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| seezar |
 Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 10:38 am Post subject: |
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| Switch all your lights to CFL bulbs (compact flourescent light). A 13-watt CFL bulb is the equivelant to a 60-watt bulb. They are also coming down in price and arent much more expensive than incandescent bulbs if you buy them in multipacks. The Lowes near me sells a 6 pack of 13-watt bulbs for about $8 and the savings on your electric bill will more than pay for the bulbs. They also last 9-10 times longer than incadescents. |
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| seezar |
| Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2005 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Another tool to help save electricity is to track your monthly meter reads (just like for saving money, the first step is to track exactly what you spend).
You can then figure out your monthly kWH usage by subtracting your current meter read with the previous month. I use a spreadsheet and have the last 3 years tracked by month. Lately I've started taking that to the extreme and tracking daily usage but monthly usage should be sufficient.
For my home the monthly average of kWh used in 2003 was 593 kWhs. So far this year my monthly average is 334 kWhs. If I can keep that up for the rest of the year, thats a savings of about $217 for the year based on local electric rates of about .07 per kWh.
Another electric saving tip, if you use the heated dry cycle on the dishwasher if you use one, turn it off. You'd be amazed at how much electricity heated dry uses. |
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| lostsoul01 |
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 9:43 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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If you want to track your energy usage per device, the Kill-A-Watt comes in very handy. I've found it to be quite accurate too.
You may get some surprises with it, for example my TV/VCR/DVD setup uses about 75 watts when all the devices were turned off! So now when I leave for long periods of time I unplug them.
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/killawatt-review.html |
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| MrInvestor |
| Posted: Mon May 09, 2005 9:56 am Post subject: |
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Investing Manager
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Cool idea Soul, thanks for the gadget tip. I think my house could definetly use an electrical usage audit.
For $40 it might be worth a try to see what I can uncover...especially since I hardly ever turn off my computer! |
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| chahsiubow |
| Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 5:11 am Post subject: |
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Investing Sr. Associate
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| MrInvestor wrote: | Cool idea Soul, thanks for the gadget tip. I think my house could definetly use an electrical usage audit.
For $40 it might be worth a try to see what I can uncover...especially since I hardly ever turn off my computer! |
I try using the fluorescent lights too, but that seems hypocritical since I leave my 450watt PC on all day and sometimes overnight.  |
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