Ed Cuts Electricity Use in Half

Gary,

Thanks for your unbelievable site. Here is a letter I wrote to my newspapers in town.

Thought you might like to read it.

Keep up the great work.

 

Ed

 

Good News: Average Family Cuts  Home Electric Usage in Half

 

Call me crazy but I have been anxiously waiting for my electric bill to arrive this month.

Why? Because I took the 20% challenge CL & P offered recently (use 10-20% less electricity and get that same credit

on your next bill) AND I took the Half Challenge on the website BuilditSolar.com. (cut your electric use by half)

Then I did something. I actually stopped moaning about the rates for 5 minutes and did something to reduce my electric usage. 

I  received my electric bill today and got the news.... I was nervous. It was like opening the scores to my college boards. The result? I cut my bill in half!!!! Yes!  Half!!!! All in the span of 2 months. Try it it yourself. It's easy.

For the month of July,  my  family used 1107 KWH (Kilowatt hours) and paid $204. Ouch!

Opening that bill was a painful experience. Then, this past month of August we used 601 KWH and

paid $115. Now I'm feeling good about that. Not good enough to stop moaning about the rates, but good enough

to slap my son five. He wouldn't let my wife open the bill until I came home. My 8 year old son is in this with me.

 

What did we do? What can you do? Something! Pick any one of these items below or go online and find others.

Do something... don't just sit there clicking the remote while the planet is melting.

Here's what we did. In July we had a home energy audit for $100 wherein they changed most of our incandescent lights to energy efficient fluorescent bulbs. Good deal! Plus they did  a  blower door test, weather stripped, sealed, changed all our faucets to low flow heads, and checked for air infiltration. They found that we have a low flow problem with the hot air return which can cause the furnace to use more oil. I gotta get that fixed before Winter.

In August I got busy. I vacuumed a decade of dust off my refrigerator coils, lowered my electric hot water heater by turning 2 screws, my wife and I started drying clothes using our new $60 clothesline instead of the electric dryer,

I began heating my water for  coffee in the microwave instead of the electric stove, I unplugged the microwave disengaging the power sucked up by a useless clock, and put the  TV, which has a remote, a  DVD (remote) the VCR, which has a clock, and the PS2 all on a power strip. Then I turned them all off when not in use. OFF! I said. 

I TURNED THEM OFF!!!!!!!!!  No more phantom power for me! Does it matter? An average home will use about 50 Watts per hour of phantom power. That's 8 Gigawatts on a National level, the size of 8 large power plants. I think it does matter.

And two other things: First I kept asking myself, "Do I need to turn this on?" and secondly I repeated the phrase "Please turn the light off." 

I guess our family effort worked. We cut our bill in half. Was it difficult? No. Did we spend  a lot of money? $100 bucks for the audit and $60 for the clothesline. We'll make that back in another month. 

I'm excited!  We cut our energy use in half. We are helping. We're saving money.

We are on our way now.

 

Please join us.

 

Edward