Jen and I have been moved into our new home for 8 months now and I couldn’t be happier with the setup. It’s open, homey, and secluded enough to offer a pleasant release from the sounds of traffic. Unfortunately, we are secluded enough to be too far away from natural gas pricing to have that option available to use for heating; I’m expecting a high heating bill for the winter. In preparation for increased expenditure I figured I’d take some time to try and minimize our utility usage. First place to look? electricity.
Lightbulbs:
Our home is overabundantly lit. I suspected a surplus when I noticed there were three bulbs in a single fixture. Three bulbs in one fixture? Extravagance!
This past weekend I went to each fixture and reduced the quantity of bulbs down to one per fixture. The surplus? 17 BULBS!
SEVENTEEN! After the extraction the only obvious area where we noticed a dimmer atmosphere was in our mud room closet. Hardly worth the extra bulbage.
We also found the half dozen most used areas in our home and replaced those with LED bulbs. Now we’re talking! There are a lot of data websites out there that provide analysis on whether or not LEDs are worth the investment. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to come to their own conclusion. Still… lighting is small peanuts compared to the larger power consumers like appliances.
I touched base with our electric company. Fun fact! I thought that all houses were on variable pricing (with on and off peak hours). This is not the case. The default for residential is a fixed rate plan. You can switch if you want but the advantages are mixed at best.
For Connecticut Light and Power the fixed rate is ~$0.10/kwHr. Switching to variable rates drops the off-peak rate (8pm-noon) to 9 cents a kwhr… BUT! the on-peak rate skyrockets to $0.12/kwHr. Yikes! Making the decision even harder, I’m told you have to switch for a year resulting in risk of high monthly bills due to AC usage in the summertime. I’m going to take a look at energy analysis tools to see if I can determine what our usage rate is across various hours of each day and for each appliance.
I moved in to my own new-build flat in July 14, which is already very energy efficient. However, I was given a smart meter by my energy supplier. It is insane how much appliances cost to run if you factor in the cost per hr. My kettle would cost 30p/hr ($0.48) – weirdly I don’t drink tea or coffee so that keeps that cost down! If you have the opportunity to get a smart meter then get it, such fun! I even keep my microwave turned off at the mains which really is a negligible cost but that’s what the smart meter has made me become.