Posts Tagged ‘bill’
For many people electricity is just a service that they take for granted – they plug in their appliance, flick the power button on, and away they go. Most people only think about electricity when they have a power cut or a particularly high utility bill because of increasing electricity prices.
Understanding how electricity prices are determined requires a little bit of knowledge about how electricity works. Electricity is delivered to millions of homes through a network of power lines called the National Grid. Power plants generate electricity through various sources of energy and feed the grid in order to transmit electricity through the power lines to your home.
Some utility companies generate all their own electricity but – more often than not – the utility company will purchase their power supply from the wholesale electricity markets, which can come from domestic suppliers or abroad. Your electricity prices can fluctuate depending on how much your supplier has to pay for the electricity from foreign markets.
A poor exchange rate or shortage in world power supply will push electricity prices up as suppliers pass on increased costs to consumers. Often a ‘power pool’ is created to conglomerate neighbouring resources which increases reliability of power supply and prevents power outages.
Electricity prices are based mainly on the current availability of fuels available used to generate electricity for the grid. Most of our electricity comes from coal and oil, but natural gas is a growing commodity as it is the cleanest burning of the three fossil fuels. The more fuel there is, the cheaper electricity prices get. Electricity prices can also be affected by construction costs incurred by utility companies to build new power plants, as well as outside factors such as major international events and the weather.
Electricity prices are most expensive during the day during peak times, usually in the afternoon and early evening. Where possible, if you are on a variable rate, use your electrical appliances early in the morning and late at night to get cheaper electricity prices.
I believe that every one of us is finding ways to cut the electricity bill and other household expenses wherever possible during this uncertainty economic climate. We either want to eliminate or delay unnecessary expenses like expensive vacation trip, dinning at luxury restaurant and so on and so forth. However, the electricity bill left to be the one of the most challenging bills to be reduced especially for those who have a lot of power sucking appliances at home. Accordingly to U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average family consumes around 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity each year or USD 900 or more if based on 8.5 cents per kwh. There are many ways you can cut down your electricity bills significantly. You can always start with easy ways to enjoy immediate power bills saving whilst working out the long term solution to change your home energy source to renewable green energy source without compromising your standard of living.
Let’s look at how you could cut your power bill significantly
1) Change to efficient Compact Florescent (CFLs) bulbs from incandescent light bulbs
CFLs last from 8-10 times longer, utilize about 75% less energy, and generate 90% less heat at the same time as delivering more light per Watt. For instance, one 20 Watt CFL (replaces a 75 Watt incandescent bulb) will save you $66 dollars over the life of the bulb (based on $.12 KWH). If you replace one 100 Watt incandescent bulb with a 25 Watt CFL, it will save you $74 dollars over the life of the bulb.
Recent statistics reveal that we spend about one-quarter of our electricity budget on lighting, or more than $37 billion annually. Although traditional incandescent light bulbs are less expensive to purchase, they are much more expensive to operate. So you should start to change them now!
2) Always keep your appliances clean, in order and at optimum operating condition.
You should carry out regular cleaning or maintenance so that your appliances are in good shape and thereby operating efficiently and also consuming lesser energy.
3) Set Air-conditioner at optimum temperature
Setting your thermostat to 78 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimum setting for your air conditioner during warmer seasons. It would increase your cooling cost by 12% to 47% if the thermostat is set at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. You shouldn’t set temperature really low at the beginning as it will not help your home cool faster but to consume more energy. If you forget to adjust it subsequently, the air conditioner will be running far less efficiently than you think. Besides, you should consider substituting fans for air conditioners on milder days as it can save 60% or more in cooling costs.
4) You should call qualified service technician to you home for an annual check up.
This will not only help you to reduce the operating costs of the appliance by around 20%, but also extend the life span of the appliance.
5) Don’t over-stuff your refrigerator with bottles and other plastic containers.
The condenser will be overloading as lack of free air circulation. As a result, it will consume more energy.
6) Turn Off un-used electric appliances & computer and lights
7) Shop around for energy-efficient appliances
Convert renewable energy source
You should consider this option as your long term solution if you are really committed to reduce your power bill. You could either ask the professional install for you if you can afford it, if not you can also consider to DIY. There are a lot of user friendly DIY kits out there with detailed step by step instruction to guide you how to set up your own solar or wind power generation system.
Those electrical utility companies have us over a barrel, don’t they?
I mean it seems like every year they raise the electricity rates and there doesn’t seem to be much we can do about it.
I know exactly how you feel. I looked into this major problem and found three secrets that can significantly reduce or eliminate your utility bill.
Secret Number One.
Replace all of your light bulbs with CFL bulbs. CFL stands for compact fluorescent light and they can help you save a ton of money. The bulbs typically use about one fourth of the power of a carbon filament bulb, while putting out the same amount of light. You can sometimes find these bulbs are very cheap prices as right now the utility companies are subsidizing the cost of these to consumers. I recently was able to buy them for ten cents a piece, what a bargain!
Secret Number Two.
Turn off as many of your appliances off at night as you can. Look all around the house and everything that is plugged into the wall uses electricity, even when the power witch is turned off. I know you think it is turned off but do you hear it humming or see any lights on? It really is using electricity and all of these appliances plugged into the wall start adding up to your total electrical bill. What you need to do is try to cluster as many as you can together on a power strip and switch the strip off at night. Do this all around the house and you will start reducing your energy bill noticeably.
Final Secret.
Start generating your own electricity at home. That’s right, you can do this and become your own power company. The best overall way I have found to do this is by making free electricity with a magnetic power generator. Plans are available on how to make these in less than a day using material found at your local hardware store. They operate quietly, need little space, are safe, and reliable. You can greatly reduce or eliminate your power bill depending upon the type of system you build.
Are you ready to take these steps to start eliminating your monthly power bill.
Sure you are!
Now you can generate free electricity with a simple and easy to use guide for making a magnetic power generator at home.
To learn more watch this video by following this link == > http://generating-electricity-at-home.canemanim.com