Saving on Electricity
With the economy continuing to sag, and jobs as scarce as hen’s teeth, new money is hard to come by. This leaves us with searching for ways to stretch our dollars, and save our dollars. Using less power is one way to save dollars every month, and many ways of saving power are really easy.
In an article on saving energy, I came across one really easy way to save a lot of power. The article suggest using a thermal carafe to keep your morning coffee hot instead of leaving your coffee pot turned on. This got me to wondering how much power my coffee maker uses. I looked around on the cooker maker until I found the notation that it consumes 850 watts.
If I turn off my coffee maker and pour my coffee into a carafe to keep it hot, I will run my coffee maker about 1-hour less every day of the month – as I never do without my morning coffee. That equates to about 25,500 watts per month of saved energy. That’s 25.5 kwh!
You can check your own monthly utility bill to see how much you pay for a kwh of electricity and determine exactly how much this one simple act will save you. Of course if your coffee maker uses more electricity than mine does, you’ll save more. I have a really cheap drip coffee maker, and I doubt any models use less electricity.
The same article that mentions using a carafe speaks of numerous other power saving ideas. Some were really simple, and some not so simple. You can give it a full read at: http://www.mymilescity.com/solar_wind_power/free-ways-to-save-energy-2.htm. All of the suggestions are cost free – something I really appreciate. This also means I don’t have to compute a payback time on something, such as an energy efficient refrigerator or freezer. Not that such things are bad, but who can afford to go out and spend $600 to save $50 a year?
One of the great things about saving on your power bill is ‘instant gratification.’ You don’t have to wait for years, or even months to see the difference – and pocket the difference. You start saving money in the first month, and it’s something you can see, measure and appreciate.
Right now, saving power is something we get to choose to do, but with increased power consumption and a weakening power grid, it may soon become something we are forced to do. Maybe if we all start saving now, that day will never come.
And don’t forget that saving power is also good for the environment!
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