Your Electricity Charges

[Bylo Selhi]

So buy your CFLs only at reputable dealers and save the receipts. I've bought Sylvanias at Home Hardware and Philips at Home Depot. Both claim a 7 year guarantee. I've returned one failed CFL to HD and got a replacement, no questions asked and no receipt required.

[pmj]

Although it's true that the waste heat from electronics, fridges, etc, does heat the house during colder weather - the cost of electric heat is a lot higher than heat form natural gas. You can work this out from first principles - or the folks over at Union Gas have done it for you. It would still make sense to unplug and use more gas - and this'd be an absolute saving in the summer.

[Shakespeare]

You can work this out from first principles

I'm quite aware of that - note that I mentioned thermal efficiencies - but the point is that, in heating season, some of the electricity savings are offset.

[Jack's Girl]

The 'heat from lights' theory was something I hung my hat on last fall until my solar guy pointed out that lights give off heat at almost 1:1 ratio (plus you get the light) but my old heat pump was about 1.25 units of heat per 1 unit of electricity used.

Last fall, we didn't put our heat (at that point, electric forced air with air-to-air heat pump) on until November 11. This fall, because we have a new ground source heat pump, we put the furnace on around the beginning of October. The thermostat is set to 18 degrees and the heat pump won't come on unless the temperature in the house falls below 17, then it comes on and brings the house back up to 18.

Our average usage for the first 10 days of October for both years are as follows:

2008 - 15kwh/day 2009 - 26 kwh But the house was much more comfortable and we didn't run our gas fireplace at all, as we did in 2008 because we needed it to take the chill off the house in the mornings.

The average daily highs for those ten days were almost identical, 14.6 for 2009 vs. 15 for 2008.

But the last 7 days have been very interesting. The temperatures turned colder than last with the average over the past 7 days being 6 degrees vs. 17.8 for the same 7 days in 2008. But our average consumption is less than in 2008, despite the temps being so much colder.

2008 - 49.5 kwh/day 2009 - 36 kwh

The difference? The weather is now well below 0 at night (as it was in 2008) so the heat pump is running all night. It also produces hot water for us. So, while last year the hot water tank would have been also providing some heat to the house, along with the lights, fridge, etc., this year the heat pump is providing the heat and any excess heat it produces offsets the amount the hot water tank needs.

For the first 10 days of the month, the heat pump was hardly running at all, so the bit it did run used more electricity than the previous year. But once it was running regularly, the savings from the HWT more than off-set the savings from not having any heat on at all.

We too read our electricity daily but haven't entered the data into a spreadsheet (I'll suggest that to my dh so we can graph things!)

Our goal in electricity reduction is to become electricity independent. Eventually, we want to produce enough solar electricity to handle our needs for 6 months of the year. With electric heat and hot water, it is a slow process while we cut our consumption but we are getting there. We think the fridge is our 3rd biggest energy hog although it is only 10 years old and it will be the next item we replace. We are looking at chest freezer mods that turn a freezer into a fridge since they use way less electricity than even a super-efficient specialty fridges and can be made from used parts, instead of buying a new fridge with all the environmental impact that has.

[worthy]

save the receipts

Funny, never bothered with lightbulb receipts before. But they weren't such an investment.

[eric]

Just pulled a hydro bill to compare. Hydro One gives you a running per day average for the last year. From August 1st 2008 to Sept 2nd 2009, I am averaging between 3 and 4 kWh/day. My electricity charge for month of August was $6.10 (107 kW/h @ 5.700 cents). Delivery was $30.93. Regulatory and debt retirement charges were $0.95 and $0.69 respectively, and GST was $1.93, for a total of $40.60. My equal billing amount is $50/month.

We have a 2300 sq ft, R2000 bungalow. Heating and AC is thru a ground source heat pump. During the winter, we keep the house at 18C during the week, and drop it to 15C on the weekends since we're at the cottage.
We do burn wood in a high efficiency wood burning insert during the week, so once I'm home and the fire is going, the furnace generally doesn't run anymore. During the summer we do run the AC occasionally, but not very often. Just enough to pull the humidity out of the air.

Aside from that, I can't say we do anything crazy to keep the hydro bills down. We do have CFLs everywhere in the house, but I leave all the electronics plugged in. Not shy about using the dishwasher either. 8 year old fridge, no freezer.

I must say that when Hydro One swapped out my old meter for one of these new smart meters a couple years back I saw a drop in our usage.

[like_to_retire]

From August 1st 2008 to Sept 2nd 2009, I am averaging between 3 and 4 kWh/day

Amazingly low for a 2300 sq. ft. home...

Three 60 watt light bulbs left on for a day is 4.3 kWh/day - and you run a 2300 sq. ft. house on less per day.....

ltr

[Jack's Girl]

From August 1st 2008 to Sept 2nd 2009, I am averaging between 3 and 4 kWh/day

Amazingly low for a 2300 sq. ft. home...

Three 60 watt light bulbs left on for a day is 4.3 kWh/day - and you run a 2300 sq. ft. house on less per day.....

ltr

I'm amazed too. I have a 2400 square foot home and we travel a lot. Our average when we are away in the summer is 9 - 10 kwh/day. So that is our lights (7 cfls on timers and the lawn lamp), the fridge, freezer, furnace fan, waterbed heater, a couple of phones and electric clocks (alarm and on microwave and stove). The HWT, furnace/ac, all tvs & computers, and everything else we can think of are off and, if possible, unplugged (our internet tower was hit by lightening once and we lost a lot of things despite the grounding so we unplug things when we aren't using them.)

Once we are home, the numbers basically double because the HWT is back on, as well as the water conditioners, the water pump is running and the computers are turned back on (we run a business from the house.)

[eric]

I went a grabbed a stack of older bills just to confirm. One error: what I took to be a running total from the last year is actually 6 month running average, with the last entry being your usage from the same time period a year ago. I glanced quickly at the last entry and saw a year ago, so assumed it was a yearly average.

Going back to some older bills I peaked at 12 kWh/day during the period of Jan 2nd 2009 to Feb 2 2009 (actual). February to March was 10 kWh/day(estimated). March to April was 9 kWh/day (estimated), April to May was 3 kWh/day (actual). From April going forward thru the summer, I am averaging between 3 and 4 kW/h per day. Looking thru the older bills I don't see large adjustments so Hydro One's estimates seem pretty accurate.

The numbers still seem low compared to what others are posting, and as I said before we are not doing anything extreme to conserve energy. I don't even turn the hot water tank off on the weekends. We probably keep the house cooler than most people and we use wood burning to increase the temperature into the 20s, but my heat is 100% electric with the geothermal heatpump.

[marty123]

From August 1st 2008 to Sept 2nd 2009, I am averaging between 3 and 4 kWh/day

Amazingly low for a 2300 sq. ft. home...

Three 60 watt light bulbs left on for a day is 4.3 kWh/day - and you run a 2300 sq. ft. house on less per day.....

ltr

I'm amazed too. I have a 2400 square foot home and we travel a lot. Our average when we are away in the summer is 9 - 10 kwh/day.

It seems odd to me too. We use between 30 and 50KWh/day depending on the time of year, but we have a hot-tub, a large pool (when the pool is closed, the extra hot-tub heating compensates), 2 Bell power-hog PVRs, and a few inefficient appliances. I once put the kill-a-watt on my air-exchanger (which would be on any R2000 home), and it uses 3.5KW/day (It's a 3000sf with HEPA filter, I need to put it on a timer).

I just bought some wireless plugs so I can turn off a bunch of appliances that use shadow power or that the kids keep leaving on on in their hobby room (printers, TV sound, DVD, computers, etc.).

[Jack's Girl]

The numbers still seem low compared to what others are posting, and as I said before we are not doing anything extreme to conserve energy.

Could you do me a favour and read your meter tonight and then again at the same time tomorrow night? You seem to be using 1/10th what I'd expect you to use (especially since you have ground source heat pump since I'm assuming you are running a well pump to run it.) And you imply you have an electric HWT.

I'm wondering if the units on your bill are 1/10th the units we read on our meters and that makes for the difference.

If I'm right, since our homes are so similar (ground source heat) I'll be able to look forward to 100 kwh days in the winter instead of the 150 - 200 that we commonly get here (although I'm in Eastern Ontario where it might be colder than where you are.)

[carnet]

Has anyone recently tried/seen LEDs for interior lighting? Recently there was this in the g&m.

With the semi-conductor business also making the diodes, Mr. Riesebosch sees LED prices coming down quickly, and fairly soon. He expects high-quality LED replacements for compact fluorescents to be on the market within 18 months. LEDs, he said, "are coming now in a big way."

In talking to a electrical distributor recently, he thought CFLs would likely be phased out over the next 5 years with LEDs. He also confirmed that there is a wide variety in quality at the moment but the higher end stuff is decent in colour and brightness though, obviously, costing more. The wide variety in quality may explain some of mixed reviews on the net.

[Bylo Selhi]

Has anyone recently tried/seen LEDs for interior lighting?

See this thread starting hereabouts. I've purchased several LED "bulbs" from DX (see a few posts downthread in the link.) All are still is use. I'm a convert but only for applications where low levels of concentrated light are adequate. For instance the LED in the front alcove that I mentioned in that thread has been on 24x7 through a couple of winters now and still works great. I also have LEDs in reading lights on desks and bedside. One of the projects on my to-do list is to replace under kitchen cabinet lighting in the kitchen. While the light is noticeably "whiter" than older technologies, I don't find it objectionable.

But that said, we're still a long way from the day when you'll be able to replace 40W to 100W incandescents, or the equivalent CFLs, with LEDs without taking out big a mortgage. I'm skeptical that LEDs will be affordable in the next couple of years, industry promoters quoted in the media notwithstanding.

[WishingWealth]

I've bought a few LEDs for the outdoors; I was fed-up changing the incandescent bulbs every few months, hundreds of hours short* of their expected guaranteed life.
So far so good; they've been there about 7 months including a not too cold winter.
And BTW, the instructions for the LEDs I bought mention they may not go on below -20°C (IIRC). It probably was that cold a few evenings but they were OK.
BTW2: I replaced some 25 W incandescent on each side of the front door by 40W DELs. As I've said before on some other threads, those equivalency values are a big POS of a lie.
The 40W look like wax candles when compared to the 25W incandescent. [OK, just a flicker of an exaggeration.]

WW

* I dunno what's happening; I seem to go through way too many bulbs; I tried the rural ones but to no avail.