Monthly net electricity use in my household:
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Tesla (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tesla (Score:4, Interesting)
And that's your excuse? I drive electric too, some 25Mm (16kmiles) per year, but my family is in the "net negative" camp. Solar panels on 1/3 of my roof more than cover for all my driving, plus everything else in the house.
With a 16k$ investment, I went from spending 3k$ per year on fuel and electricity, to zero.
Destroying this planet a bit less feels great too; who knows, my kids might want to live there...
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And the great thing is that olden here has offered to pay us all to move to somewhere with enough sun, AND given us secure jobs.
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We're close to net zero in Vermont with a 4kw solar array. If you're in Portland or Seattle, I could see where you'd have trouble, but most parts of the U.S. can produce quite a bit of solar on a typical roof, at least if it faces the right direction.
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I personally have no more idea how much power I use than how much gas I burn, or how much gas is a gallon these days. Both are simply something I have to pay to have the lifestyle I want.
I have levelized billing for power, and it is something like $210 or so maybe a month, I really don't know for sure, I pay the bill and forget it.
I'll try to remember next time I pay, and see what it says my usage is, but with things like
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Yea, I won't know until I look at the bill. I'm looking at how much it costs so I can budget it in. I do know price wise my total bill for utilities (gas, electricity, water, sewer, and trash pickup) averages to around $150 a month. It is just me and the cat in the house so I'd expect it to be lower than most folks.
There are two bills, one from the city and one from the electric company. The city one goes down in the winter and up in the summer, possibly due to water usage and the electrical one goes up in
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Chances are you already live somewhere with better insolation than Germany so the enough sun part is taken care of.
And as for those of us living in Finland (and not the South of the country either)...
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Glad it worked for you though.
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Yes.
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I drive oil, but it's catalytically cracked veg oil.
The heating process for dewatering and then distilling excess Methanol off afterwards takes a fair bit of energy (16kWh) but over the course of a year and making 2500 litres it adds up to less in electricity costs than running a home server 24/7 (50W).
So I'm firmly in the 500-999kWh range.
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No way it is the true cost. I have a 7kW installation on my roof, 29 panels that at the time 3 years ago cost ~$400 each contractor cost, + microinvertors, + mounting equipment electricians, installation permits etc. All told was $54k I might have gotten ripped off but I doubt I got ripped off by a 3X factor.
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It's going to depend on location, people doing the work and so on. Not all labor rates are the same.
To cover my roof with w turn key solution, 20K.
I couldn't do it becasue my roof is too old. If you add in the cost of a new roof, then it's about 33K
Ironically, I cold get all kind of special financing for solar, but nothing to cover my roof .
I suspect that if you could roll a new roof into the same deal for covering the roof i solar, they would get a lot more people with solar.
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Hmm sweet. In my part of Canada we don't get a tax credit directly. We get feed in tariffs though so I get paid much more than market rate (~80.2c per kWh) to compensate. I'm not sure which is better. They have to periodically evaluate the tarriff amount for new installs to keep it fair for different technologies as they improve but giving a lump sum upfront could lead to gaming which isn't great either (say efficiency is going up 30% with new panels coming out a month from now, you might opt to take the 10
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And the price will keep dropping.
Because it is an exponential technology, so like Moore's Law.
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Only so far I think. You might be able to cram more cells per unit area but you only have so much sun energy to capture, you still have to cover the area with material. So we might get a 2X efficiency gain but after that it will just be a matter of how energy intensive it is to make silicon which is huge (I think break even time for my ~3 year old panels was quoted at 7 years, ie. 7 years of solar generation was required to compensate for the energy use needed to make the panels).
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Break even, even with aluminium frames, is roughly half a year.
Re:Tesla (Score:5, Informative)
Hi Friend,
Actually, if you look at standard e12-07 from Hydro-Quebec, you will find it is feasible to feed electricity back to the grid. I know there is some red tape, but the last government made it mandatory for Hydro-Quebec to accept people to feed back into their system.
You need a UL1741 or CSA C22.2 No 107.1-01 Inverter + power source.
An important fact is that you will never receive a check in the mail. You can only reduce your bill. Also, you cannot pay the "montly connection fee" with the energy you could be overproducing.
Also, if I remember correctly, you have 24 months to use the energy you overproduced. So, you could over-produce in the summer and use it in the winter. This would not affect you bill. It would be like using Hydro-Quebec as a big battery!
Regards
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Tesla coils are awesome - and a great device to annoy the neighbors with!
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Tesla coils are awesome - and a great device to annoy the neighbors with!
It also keeps them off your lawn. Well, until they start building tank rushes.
173 kWh (Score:4, Interesting)
I feel that eating up 5.73kWh a day is still high given that we are only at home probably a few hours a day. Though there is no air conditioning. Just fan. Old style CRT TV. No refrigerator but a water cooler is there. Lights. Laptop and other mobile devices. Water heater though is present.
I guess all those small usage add up a lot.
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/me looks up the data on my provider's web site.
The average is less then 160 kWh/month during last 6 years with a slightly declining trend. Looking at the poll results ... why the heck should I support EU in producing one regulation after another aimed at saving energy, reducing green-house emissions, etc. ?
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Actually I find his usage extremely high because he doesn't seem to have anything running except for a water cooler..
During summer I use between 25-40kw/day (
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I've seen some people use propane or natural gas powered fridges. They are common in RVs.
The downside of them is the price. Because they are not mass produced items, you will be paying 5-10 times as much, and they do not cool down things as fast as a compressor based refrigerator. However, if natural gas or propane is cheap, it may be the way to go, especially if one is trying to get off-grid [1].
Similar with a stove. A stove can be completely gas.
[1]: Good luck getting completely off-grid in Texas, co
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Lucky - my electricity price is about the same as your on-peak price. I use quite a bit less though - on par with the GGP, around 6-7 kWh/day. Most of my major appliances (heat, water heater, stove) are gas; most of my lights are LED; and I generally try to avoid using power if I can - so my desktop is normally only on when I'm sitting in front of it.
From my hourly usage report from the utility, I can see that my baseline power usage (i.e. overnight or when nobody is home) is about 160W; this includes the f
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Re:173 kWh (Score:4, Insightful)
(although find that hard to believe.. guess must never cook at home which also means no stove usage.. eat out/order in everyday?) .
I've worked at some places with a subsidised canteen where you can get a breakfast and a decent hot lunch. A number of single people made that their main meal, piled up the portions and just had a sandwich in the evening.
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I average 300W with about the same setup minus the fish. But I'm absolutely anal about not wasting (and we only need laundry a couple times a week)
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Got a two-bedroom house here, married with one child. My power usage has never gone up more than 200 kWh per month, and is almost always below 125 kWh. Well, I do have a nice, efficient one-door refrigerator which I measured to require only a paltry 25 kWh per month on average, and my Raspberry Pi home server/HTPC set up along with external storage, Wi-Fi router and DSL modem consumes roughly 17 kWh per month in total as this is the only other thing that I never turn off if I can help it. Air conditioning g
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That's actually about what I use, I used about 160 kWh in October. Live alone in a 43 m2 one bedroom apartment, 42" flat screen TV, desktop computer with dual screens, tablet, phone, refrigerator and freezer, combination of LED and CFL lights, occasionally used stove and oven (mostly microwave, unfortunately). District heating, so that doesn't factor in to the equation. I don't see how people can use so much electricity use unless they heat they're running electric heating or AC.
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Which one? [wikipedia.org]
Re:173 kWh (Score:4, Interesting)
If I lied, and said I was from a third world country, I dropped down to less than one earth.
I suspect that most people here are not considering the power consumption they are indirectly responsible for. Their country's military, other government, Internet companies, their employer, etc.
If you choose a country without a military, then be sure to include the energy from the country's military that IS protecting your country.
No Need (Score:2)
I have no need to know this. All I know is the dollar amount I pay each month. It's not like I can shop around for my electricity.
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Really? I have a choice of 278 different electric plans with over 40 different electric providers.
I've got approximately 277 fewer choices than that, and that's the way my utility likes it.
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Really? I have a choice of 278 different electric plans with over 40 different electric providers.
I've got approximately 277 fewer choices than that, and that's the way my utility likes it.
Too bad for you that you live in one of those socialist countries with no sense of how free markets work.
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I have many choices, but I don't really see why anyone would have this need of having a choice between 300 different providers which are all trying to screw you over in order to maximize profits for their owners, rather than one provider which has a democractic mandate to benefit citizens rather than owners. The electric market is a natural monopoly, whoever owns the grid calls the shots. In my city, the local grid was sold off by "free market"-worshipping liberals like yourself years ago, the result is not
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Really? I have a choice of 278 different electric plans with over 40 different electric providers.
I think it's a fair guess that you're the exception rather than the rule, then.
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Bollocks. That's like owning a car and not knowing what its gas mileage is. Even if you have no choice in who you buy your electricity from, you still ought to have even a vague awareness of this. Why? Because that is the reference point for everything else. It is also the denominator in figuring out what you pay for electricity on a per-kWh basis, which is what underpins every economic calculus on energy improvements.
Imagine, for a moment, that the poll question was "Ho
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2 reasons:
To see if there is an increase in usage. Meaning maybe some insulation is failing, or there is a short, or leaching you know general home maintenance reasons.
To be sure it's correct.
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Our home used 654 kWh in October in the upper Midwest. We ran the heat some but it's
I have no idea! (Score:2)
I am using someone else's. ;)
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Yeah, my queen ant doesn't. However, she does complain I hog too much because of my electronics like my two desktop PCs, central AC, etc. :P
Net of what? (Score:4, Insightful)
And I thought I was inefficient (Score:2)
I use about 10kWh per month. There are lots of things I could do to make things more efficient still like more efficient devices, better insulation etc.
I have multiple computers that are always on, refrigerator, stove, oven, water heater, furnace, AC etc. I also spend a fair bit of each day at home (studying, working etc).
Either I am insanely low or that poll is designed for people that leave their AC on full blast with the windows open in the summer.
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Okay I found the bill really sucks to read. It showed the 10kWh under the total but later it also showed 290 kWh under the total which makes a lot more sense. Still seems like a very small amount.
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I have heard of sleep and resting. I think it is a myth that is promoted by business majors. :)
I technically have next week off for thanksgiving break but mostly professors see it as a time where you don't have class and can spend even more time getting work done so .... not really a break. It is so strange but every engineer that talks to us tells us that work is less than half as hard as school. :) At least I get out in may.
Wow, what gadgets are you folks running?? (Score:2)
I don't think I've ever broken 500 kWh in a month in my entire life and have been under 200 kWh/mth, for over 10 years.
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Electric heat, appliances, water heater, things like that. 600kWh a month is only 1kW average. That's not a lot in the grand scheme of things. That's the figure they use for a house when they say something will power x houses as though it were a unit of measurement. The more you know. . .
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I don't think I've ever broken 500 kWh in a month in my entire life and have been under 200 kWh/mth, for over 10 years.
It's probably less like what gadgets they're running -- although that does matter -- and more like how big a place they're conditioning, and just how much of that is done with electricity. I use an average of 1000 kWh per month*. This would be much higher if I heated my water and air with electricity, but those are done with gas here. Same if I lived somewhere I had to use AC year round. Of course EMMD -- everyone's mileage my differ.
Maybe my deep freeze counts as a gadget: that's 250W, or 250W*(24hr/day)*(
About your freezer... (Score:2)
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You don't run it 24 hours a day...unless you forget to close it.
I run it 24 hours a day, in that I don't unplug it. It cycles its cooling system on and off to maintain the set temperature, yes. And it does consume 250W, or if you prefer 0.25kWh/hr. ~6kWh/day. ~180 kWh/month. Over 2100kWh/year. Instantaneously measured, as I suspect you were thinking, it can consume much more or much less than that 250W, but we were talking about net electricity usage per month in this poll, so I went with the energy use I measured in 2 separate 2-week periods with a Kill-a-Watt meter
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Where do you live? I regularly break 1500 kWh/month in the Houston summer when my air conditioner is running nonstop. Weak insulation in my southwest-facing second floor apartment probably doesn't help.
Net negative (Score:2)
Hang on a second, someone's at my door...
Does that include metabolic reactions? (Score:5, Funny)
Or just the conventional wire shit?
No Clue (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no clue: The electric company doesn't even bother to read my meter. They just send me a bill for whatever they think I should owe.
(And no: I’m not joking...)
Surprising results (Score:4, Interesting)
I looked back at my past year's worth of bills and saw that I used a total of 3648 kW-h. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, though each month my power company sends me a notice that states I'm using about 15-25% less energy than my energy efficient neighbors. I live alone in a house that's bigger than I need but not ludicrously so, and I don't tend to leave computers running. As 30-year old appliances fail I've been replacing them with more efficient models, and as they burn out I'm replacing incandescent light bulbs with CFLs (but dang, some of those daily-use incandescents are over 12 years old at this point, I'm beginning to think they'll never fail).
The big surprise for me, however, was my bill from last January; my electric energy use easily outstripped even my summertime air conditioning use, and was a fair bit higher than the months immediately before and after. The bill kindly informed me that the average temperature that month was 9 degrees colder than the year before, but I couldn't see that making such a huge difference. Could it be the air circulating fan in the furnace that I let run on low most hours of the day? Maybe, but why the anomalous month? I considered a incorrect meter reading, but realized that it's read remotely rather than by a guy walking around the neighborhood, and any mistake would have been offset the other direction the next month. Then I remembered.
For occasional use by my houseguests I have one of those oil-filled radiator-styled space heaters in my guest bedroom. I recall that sometime in that December-January timeframe the heater was used, and I forgot to check that it was turned off after a houseguest left. It sat there maintaining a comfy temperature in the otherwise unused bedroom for approximately a month before I happened to enter the room and noticed.
So now I know just what an energy pig that space heater is, and I'll be extra careful to check in on it after houseguests depart. Thanks Slashdot, you've probably saved me several tens of dollars over the next decade as I become more vigilant about the heater's use.
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tens of dollars over the next decade? You're probably off by some orders of magnitude.
Energy won't get any cheaper you know.
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Gas has don't nothing but get cheaper of the last 6 years. Electricity in real dollars is cheaper to day then 100 years ago. Solar is going down in price.
What do you base your premise on?
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"so that's more than just a little irrelevant.."
you said that energy prices will be going up. That indicates trending. That means in order to create any premise about where it's going you need to look at the historical prices of energy.
IT is. in fact, not just relevant but critical.
"0-15 years ago and was paying $10-15 per month then compared to $50-60+ today"
for..? energy for or car, total monthly energy fr everything, home?
taxes, fees and surcharges are on top of energy cost.
where the hell where you payin
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You should know that they're ALL like that. Space heaters in the US are usually 1500W, because that's the maximum a common NEMA-5/15 outlet can supply. And heating with electricity is 99% efficient, so they ALL consume the same amount of power. You can go for a lower-rated unit, 400W or so, but you'll only get a quarter as much heating from it. Still, it's a possible solution if your house guests are unreasonable, and will help if you continue t
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You know, the right design means the space heater needs to run less often to heat a given area.
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No... No it absolutely doesn't.
I am puzzled (Score:2)
I find the granularity of the poll very strange, because it starts of with such large amounts. The weighted average for a two person household is 2500 kWh/y including cooking with electricity. 2500 kWh/y is about 200 kWh/month + 100 kWh for the Christmas season. In our household, we consume 1049 kWh/y or 87.4 kWh/month. True we use gas for cooking and we do not own a TV. Instead we use tablets and laptops. But still wouldn't it have made more sense be more precise in the lower ranges? However, it might be t
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It's less than a tenth of that in summer, as it's basically all heating. We don't have or need air conditioning, as our summers are moderate (25+C peaks), and the metre-thick walls keep the flat beautifully call all summer round anyway.
We live in a small place, I'm not surprised there are much higher usages than mine.
LEDs, moderate heating/cooling, and low-flow (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been a long time coming, but regular consumer LED bulbs are getting to be reasonably price-competitive, and are around 50% more efficient than CFLs. Today, you can find decent LED bulbs that are 30-40W equivalents shipped for just $3.50: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZ0JW2I [amazon.com] - What's more, they are easily available in even smaller sizes/wattages than CFLs ever were, so you don't need to get stuck installing a 40W equivalent in a closet, small bathroom, etc, that doesn't need it. The instant-on in cold weather means they offer huge savings as replacements for incandescent bulbs in refrigerators, and outdoor fixtures, where the excess heat can even require double the electricity to remove afterwards.
The sky's the limit for LEDs. While we get less-efficient emitters in bulbs due to price, flashlights are up to 2X better already, and LEDs in the lab are the most efficient form of electric lighting: http://www.cree.com/news-and-events/cree-news/press-releases/2013/february/276-lpw [cree.com] - With lighting being the biggest demand of residential electrical usage, these technological improvements can make a big dent in demand, offsetting the increase due to population growth and new uses like electric vehicles.
Other simple things like keeping your electric hot-water heater, space heater, furnace, or similar set at the lowest workable temperature, and allowing your refrigerator or home A/C to maintain the highest usable temperature, can save huge amounts of electricity as well.
It continues to bother me that plumbers don't use the smallest diameter of pipe that will work with the incoming pressure, as every increase in size about doubles the volume of hot water you need to pump into them, to move it the same distance to the faucet. Insulating pipes only really helps in a busy house where the hot water very regularly flows, while smaller pipes are always an improvement.
Not to mention smaller pipe is cheaper up-front, and any shortfall in pressure can be easily made-up for by low-flow fixtures. There are good aerators for sinks that only need 0.5GPM, and shower heads down to 1.25GPM that work quite well. This reduces your hot water consumption by 1/2 to 1/4, and makes setting your water heater to a lower temperatures workable, reducing the standby losses much further. These things can all dramatically reduce your electricity usage (or perhaps your natural gas, propane or fuel oil bills)
And these are just the very easy and almost-free improvements available.
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I also like LED bulbs. The biggest areas for me were the kitchen and dining room, which have 5 and 4 can-type lights each. I changed each from a 65W incandescent to a 13W LED. They're also on dimmer circuits, and I find that I usually don't need full brightness; measuring at the power meter, I see that my kitchen lights take around 25-30W when on now, instead of up to 325W. The dimmable bulbs were a little more expensive ($20), but especially considering the reduced rate of failure compared to CFLs (and eve
Missing Option (Score:2)
Wife (Score:5, Funny)
My wife doesn't know how to turn lights off. Guess which category I'm in?
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Hey now, there's nothing wrong with wood. Especially in the mornings. Wood in the mornings is best.
Yes morning wood saves electricity, but I worry about how much CO2 is in the smoke that goes up the chimney as the wood is burned in the stove.
I can't answer that. (Score:2)
My meter uses quaternions but there are no options for imaginary usage.
144KWh on my last bill (Score:2)
Weather turning warmer here in the south hemisphere, so there's more A/C. Should peak at some 200KWh at the height of summer.
And I telecommute, so I'm at home most of the time, but usually only one room has the A/C turned on (it's not central, but very efficient inverter split units on each important room)
Other costs are the refrigerator, lighting, TV gear, etc.
8000 kWh/month? (Score:2)
That's about 11 kilowatts, running 24/7. How the hell does anyone machine that on a residential connection? That screams one of two things to me:
1%'er (*cough* Al Gore *cough*)
Large-scale grow-op
It varies (Score:2)
And you can watch me use mine... (Score:2)
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Minor bitch:
The mistaken usage... long i...,
With a long I it would be pronounced "gai-guh-watt," a non-word I've thankfully never heard spoken.
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I watched all three films over the weekend. I even quoted Marty from the first film (admittedly a lesser-known line than the one in the subject) on Slashdot, but no one noticed :-P
Re:Unplug (Score:4, Informative)
Modern switched-mode wall warts use negligible power in stand-by. You can feel it: they stay cool when not in use, unlike the old ones with iron-core transformers.
Bigger hidden consumers over here are the pump of the hot water system (100 W while running) and the airconditioner in standby. I use the ac only a few days per year, but I found out that it sips 15 kWh per month waiting for a signal from the remote control.
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Whether something feels hot or cool isn't a good indicator. That varies greatly depending on venting, and size of the housing. So your tiny little cell phone charger might *feel* just as warm as an old, *large* transformer, while consuming several times as much power.
The best example might be halogen bulbs... They have a much, much smaller glass envelope than regular incandescent bulbs, so while they use less
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Well duh, of course I'm not comparing an old-style wall wart in front of a fan to a modern wall wart in a closed box. Anyway, you would have to compare temperature difference (relative to environment) multiplied by surface area. Since most swit
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If every US household turned off 30W, we could permanently shut down a coal plant.
At 70W savings per household, you can spare one nuclear reactor.
You won't notice it as a big change on your bill, but little numbers do add up to pretty significant changes.
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Don't confuse 'save a coal plant worth of power' with 'being able to shut down a coal plant'. Unless the entirety of the savings comes form the area the coal plant services.
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True. The math works with a perfect grid, but you need a little bit more to convince investors that there is not enough demand for that old expensive plant to be upgraded with the expensive filters...
I was mostly pointing out that it doesn't take a tremendous life-changing effort individually to make a major difference, when tens to hundreds of millions are concerned. Whether it's cars mileage, house insulation, standby power waste...
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>> I have CFLs only
Wow since switching did you notice any effect on your health? For some reason the light from CFLs very quickly make me feel sick and gives me a bad headache.
If I had CFLs throughout I'd never want to go home, perhaps in the same way you would if anytime you're at home you had to wear an itchy woollen sweater directly against your skin.
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"Luckily we have cheap power here though since we're so close to all the natural gas.
that's not why you have cheap gas.It's the subsidies in Texas.
The Texas subsidies for oil and gas is about 1.4 Billion dollars. Texas spending is $93 Billion.
For comparison the US subsidies for oil and gas is 3.4B and US spend is $772 Billion
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In the state with the highest electrical rates in the CONUSA 250 khw gets you a bill of less than $43/month
It gets you an energy charge of $43/month. After the base fees, distribution fees, and because-we-said-so-now-pay-up fees it's more like $70 total...