Reducing electricity usage - winning!

Discussion in 'Designing, building, making and powering your life' started by mouseinthehouse, Aug 29, 2013.

  1. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    After three months of *austerity measures* to decrease electricity usage I got the long awaited bill this morning. $322! 8) (of course this included twenty something $$ gst and 4.50 merchant fee for credit card payment of last bill grrr)

    Usage down from around 12.5 kWh/day to 8.5 kWh/day. Oh yeah!

    Now to go sub-$300! ;) My next strategy, is to turn off the water pump during the night. Despite our best efforts there are small leaks in the vast system of pipes, hoses, taps and troughs around the place and I am sure that the leaks are making the pump turn on and off numerous times day and night. Until such time as we can get the leaks sorted out, the pump will only be on from about 8am to 8pm. Will be interesting to see if there is any difference after that experiment.

    Just had lunch with a friend. When I told her my bill was $322 (for two people), she said that her's was $1600 (for two people). She couldn't care less. As they say, more money than brains....
     
  2. Grasshopper

    Grasshopper Senior Member

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    Ive got down to $75 in a quarter a few bills back
    My last one was $125 there has been a 20% increase in Qld after Cando claimed he could bring down cost of living presures and put a hold on power bills for 12 months so they doubled the increase when it was over.

    https://www.local-energy.com.au/electricity-bills-in-queensland-to-jump-21/
     
  3. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    Wow that is good going. Our supply charge was $56 alone. :(

    I am thinking up other ways to be even more miserly with the electricity. From next week I am full time at home so I might start hand washing the easy stuff. Then I thought that in our dry climate here with low relative humidity I might try some pot-in-pot refrigeration! That would be exciting - challenging - but exciting. Can probably cut down a bit more here and there with laptop usage and having more than one light on at a time. It's a work in progress until we go off grid solar/wind. :)
     
  4. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Do you have an energy monitor? I found it very useful as it gave me a handle on what appliances were pulling the most power which helped to make sensible decisions about where to direct my personal energy. It's broken now but the lessons learned were worth getting in the first place. Like the lights aren't the issue - it's all the electrical appliances sitting on standby 24 / 7. I've slacked off a bit now but I have managed in the past to get under $200 a quarter for 3 of us - and that includes 2 teenagers - one who is permanently connected to a computer and the other who HAS to use a hair straightener each morning before school!
     
  5. pebble

    pebble Junior Member

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    Inland maritime/hot/dry/frosty
    $322, over what time? 3 months or 1/4?

    What climate are you in? It's pretty easy to live without a fridge in the winter, if you set systems up well.
     
  6. mouseinthehouse

    mouseinthehouse Junior Member

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    That is 90 days worth pebble. We are in South Australia with the highest electricity prices in Oz. I am thinking we could easily live without the fridge in winter now that I have only had it on about 10 hrs a day and even that seems fairly uneccessary. My partner wants to run the fridge and freezer off their own solar set up. We don't pay for water so that $322 covers pumping all our water as well for our needs and our horses, chooks etc.
     
  7. Unmutual

    Unmutual Junior Member

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    I've found the variability between household's electric bills to be somewhat large myself. In South East Louisiana, it tends to be from air conditioning usage(at least that's my unscientific results). Some people want it 60 degrees during the summer and 80 degrees during the winter and leave their stuff running even when everyone's at work/school. I must admit, though, that I had a terrible time acclimatizing to the summer heat this year.
     
  8. Terra

    Terra Moderator

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    Excellent thread

    We had a extended no power period after our big bushfire , we ran the chest freezer only two hours a day on a gen set and this is in the summer of course . We kept the frozen gear on the bottom and we used a large doona folded and layered on top of the frozen food and the fridge type food in the baskets on top , worked really well .

    So no doubt with a bit of effort we could use these techniques all through the house , and the way power is going a lot of us will just have to find cuts in usage , lots of little savings like putting the remainder of hot water out of the kettle in a thermos .

    My dim memory recalled discussions on this awhile ago and recall a thermostat to convert a chest freezer to a fridge (no loss of cold air on opening door ) , quick search on this site brought up a few hits and this one was listed , https://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html BIG power savings no doubt there are other conversion devices out there .

    Extra Efforts in this quarter from us have been , the spare rainwater tank on a stand that never gets used and overflows all the time is now connected to the toilet (no pressure pump) , 99% use of our wood stove for cooking .

    I need to rehash my aquaponics so both systems run off the one 25w pump , as we are way out of town we could have our fridge / freezer outside over winter on the veranda so they dont compete with the heating .
    Rob
     
  9. Donkey32

    Donkey32 Junior Member

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    The biggest difference for us came after I hooked up our passive solar water heater. Electric hot water, even if you turn it off between needs (night and midday), is a BIGGIE.
     
  10. gardenlen

    gardenlen Group for banned users

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    we don't have A/C or heating, built haouse somewaht correctly, we have small chest freezer somewaht full and fridge which has no freeze, need only one light to light whole house use twin tub to do 3 loads in same day once a week.

    our power rises, nothing else we can afford to do

    len
     

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