 7 1/2.

So, when the 2 space heaters are used they use 8 1/2 spins in 30 seconds. The Central heater uses 10, but it stays off more of the time it seems than the 2 space heaters.

Conclusion: There is something wrong with the 1,500 watt space heater.

So, the only conclusion I can reach from this data is that the large space heater is malfunctioning. It is drawing a huge amount of electricity. I am not an electronics man, but there may be some sort of short with it. So I decided to get rid of it. And I got a second infra red space heater. But, I think I will contact a few fire departments and some safety folks and see if there are in fact safe space heaters. If there are, it should be readily known, and if they are wrongly marketed as safe, this should be widely known as well.

I will keep you posted on what I find out on this matter.

One thing is for sure no matter what type of space heater you have. NEVER EVER EVER put anything on top of ANY OF THEM to dry!

Apparently many people do this, and pay with their life because HUMANS FORGET!

Ok, Thank you: You can check your electric rates at our web site. See if you can get lower rates.

Article presented by Consultant Don of   http://cheaptexaselectricrates.com

Lower your Electric Rates with a CLICK HERE

*****************Download Pokerstars Free ******************

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google Bookmarks
  • MySpace
Comments(0) Blog, News
 

Leave a Comment

« | Home | »

Podcast Powered by podPress (v8.8)