Cut electric bill in half with a few changes.

Thanks for this info! We run all our fans all day long during the summer. In fact, as I sit in the office in Reston, they are going round and round at home using up energy.

 

Does anyone have a clue how many watts are being used by the fans? We also leave ours on all summer long. We love them but could see them not being needed if we're not in the room.

 

The house:

When we moved in summer 2008 we added one programmable thermostat a few months later, due to the hassle of manually setting it back. Perhaps a year later, we added a second programmable thermostat upstairs. Basement is unfinished, sq ft (not including basement) ~2900. Lutron RadioRa system added piecemeal over the last year.

We have moderate "occupied" temps set most of the year: around 72 deg in the summer, 74 in the winter.

We've added a 1500W electric space heater to the master (leaving the windows cracked in the winter) and another the basement. To a fault, I run the fireplace constantly in the cooler months when I am in the family room.

The data:

The attached graphs show the bill paid date compared to the previous year's.

Gas expenses have definitely gone down, despite me running the gas fireplace almost every day in the colder months. Cannot say for certain if the lower gas expenses are due to the thermostat(s) or using a space heater upstairs.

Electric expenses have definitely gone up. This is likely not due to Kim occasionally leaving the light on over the kitchen sink. Items have been added to the house which consume more (dehumidifier, etc).

April 2010 1184KWH was $87.32, a year earlier (using slightly less energy) was $121.45. I think the lower number was due to fuel credit settlement. The jump in Mar is from the gas bill, Washington gas said due to it being a cold month.

Conclusions:

For our situation, it was hard to quantify the effects. Changes were done at different times, things were added which consumed more electricity.

During a few of the last 5 months we have sometimes spent less on energy than the previous year. This seems to be a good trend

The second thermostat upstairs will likely not show up in the data yet until we get through these next summer months, thus perhaps the electric will drop further.

Overall average elec plus gas cost was ~ $260/month averaged over the last 22 months. I would be curious to know how others averaged bills compare. This is still less than we used to spend for our two apartments (with less than half the overall square footage). My old apt was ~ $105 averaged, I know Kim's was more since it was an older townhouse in Reston.

I have not accounted for rates, just the bill. We've sometimes spent more even with the "improvements" but our emphasis was on comfortable temps while keeping usage down. Perhaps our bill would be even higher without the thermostats and lighting.

Mike

 

http://www.pepco.com/home/education/conserving/

In summer: "The recommended thermostat setting is between 75°F and 78°F. Every degree you raise your thermostat can result in a 5% savings on the cost of cooling your home."

We should take a look at that.

I'm interested in knowing what other's bills run, to try to gauge how much we are saving with our system. We only run the AC part of the day downstairs, and from 9PM to 5AM during the night upstairs.

Mike

 

What ever you 're doing, keep it up. Insulation matters a great deal. My whole house uses fans and CFLs (some of which dimable, but those are difficult to find) and I have all new windows with low-e, insulated vinyl, argon filled glass. Windows were the best investment, especially after I lost trees on the now unshaded west side this winter. I can't feel the heat thru the windows and the glare is greatly reduced. Probably cut my heat bills in half this winter and hopefully again this summer.

 

Try 78-80 in summer and 68 in the winter. A little discomfort equates to huge savings! May/June electric bill $24 and gas bill $29, both will increase a little throughout the summer - 1700sf townhouse is comfortable by most standards. Makes dining out at a fine restaurant more enjoyable!

 

We replaced the recessed lights in our basement with those low wattage 'energy saving' bulbs but they take a bit to warm up to full brightness, is this normal? Not very usable in living spaces if you want to see right away.

 

We have CFL in the garage and in the winter they are kind of purple-gray until they warm up.

Mike

 

Home Depot has a Philips 15 Watt Ambient LED PAR30L Indoor Flood, has any one tried these? They are pricey - $49/ea

# Light Output: 418 Lumens
# Energy used: 11 watts

http://www.homedepot.com/Lighting-F...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

 

We have replaced almost all of our lights in our house, including dimmables. It took a while to get used to the buzz, the warming up and the different hue. No, you won't get "instant" light. But now we don't even notice.

 

We had the same findings two years ago when we switched all the recessed lights to CFL. They take a few minutes to fully warm up. I couldn't find a good solution at the time, so we add a few table lamps (w/ CFL's!) that give us instant bright light.

Perhaps there are better recessed CFL's out there now.