Frugal Electricity Tips.

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Tank-Girl

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Hi all!

Here is a few ways in which I save on electricity costs:

I use the solar oven as much as possible.

I use solar powered lanterns instead of mains power lights at night.

I've downsized my appliances or have stopped using them in favour using "old fashioned" methods
of getting things done.

I use an ice box instead of a fridge.

I do my laundry by hand.

I have an old cartridge carpet sweeper instead of a vacuum.

I keep my chest freezer full by stockpiling and filling any empty space with juice bottles filled with water.

I'm currenly building a small solar power system so my usage will be even lesss.

How do you save on power usage?
 
LED light bulbs, including LED based "fluorescent" tubes. All our exterior lighting is also LED and all motion activated. We also have interior motion sensors in our entry ways, stair case, hallways, etc. If you enter those rooms or areas the lights come on automatically, if they no longer sense motion they turn off.

We also buy and use energy star appliances and an energy efficient hot water heater & furnace, turn off power strips to televisions and computers when not in use to keep them from "leeching" power, have a single "charging station" set up for phones & tablets so they can be unplugged when fully charged and chase after children with a stick when they waste electricity. That last one probably does the most for us. :)
 
My biggest was adding the clothes line outback to dry clothes. I would like to hand wash but with as many clothes as we go thru, well it just ain't happening right now. Been there done that with a family of 4 still living here during power outages. Every once in awhile is OK but my back isn't as young as it used to be. Another is I always hand wash dishes. Don't use overhead lights during the day, just natural lighting. We use a wood stove to keep the house warm and since it will be lite tonight when temps drop, I have a pot of beans soaking to put on for tomorrows supper. Not much but every little bit helps.
 
For me, frugal electric is adding more electric items instead of cutting down on them. Living with your own alternative energy system means those run for free. I am washing by hand now, but within this next coming year I will be thrilled to start using my washing machine.
 
Tank-Girl said:
...How do you save on power usage?
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I come home from work and all zillion billion ceiling flood lights are on in the kitchen and no wife to be seen (Wife is afraid of what can be hiding in dark places). I go upstairs, changes clothes and come back down to the kitchen. Light are still on and still no wife to be seen. I turn off the lights. That's the first method I use to save power, turn off what isn't being used.

My second method was to replace the zillion billion ceiling flood lights with LED lights. Now when I come home and see the zillion billion ceiling flood lights on and no wife to be seen I think about how much those LEDs are saving me.
 
Heating with wood slow combustion fireplace with free wood sourced and cut by us in winter .
Boiling the kettle on the fireplace.
Steaming vegetables on the fireplace.
Cooking on top the fireplace.
Using our solar lanterns instead of mains powered lights at night saves us around $10 a quarter.
Batch cooking when we have the oven going so we fill it up.
Only turning on the electric hot water system on once every 3 - 4 days for 3.5hrs instead of leaving it on. This saves us around $30 a quarter on our electricity bill.
Setting the electric hot water system to 60 oc via a the temperature control dial.
Setting our fridge and freezers to the optimal money saving temperatures as per our electricity website.
Turning off appliances at the wall when not in use.

About all I can think of at the moment :) .
 
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From a cost POV, your power company may have different rates based on their demand. Try using power during off-peak times.
As far as reducing actual electric consumption, I'm no help there. What you doing now is what I would only consider during a black-out. I'm more of the "time efficiency" mindset. If I can wash my clothes and dishes in a machine while I do something else, I'm going to do that. I would like to get a clothes line. The dryer probably adds to the electric bill quite a bit in the summer.
 
- Other things we do to save on electricity is only vacuum every two weeks and sweep in between.
- Another tip that saves a heap of electricity around $20 or more a quarter is to turn down the brightness on your television to the lowest level possible and you can also save battery power on your laptop by doing the same I have noticed.
- When ironing do all your ironing at once as it saves on electricity turning it on to heat for multiple ironing sessions.
- We also adjust our whites washing load to one rinse instead of 2 which saves 11 minutes of electricity and around 20lts of water for every load. We do soak and pretreat all dirty items before washing them.
 
Terri9630 said:
Peak, off peak? How does the power company know when I used that power when they are reading numbers off the meter?
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Special NOTE: Many of the meters today are "SMART" Meters and they record the usage and the time of day, down to the minute and second it was used. These meters do not require anybody to come read them, it is wireless sent back to the utility. User need to be very careful with these meters as they have been know to be inaccurate, always in the utilities favor strangely enough. If my resident was installed with one of these meters, I would start recording the reading myself each month. The utility almost always denies there is a problem and insists you pay the total bill, it can be a difficult task to force them to come out and verify but is you can produce your records, then it is a bit easier to force them out. I have known a couple of folks who had to fight this battle after getting a a 4 figure monthly electric bill.
 
Amish Heart said:
I heard that people were having a lot of problems with smart meters...the electric company knowing when you're home, for one, the ability for them to deny you service if you don't allow a smart meter (monitoring device) for another. Anyone concerned with this?
Click to expand...
Yes. That is one of the reasons hubby is looking at solar for our other place.
 
TMT Tactical said:
Special NOTE: Many of the meters today are "SMART" Meters and they record the usage and the time of day, down to the minute and second it was used. These meters do not require anybody to come read them, it is wireless sent back to the utility. User need to be very careful with these meters as they have been know to be inaccurate, always in the utilities favor strangely enough. If my resident was installed with one of these meters, I would start recording the reading myself each month. The utility almost always denies there is a problem and insists you pay the total bill, it can be a difficult task to force them to come out and verify but is you can produce your records, then it is a bit easier to force them out. I have known a couple of folks who had to fight this battle after getting a a 4 figure monthly electric bill.
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Electric meters are "odometers". Your total usage is just the difference between the last 2 readings. They may be able pull shenanigans with peak/off-peak usage, but your overall usage can't be spoofed long term. Eventually the reading on your bill would be higher than the actual reading on the meter days/weeks later. That would be a honey-pot class action suit.
 
Amish Heart said:
I heard that people were having a lot of problems with smart meters...the electric company knowing when you're home, for one, the ability for them to deny you service if you don't allow a smart meter (monitoring device) for another. Anyone concerned with this?
Click to expand...

There are also reports that these smart meters can cause health problems due to the way (and intensity) in which the signals are transmitted back to the power company. Of coarse all the studies that have been done are non-conclusive......imagine that! I don't like the fact that the power company can manipulate those numbers since they are in control of that meter. Then, there's also the potential for hacking. Ummmmm - smart meter you say???? I'd like to stay with the dumb one, thank you very much.

Our power company came and changed a meter one day of an outbuilding and never notified me of it. I called and raised a messy stink about it! Of coarse, that changed nothing. I told them if they decided to make that change at my residence they had better notify me first so I can call some board members! Apparently there is a house bill in our state that is trying to make it a law for it to be the choice of the consumer. I sure hope that bill doesn't die a slow death.......but I bet it will.
 
AtomicFarmer said:
We have several dusk-to-dawn lights around the buildings
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I had mine disconnected. It's really dark out here in no-mans-land and I hated that thing spoiling the darkness where I could see so many stars. It belongs to the power company and it's tied in right at the pole. They gave me a bit of a hard time so I told them I would go up and take care of it. They didn't like that idea; came out 2 days later and unhooked it. I wasn't paying attention to the bill and one day I looked at it. They were still charging me for the light! I called again and told them I would go up the pole, take it down and bring it to them if they were going to keep charging me. I got an instant credit and haven't been billed for it since. :)
 
UncleJoe said:
They gave me a bit of a hard time so I told them I would go up and take care of it. They didn't like that idea; came out 2 days later and unhooked it.
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The power companies hate the idea of any of their customers touching any of their equipment. If it's the meter or before the meter they freak. I've had to take the meter out so I could put in a new electrical panel in my house a couple times and then I just call them and tell them to come put a new seal on their panel. Sometimes they throw a fit about it. I offered to let the last guy who showed up have a tour of the basement so he could check my wiring and he politely declined. All he cared about was putting a new seal on their meter. I also had another guy come in and sniff the gas lines, he told me I had a leak so I decided to go all-electric once I changed the water heater to electric as well. Strangely, my bill didn't change much after I went to all-electric... with the minimum charge and using 3 therm a month vs electric water heating.
 
skittles said:
@AtomicFarmer I understand changing slowly as they burn out... but new led's are .99 or less eachnow so they'll pay back pretty quick... or are these lights that don't get used much anyway?
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I figure the old lights are going to end up in the trash anyhow so I just let them live their lives until they burn out then replace them with more efficient ones. Some we use a lot and some, not so much.

And Joe, as far as the light pollution goes, we have all of ours hooked up to regular light switches for just that reason! We've been robbed out here so we feel the lights are necessary for security but if we want to stargaze all we have to do is flick the switches and shut 'em all down.
 
Our power company switched to smart meters, but I pay a hefty charge each month for the privilege of keeping the old one. The meter on our house is right behind where my stove and kitchen sink are, where I sometimes spend several hours a day. Too close for comfort with the microwave radiation coming off that thing.
 
angie_nrs said:
...Our power company came and changed a meter one day of an outbuilding and never notified me of it. I called and raised a messy stink about it! ...
Click to expand...

I suspect when you asked for service, the fine print in your service agreement stated they you gave the right to the Power Company to access your property at will to maintain their equipment.
 
The Lazy L said:
I suspect when you asked for service, the fine print in your service agreement stated they you gave the right to the Power Company to access your property at will to maintain their equipment.
Click to expand...

Yes, I realize this. However, their old equipment was working just fine. I don't think it's too much to ask to inform a property owner that they are sending a crew out to change the meter. Here, we still have the option of paying for the old meters if we want to keep it. I was never given the option. Apparently they find it much easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. They notify everyone when they do tree/brush clearing, so this would certainly warrant a notification. As a worker, I'd want the person at home to know I was going to be there so homeowners could restrain their dogs and not be surprised by a stranger. Surprises aren't usually a good thing.
 
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