For Christmas, I got a power cost meter.
It measures how fast your power dial is spinning and turns it into an instantaneous cost and a cumulative total you can reset every month.
It has been a lot of fun to see how much various things around the house cost.
It is also very helpful for someone like me who can have numerical evidence that everything is off before I leave the house.
Here is a table of my early data:
$/hr
$0.06 Baseline (clocks, Fridge, DVRs, etc), everything else off.
$0.20 Heat (just the blowers, we also pay for the gas used)
$0.04 Plasma TV
$0.03 Outdoor flood lights
$0.10 Vacuum
$1.20 Dryer
$2.00 Pre heat oven to 400F
$0.25 Electric Heater for bathroom
My first thoughts were I did not think a baseline of $0.06 per hour seemed too bad. I had heard stories that all the little devices like phone chargers and VCR clocks etc, really waste a lot of energy, but this didn't seem too bad at first.
I was surprised at how much using the oven cost. Next time someone cooks a TDay turkey for you, bring them some wine or something for the hours of expensive cooking.
We spend about $80-$100 per month for electricity which doesn't seem too bad. But if you do the math, that is only $.14/hr so our baseline $0.06 represents ~$40/month or ~40% of our total usage.
Energy saving bulbs are great, but they can't help lower your baseline at all.
The good news is this means even a small amount of solar or wind power, like 1KW could do a lot to save energy even while you are at work which most of us assume would be off peak time versus all of the lights and TVs when we get home at night.
