Yes that is true but even if you took 2 more hours per day in oven usage the added heat would be about 20,000 BTUs, a standard air conditioner with a COP of 3 will cost roughly 20 cents to remove that heat or depending on electric rate about $6 a month - equals about $25 month for running both the extra 2 hours a day.k0xxx said:
Why has the light bill gone up??
- Thread starter EggsForIHOP
- Start date
Things I tell people to watch for in both summer and winter are the over usage of vented cooking range hoods, bathroom vents, and dryer vents as they can remove all of your expensive conditioned air in a heartbeat and best done at night in the summer.
All the air you vent must be replaced, drawing it in from any house cracks you have, be it hot humid air at noon or frigate air in the winter. A dryer vent fan can easily remove all the air in a 10x10 room in 10 minutes.
All the air you vent must be replaced, drawing it in from any house cracks you have, be it hot humid air at noon or frigate air in the winter. A dryer vent fan can easily remove all the air in a 10x10 room in 10 minutes.
k0xxx
Mr. Sunshine
That being so, then what are the possible variables besides cooking?xpc said:
KWH Rate
Meter misread
Outside Temperature
AC Setting
AC Malfunction
Running a welding shop out of the garage
(add your own)
Eliminate them one by one and see what is left, is all that I can suggest.
the blue jays flying close to the exterior walls creating wind
farts in the hall near the thermostat
the heat from a long bath with candles lit after farts in the hall near the thermostat
half of the leaves of an oak tree shading 1/4 of the roof of a 1200 sq ft house
haha
farts in the hall near the thermostat
the heat from a long bath with candles lit after farts in the hall near the thermostat
half of the leaves of an oak tree shading 1/4 of the roof of a 1200 sq ft house
haha
- Thread starter
- #15
EggsForIHOP
Power Conserver
We blew through 3500 KWH last month as opposed to 2500 last year same month.
I did check the meter - not only is it digital, but I know the guy that read it really did walk up and read it (the dog woke me up that day to let me know) and the readings all seem about right.
The ac seems to be functioning fine - it got it's yearly check up 2 months ago as well. I don't think that is the issue (could be, but I doubt it)
But when I really think about it cooking DOES involve the following things (especially when DH is involved):
-electric stove/oven
-fan above said stove to vent the kitchen (and smoke from failed attempts at a meal)
-light about stove and 2 other lights in the kitchen (even at noon making a sandwhich he turns all 3 on)
-ac to cool down house from cooking
-fridge door left open for a countless length of time 'contemplating' what to make today
-oven forgotten about and left on (lord only knows how many times I have caught this..what about when I didn't?)
-multiple electric gadgets (blender, mixer, etc)
Then there is the fact that he just cooks to cook - for example: tonight, I made dinner...had all the stuff set out and ready, NO NEED FOR RICE OF ANY SORT...however...he got up and made spanish rice "to work on perfecting it" Don't worry, we will eat it...but really? Just cooking to cook he is! My freezer is FULL of stuff! At least when he goes back to work I won't have to cook for a while...
Plus, we have been baking bread, making tortillas and muffins - things we never did last year...I maybe doing things a little less efficiently than I should be with the oven...but I ALWAYS turn it off...where as he doesn't! Caught it on twice this month already at least! HOURS after the biscuits were done no less!
It just makes me so frustrated to do so much to cut back and see this one huge expense continue to grow regardless!
I did check the meter - not only is it digital, but I know the guy that read it really did walk up and read it (the dog woke me up that day to let me know) and the readings all seem about right.
The ac seems to be functioning fine - it got it's yearly check up 2 months ago as well. I don't think that is the issue (could be, but I doubt it)
But when I really think about it cooking DOES involve the following things (especially when DH is involved):
-electric stove/oven
-fan above said stove to vent the kitchen (and smoke from failed attempts at a meal)
-light about stove and 2 other lights in the kitchen (even at noon making a sandwhich he turns all 3 on)
-ac to cool down house from cooking
-fridge door left open for a countless length of time 'contemplating' what to make today
-oven forgotten about and left on (lord only knows how many times I have caught this..what about when I didn't?)
-multiple electric gadgets (blender, mixer, etc)
Then there is the fact that he just cooks to cook - for example: tonight, I made dinner...had all the stuff set out and ready, NO NEED FOR RICE OF ANY SORT...however...he got up and made spanish rice "to work on perfecting it" Don't worry, we will eat it...but really? Just cooking to cook he is! My freezer is FULL of stuff! At least when he goes back to work I won't have to cook for a while...
Plus, we have been baking bread, making tortillas and muffins - things we never did last year...I maybe doing things a little less efficiently than I should be with the oven...but I ALWAYS turn it off...where as he doesn't! Caught it on twice this month already at least! HOURS after the biscuits were done no less!
It just makes me so frustrated to do so much to cut back and see this one huge expense continue to grow regardless!
Farmfresh
City Biddy
I do that in the summer anyway to keep from heating up the house.elijahboy said:
Holy cow! blew through is right - 4 times the national average of 900 kWh, my house is 100% electric and only use 300 kWh on average.EggsForIHOP said:
Next time your outside write down all the electric meter info and see if there is a heartbeat indicator flashing then you can easily determine what may be the culprit by turning things on and off.
Do you know the tonnage and age of the unit? A 3 ton unit can easily cost you $5 to $10 a day and still be functioning fine. A dirty or blinded air filter can cost $20 or more a month in extra electricity - changing it monthly as required and suggested in the manual only costs $1.
I always use 50 cents an hour for oven usage, its a bit high but includes lights and fans. If you have an electric water heater then that will also cost 50 cents to reheat the water from a 10 minute shower.
Depending on the ambient temperature of where the freezer is and its size makes this a wild number from only a few dollars a month to $50, same goes for the refrigerator and its misuse but can average $15+ a month.
I tend to use 10 cent per kilowatt hour as it is the national average, yours may be different. If you just went from $250 a month to $350 a month I'd be a bit perturbed but if you have the money I see nothing wrong with spending a few hundred dollars more in the summer to be comfortable after all it is what we work for.
How big, how old, and how well insulated is your house? how many people are living there? What do you heat with? Do you have natural gas available as it is in your city and 15,000 people use it to cook with? natural gas is about 1/3rd the cost of electricity.
My last 13 months of electrical usage, 3 bedroom 1200 sq.ft. All new windows, doors, and attic insulation. 100% entire electrical house.
Month kWh
JUN 445
MAY 329
APR 370
MAR 352
FEB 391
JAN 306
DEC 386
NOV 301
OCT 300
SEP 362
AUG 171
JUL 449
JUN 262
4424 kWh for the last 13 months = 340 kWh or about $35 monthly, my entire year is less then two of your cheaper months. The $20,000 dollars needed to go 100% solar is best left in the bank as it makes me $80 a month in interest and I still get to keep all my original money.
This is not meant to rub salt in your wounds as I am a single guy with complete control of my usage and conservation. I do not mind a 50 degree house in the winter but a 90 degree one is unacceptable, very few days in the last 2 months have been below 90F and keep my bedroom at 75F which according to my kilowatt meter is costing $18 a month.
To be fair I seldom air condition the rest of the house as I don't spend much time in it and don't see the value in keeping my sofa cool, I don't own a TV or stereo and only used the washing machine 6 times and dryer twice this year. My heavily insulated water heater is set at 95F which saves me about $30 a month, but then again don't use it wilily nilly.
I keep my refrigerator at 37F but the freezer at 10F, fresh foods store longer and frozen food about half that of being at zero or lower but seldom keep anything in there for more than 3 months anyways - I let the grocery store keep my food frozen. Long term storage goes in the $2 a month chest freezer. Turning the refrigerator's freezer up to 10F saves me about $5 a month, I have a side by side with water and ice dispenser - the most costly of all cold white boxes to operate.
I installed a combination bathroom ceiling light / vent / heater, no sense in heating the entire house to make that room just a little warmer for a quick shower. 10 cents a day vs $1 dollar a day, wire it into a 30 minute timer close the door and forget about it. In the winter a foam toilet seat brings all the creature comforts of your love seat without the rude awakening of sitting on an arctic circle.
Summer sun generally won't come into your north or south windows especially in Texas but can easily put up to 1000 watts of heat per hour into your east west ones during the hours of 10am to 4pm - 6,000 watts per square yard of windows (3'x3') per summer day, the equivalent of running a space heater for the same amount of time. A large roof overhang, awning, or insulated curtains will considerably reduce that.
A well insulated attic with natural convention via soffit to gable or soffit to ridge (not both) will vent all that 150F trapped air. Powered attic vents are not recommended as they will suck out all your expensive air conditioning.
Though most houses no longer have functional double hung windows or door transoms the cooling effect still works but must remember to close them first thing in the morning or you'll get all the evaporating dew in the house as humidity.
After having the oven on high for 6 hours my kitchen and living room went up to 85F, after 10 pm I opened the west windows and put a fan blowing out in an east window and is now 80F. it is 72 outside tonight and should get close to that inside by morning ( i still keep my bedroom closed and air conditioned).
Watch out for humidity misnomers as 90 degree air can hold much more water vapor as the same level of 70 degree air, hence the name relative humidity. Only a wet bulb psychrometer can differentiate them, by the same token in the winter a house kept at 70F with a 40-50% humidity can feel more comfortable then a dry 80F - cheaper too.
Energy conversation is a lot like a diet, you have to make it a lifestyle change for it to be effective. The first thing is to educate the household on what things cost as power consumption and not dismissing them because they are small and often forgot about.
People (women) have a mindset that if it only costs a few dollars and has a 50% clearance tag it actually costs less to buy then to leave it at the store. Same as the 1 cent an hour light bulb times 10 hours a day times 20 bulbs equals $60 a month - an exaggeration but doable.
All those cheap little items adds up at the end of a night, just as the guys (men) buying all his friends 50 cent tap beers ends up with a $100 bar tab but doesn't realize it until 2am when he has to pay the bill. Is that a good analogy?
I'm a glutton and can seldom eat out cheaper then building a meal at home even with the added cost of oven usage, if you have friends or relatives that you can tolerate for more than a few minutes show up at their door at supper time - you actually help save them from over eating. Cue the kid on feeling sick and get out of there before the dishes need washing.
Month kWh
JUN 445
MAY 329
APR 370
MAR 352
FEB 391
JAN 306
DEC 386
NOV 301
OCT 300
SEP 362
AUG 171
JUL 449
JUN 262
4424 kWh for the last 13 months = 340 kWh or about $35 monthly, my entire year is less then two of your cheaper months. The $20,000 dollars needed to go 100% solar is best left in the bank as it makes me $80 a month in interest and I still get to keep all my original money.
This is not meant to rub salt in your wounds as I am a single guy with complete control of my usage and conservation. I do not mind a 50 degree house in the winter but a 90 degree one is unacceptable, very few days in the last 2 months have been below 90F and keep my bedroom at 75F which according to my kilowatt meter is costing $18 a month.
To be fair I seldom air condition the rest of the house as I don't spend much time in it and don't see the value in keeping my sofa cool, I don't own a TV or stereo and only used the washing machine 6 times and dryer twice this year. My heavily insulated water heater is set at 95F which saves me about $30 a month, but then again don't use it wilily nilly.
I keep my refrigerator at 37F but the freezer at 10F, fresh foods store longer and frozen food about half that of being at zero or lower but seldom keep anything in there for more than 3 months anyways - I let the grocery store keep my food frozen. Long term storage goes in the $2 a month chest freezer. Turning the refrigerator's freezer up to 10F saves me about $5 a month, I have a side by side with water and ice dispenser - the most costly of all cold white boxes to operate.
I installed a combination bathroom ceiling light / vent / heater, no sense in heating the entire house to make that room just a little warmer for a quick shower. 10 cents a day vs $1 dollar a day, wire it into a 30 minute timer close the door and forget about it. In the winter a foam toilet seat brings all the creature comforts of your love seat without the rude awakening of sitting on an arctic circle.
Summer sun generally won't come into your north or south windows especially in Texas but can easily put up to 1000 watts of heat per hour into your east west ones during the hours of 10am to 4pm - 6,000 watts per square yard of windows (3'x3') per summer day, the equivalent of running a space heater for the same amount of time. A large roof overhang, awning, or insulated curtains will considerably reduce that.
A well insulated attic with natural convention via soffit to gable or soffit to ridge (not both) will vent all that 150F trapped air. Powered attic vents are not recommended as they will suck out all your expensive air conditioning.
Though most houses no longer have functional double hung windows or door transoms the cooling effect still works but must remember to close them first thing in the morning or you'll get all the evaporating dew in the house as humidity.
After having the oven on high for 6 hours my kitchen and living room went up to 85F, after 10 pm I opened the west windows and put a fan blowing out in an east window and is now 80F. it is 72 outside tonight and should get close to that inside by morning ( i still keep my bedroom closed and air conditioned).
Watch out for humidity misnomers as 90 degree air can hold much more water vapor as the same level of 70 degree air, hence the name relative humidity. Only a wet bulb psychrometer can differentiate them, by the same token in the winter a house kept at 70F with a 40-50% humidity can feel more comfortable then a dry 80F - cheaper too.
Energy conversation is a lot like a diet, you have to make it a lifestyle change for it to be effective. The first thing is to educate the household on what things cost as power consumption and not dismissing them because they are small and often forgot about.
People (women) have a mindset that if it only costs a few dollars and has a 50% clearance tag it actually costs less to buy then to leave it at the store. Same as the 1 cent an hour light bulb times 10 hours a day times 20 bulbs equals $60 a month - an exaggeration but doable.
All those cheap little items adds up at the end of a night, just as the guys (men) buying all his friends 50 cent tap beers ends up with a $100 bar tab but doesn't realize it until 2am when he has to pay the bill. Is that a good analogy?
I'm a glutton and can seldom eat out cheaper then building a meal at home even with the added cost of oven usage, if you have friends or relatives that you can tolerate for more than a few minutes show up at their door at supper time - you actually help save them from over eating. Cue the kid on feeling sick and get out of there before the dishes need washing.
How to properly set aircondition was one of my biggest pet peeves I had with my mother...of all people! While on one had she wouldn't set it so cold as you would need a sweater in mid July, she was totally opposite, she set it so high that by the time it would kick back on the house would be only a few degrees cooler then outside. Mind you we didn't have central air, we had two window units. One was located on our back porch (facing east) and the other one in our dining room (facing south). The front of the house obviously faced west. And that was part of the problem!
My mother had her lazyboy chair right infront of the bank of 5 windows on the west side of the house. So in the summer when the sun came around, even with the drapes closed the living room temp would soar. In the winter the opposite happened. So my mother would blast the heat in the winter so she would feel warm. Yet set the airconditioning so it like I said was just barely below the outside temp before kicking on again, but then she'd want it to drop the temp 20 degrees from outside! That constant cooling down-reheating of the livingroom and dining room combined thermal mass, and it was no wonder our Kwh was like 1800 per month! Twice the national average!
If she'd 1) kept the airconditioner set to a level say 5-10 degrees below the outside temps, the ac wouldn't have struggled as much having to recool two large rooms down five times a day. 2) by rearranging the living room so her lazyboy was on the south wall (all brick) and away from the windows she wouldn't have gone throught the issue being cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
I've since gotten rid of the aircons. The one on the back porch was 20 years old, basically fell apart in my hands when I took it down last fall. I sold the other one about a month ago for $75. My bedroom is on the third floor (converted attic space). And I manage to stay realativly cool by using two box fans. One blowing in from the west and the other blowing out on the east. For the really hot days, I've a third one to blow on me. It's almost noon here now, weather is sappose to hit mid 90's, and my room is below 80 for now. The worst time of the day is between 4pm and 7pm. As the sun comes around. But then I just go down to the main floor... get my dishes done, make dinner, do laundry. Amazing how quick those three hours go buy when you keep busy.
My mother had her lazyboy chair right infront of the bank of 5 windows on the west side of the house. So in the summer when the sun came around, even with the drapes closed the living room temp would soar. In the winter the opposite happened. So my mother would blast the heat in the winter so she would feel warm. Yet set the airconditioning so it like I said was just barely below the outside temp before kicking on again, but then she'd want it to drop the temp 20 degrees from outside! That constant cooling down-reheating of the livingroom and dining room combined thermal mass, and it was no wonder our Kwh was like 1800 per month! Twice the national average!
If she'd 1) kept the airconditioner set to a level say 5-10 degrees below the outside temps, the ac wouldn't have struggled as much having to recool two large rooms down five times a day. 2) by rearranging the living room so her lazyboy was on the south wall (all brick) and away from the windows she wouldn't have gone throught the issue being cold in the winter and hot in the summer.
I've since gotten rid of the aircons. The one on the back porch was 20 years old, basically fell apart in my hands when I took it down last fall. I sold the other one about a month ago for $75. My bedroom is on the third floor (converted attic space). And I manage to stay realativly cool by using two box fans. One blowing in from the west and the other blowing out on the east. For the really hot days, I've a third one to blow on me. It's almost noon here now, weather is sappose to hit mid 90's, and my room is below 80 for now. The worst time of the day is between 4pm and 7pm. As the sun comes around. But then I just go down to the main floor... get my dishes done, make dinner, do laundry. Amazing how quick those three hours go buy when you keep busy.
murphysranch
Super Self-Sufficient
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This is a great discussion, esp xpc's contributions. It made me go look at our bill. We have two refrigerators, one upright freezer (not frost free); run fans at night to try to cool down the bedroom, I leave my lap top on 100% of the time, there are only two of us here now, and the usual small appliances and TV's. We have a rebuilt AC, which I've been turning on at 4 p.m. to 9 pm due to our heat wave all this week. We have two propane tankless water heaters, a propane range and oven, and a propane grill.
I'm afraid of my usage this coming bill, but looking at last month's bill just for electric use, we're at 550kwh. We never eat out and I cook everything.
It looks like our rate is about $0.12 per kwh. In the Bay Area San Jose, we were at $0.145 per kwh, so I'm glad its cheaper up here.
The worst thing that has happened to CA who uses Pacific Gas and Electric, is the installation on homes of the Smart Meter and subsequent remote monitoring of our usage. They converted our little town last fall, and the complaints about how much everyone's electric bill has gone up has generated a PUC (Public Utilities Commission) investigation into the reasons for the increase. I have not read any reports of any conclusions yet, but the Smart Meter company is making money hand over fist.
I'm afraid of my usage this coming bill, but looking at last month's bill just for electric use, we're at 550kwh. We never eat out and I cook everything.
It looks like our rate is about $0.12 per kwh. In the Bay Area San Jose, we were at $0.145 per kwh, so I'm glad its cheaper up here.
The worst thing that has happened to CA who uses Pacific Gas and Electric, is the installation on homes of the Smart Meter and subsequent remote monitoring of our usage. They converted our little town last fall, and the complaints about how much everyone's electric bill has gone up has generated a PUC (Public Utilities Commission) investigation into the reasons for the increase. I have not read any reports of any conclusions yet, but the Smart Meter company is making money hand over fist.
