Electric Bill

[Rocky]

I'm pretty amazed at how much more our electric bill is for the month of December. It was an extra $25 and the only thing we did differently was do a few Christmas lights.

 

[bret]

Ours are going up another 6% in January. I think I may have to look at natural sources of power and how practical they are for household use.

 

[JDgreen]

I'm pretty amazed at how much more our electric bill is for the month of December. It was an extra $25 and the only thing we did differently was do a few Christmas lights.

You live in Michigan, right...? Gets dark sooner, stays dark longer, you use more home lighting, if you have outdoor security lighting, it stays on longer. Your furnace motor is electrical, the furnace runs more, right? You don't want to go out someplace to eat, meaning your stove and microwave get used more. Instead of being outdoors mowing your lawn, you sit inside at your computer and use more juice than normally. Your fridge door, like ours, gets opened and closed more frequently. You watch more TV, most likely...need I go on?

Want to hear about a sky high electric bill? I paid one last week that was for 33 days. We have a 2450 square foot house, two gas furnaces, two fridges, one freezer, four computers, one 50 inch plasma tv that is on 20 hours a day (wife is addicted) well pump, three outdoor security lites (energy efficient type) and although we are stingy with the lighting, last electric bill was $143 with tax for 33 days.

 

[JDgreen]

Ours are going up another 6% in January. I think I may have to look at natural sources of power and how practical they are for household use.

Even though I paid over $4 a day for electricity on my last bill, it's a relative bargain. Think about the last time your power went out...bet you would have been happy to pay $30 a day just to have power again...and that $4 a day I pay for all the juice I used last month would have been enough for gas to run my genset for a half day, it wouldn't have supplied the power for many things. Stop and think about what a bargain electrical power is. :thumbsup:

I read some years back that is you wanted to cut down on electrical use, you could unplug your garage door opener and raise and close the door by hand...at the end of a whole month you would have saved
about fifty cents, and that includes the lighting on the GDO. Just imagine...:laughing::laughing:

 

[AndyMan]

Our December bill is always the highest by quite a bit. My brother-in-law suggested that we switch to LED Christmas lights. (We use hundreds of lights on our tree and around the house.) We'll see if there's a difference on the bill this year.

 

[monica123]

I am not sure how much of a difference the LED lights make. We have a relatively small house but our electric bill is sky high, it is quite distressing.

 

[JDgreen]

I am not sure how much of a difference the LED lights make. We have a relatively small house but our electric bill is sky high, it is quite distressing.

I hase read that "phantom" parasitic power losses eat up a lot of KWH, things like alarm clocks, cordless drill battery chargers, microwave oven clocks, Direct TV boxes, DVD players, etc. Even when turned off while plugged in they siphon a small amount of power, the losses add up.

 

[Lucy]

I heard of a fitness club in Madison, WI that did a very innovative thing. They somehow hooked all the exercise equipment up so that the exercising generated the electricity for the facility and they had NO electric bill!

 

[Hershey]

Everything is going up, including the utility bills. I am afraid to turn most anything on and continue to look for shortcuts just to make sure we can get by to another month.

 

[Driller]

LED lights are supposed to be more efficient and longer lasting. They are also more expensive. I'd rather have them over the CFLs at this point.