Friday was the one-week mark for having the CenterPoint-supplied energy monitor on our kitchen counter. Here are a few early observations:
- One full week of power usage in our house (1,700 square feet, single-story, pool pump) equaled about 279 kWh, or $31 at our then 11.4 cents per kWh rate. That’s roughly the equivalent of four of my typical take-out lunches in the downtown tunnels (sandwich, fries and drink). I thought our use might be a little lower, but our air conditioner came on over the weekend as we still had daytime temperatures in the 80s.
- Our “background” power usage, meaning the power we’re using for always-on clocks, night lights, computer modems, cell phone chargers, etc. , is 2.22 cents per hour (as recorded by my wife at 4:30 a.m. one day when she couldn’t sleep).
- The monitor jumped by 9.38 cents per hour when our two-slice toaster fired up. Granted it’s only on for a minute or two at a time, but it was a surprise to see the little guy have such a big impact.
- The refrigerator cycling on added about 7.1 cents per hour to the monitor.
- The dishwasher (an early 1980s vintage machine) was about 36 cents per hour when in high gear.
- Our natural gas clothes drier added about 6 cents per hour to the bill.
Has the monitor led us to change our habits? Sort of.
Having the device motivated me to finally change our electric provider for the first time in more than a year, going to an 8.3 cents per kWh, month-to-month plan. I may take the time to do more shopping for a 12-month plan later, once I get a better sense of if the plans match the reality of future gas prices.
On the flip side, my wife saw how little it actually costs to leave a light on all day: a few pennies. That led her to conclude my constant nagging about turning off lights when leaving the room was overkill.
After two days I also found I wasn’t looking at the device constantly to see what was running and how much it cost. I had intended to walk around the house and do a device-by-device test, but haven’t made the time yet.
Of course, it’s only been one week, so I didn’t expect big changes.
One unexpected outcome: Shortly after reaching the one-week mark, the device stopped communicating with my smart meter. It may have occurred because I changed electric providers and they sent some odd signal to the meter during the switch over. The CenterPoint technical folks are talking me through a reset this afternoon and I may try out another device.
Stay tuned for more.
Thanks Tom. This series has motivated my hubbie to go on (an even more robust) monitoring spree. Where are the details on your A/C though? That and the dryer are our biggest contributors. Next week I’m going to work on getting that “background” usage down. No more hard drives, TVs (with remotes), etc. running when we aren’t using them.
I used a meter up here in Canada and was quite surprised to discover that my coffee maker used about $0.40(Canadian) each brewing cycle. I think I need to find one that isn’t such a energy pig.
“Our “background” power usage, meaning the power we’re using for always-on clocks, night lights, computer modems, cell phone chargers, etc. , is 2.22 cents per hour (as recorded by my wife at 4:30 a.m. one day when she couldn’t sleep).”
I’ve always wondered if this is all coming from the “vampire” gadgets. Has anyone ever tried turning off or unplugging everything in their house and seeing if the meter is still going? Does just having electricity running through your house cost you?
David
That’s exactly the kind of test I hope to do with the device. One week just wasn’t enough time to do it. I think even if you don’t use electricity one still pays a monthly fee (via their retail bill) to CenterPoint, so in a way you will always get an electric bill, even if you home it dark.
Howdy Neighbor:
First let me echo Jennifer’s sentiment that this series is great. Home energy efficiency is important and on average we waste 1/2 of our energy.
Lights. 2 cents per day is the number for a 13 watt CFL.
How about turn off that ceiling fan?
Now, if your home has ceiling fans, there are 5 like sockets in these things (and while 7 W CFLs are now available… early adaptation was 13 W bulbs), and medium power is about 40 W. So this is like a 100 W bulb sitting in the ceiling at 20 cents per day… 8 of those makes $1.60 per day. Even if you shut off the lights and run only the fan without anybody in the room…
70 cents a day, or 26 dollars a month, if one leaves those ceiling fans running (which are connected to the lights).
When changing energy suppliers, be careful of the Center Point pass through charges for delivering the power to you. Often people get a lower power charge, but then a higher delivery charge.
I’m confused. If your background power usage is $2.22 an hour, wouldn’t that mean that you are always using $2.22 an hour 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? That equals to $372.96 a week just for background power usage. Or, did you mean to say that it is $2.22 per day?
Trying to save a few pennies on lights is commendable, (I have LED lights which use even less power) but the real energy hogs always will be heating and cooling, especially in Texas. Upgrading your a/c to a 16 SEER or better will be far more effective than changing out all your lightbulbs.
By the way where are these 8 cent a kW-h plans?
I am curious about the ceiling fans. That has often been a topic of conversation (err argument) in my house. Our ceiling fans have 4 CFL bulbs in them but the actual lights are rarely turned on. Have you looked at the cost (per hour) of running a ceiling fan? Is it worth it to only have the ceiling fan on when you are in the room since the fan isn’t actually cooling the room but makes you feel cooler because of the breeze or is the delta of turning ceiling fans on and off negligible?
EnergyConservative:
My background usage isn’t $2.22 but 2.22 cents. The energy monitor shows fractions of a penny. Sorry I didn’t write that in a clearer way.
Thanks for clarifying that Tom
I thought you were going to provided information on how we can obtain one of these power monitors.
Dale
They’re not being made available to the general public quite yet (although it’s possible some retail electric providers are about to roll out plans that let you have or “rent” one). I got mine because (as I mentioned previously) CenterPoint is giving out about 200 of them to reporters, political leaders etc. in the hopes of getting people to accept the whole ‘smart grid’ push. I’m not going to keep mine (or if I do I’ll pay CenterPoint for it) but I thought getting it would be a good way to learn about it and report to readers if the reality matched the hype.
But if anyone is aware of over-the-counter energy monitors out there now I’d be interested in hearing about the.
Ruth:
Try this link
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/howmuch.html
You can also see the California rates in the pull down prices.
I’m all happy and fuzzy about the energy monitor…but……
How
Much
Did
Your
AIR CONITIONING cost ?
When my ac is OFF, my bill is always less than $ 100.00 per month. But when it runs more often than not like pretty much 8+ months down here, it soars to over $ 300.00 per month. Am I really worried about lights or my toaster?
Not so much
Silly hippies. You never conserve your way into prosperity.
Why aren’t we developing new CHEAP (i.e., nuclear) energy sources? The key to long term growth is CHEAP energy.
Thanks for the link, Energy Moron. I completely read your post wrong this morning… Maybe now I have enough evidence to get people to not leave fans/lights/tvs running when they aren’t in the room! I have a newly built house with all the energy efficient options (except a radiant barrier… which I would have put in before if there wasn’t so much unfounded opposition *shakes head*). The electricity bill is already decently low, but I’m sure we could do more to be energy efficient. The argument that I get every time I say something about using less energy is “the bill isn’t ever going to be $0!”
I would be really interested in getting one of those over-the-counter energy monitors when they are made available to the general public. The centerpoint website says that they should be available soon from home improvement stores. Now I just have to wait a year to get my smart meter :-)
ok – I have been at this a while now. You need to start with the simplest, cheapest, and easiest items to implement before you upgrade to a 16SEER, double or triple pane windows, get the low hanging fruit first:
Seal/reseal your windows and doors – recaulk, replace loose insulation, replace seals. Have your attic checked for proper insulation levels and that it is ventilated properly. (solar powered attic fans are awesome). Also consider adding Solar tubes to long dark hallways, and other rooms that have a lot of use
Turn up your thermostat in summer 78F is good, for each -1 degree drop, it can increase your bill by 2-3 percent – that adds up fast. Turn off your icemaker. Inductive loads (those with motors – AC compressor, AC FAN are big users, but your hot water heater is ALWAYS ON, turn it to 120F, and add a insulating blanket.
Close your blinds, curtains, or install heat blocking drapes.
Install shade trees on the south and west sides of your home.
If you’re not using it, turn it off, or even better unplug it. Ceiling fans cool PEOPLE not ROOMS, and should be off when there is no one to cool in the room.
We have done all the above – 3200 sq foot home, average bill $200/month with a stay at home mom and 3 kids. If I can do it, anyone can.
Ruth, you can get radient barrier sheeting at Lowes and install it in your attic. It runs about $80.00 a roll. Now would be a good time since the weather has cooled down.
Also solar screens on your windows helps a whole lot. You can make them yourself, or hire a company to do it for you.
As for the fans, I keep mine running for one reason, and one reason only – it keeps the room cool when you keep the temperature high. This is cheaper than turning up the thermostat on the AC.
My bedroom has a ceiling fan as well as a smaller fan running with both solar screens and room darkening curtains. My thermostat is set for 80 degrees during the day, but that room stays much cooler than any other room in the house. I also have the radient barrier sheeting installed in my attic, but I noticed that the bedroom stayed cool from when I just had the fans and the room darkening curtains. The windows face North, so it does not get direct sunlight, although the connecting dressing room and bath does get the Eastern sun. But I have the room darkening curtains as well as solar screens on those windows as well, plus another curtain seperating the two rooms.
I also have a window unit that I run at night. I see no point in cooling the whole house at night when it is just me and my husband living here. Plus, the window unit is a lot more energy efficent than my current AC (1998 heat pump). We did have to replace the window unit in 2009 because the older one had too much mildew. But they are very cheap. Around $150.00 and we save way more than that in one year, so even if we bought a new one each season, we would still save money off of our electric bill.
Another thing about your ACs. Make sure that it is cleaned and running properly each year. The coils get dirty and strains the motor. Earlier this year, our motor burned out. My husband thought it was due to the dirty coils, but my AC guy just cleaned them maybe 3-4 years back. It turned out that there was a gap around the return, and it was letting in pet hair and dust. It was because our motor burned out due to the dirty coils that we started looking at the return and found the gaps around the bottom section of the return. Feel around your return, and make sure there are no gaps. If there are, get some chalking and fill in those gaps. We are lucky that our neighbor is our AC guy, but this would have cost a fortune to other people. He lets us do the work sometimes and just tells us how to do it.
Also, if you have pets, and notice that your filter gets pretty dirty, change it every month – not every three months. We actually change ours every 2 weeks because of our pets as well as the return being down near the floor.
EnergyConservative:
You noted you have a heat pump: are you in the Houston area? I was under the impression heat pumps didn’t work very well in this region, that they were better suited for the Northern part of the country. I tried looking into one several years ago but had a hard time finding anyone locally who carried them.
They don’t work well in this area and they end up being very costly. This heat pump came with the house when we bought it. My neighbor, who is an AC guy, has a heat pump, but his runs a pipe down into the groundwater to use the groundwater to cool his house. I don’t know how that works, but I do know that as soon as mine needs replacing, I will not be getting another heat pump.