The difference in my home electric bill was....

[rtshinn]

Those who do not wish to pay a grand or so for a L2 charger should investigate www.EVSEUpgrade.com.  We upgraded the Toyota EVSE in August 2012 and never regretted it, especially now with two Plug-in vehicles in the household.

 

I check this place out every so often. They do not offer an upgrade for the C-Max Energi or Fusion Energi yet.

[shaggy314]

Austin, TX I pay about .08 actual or $.12 total with fees per kwh. I'm estimating about $30 higher electricity bill than last year, but saving $100 in gas, even with higher electric rates. I was around $130/month in gas to now $40 for the first 2 months.

[Energized]

Do you guys with the low rates have tiered rates? i.e. the more you use the more you pay per kWh?

[dlb92]

I have two tiers.. 8.9 cents below 1000Kwh 10.9 cents above 1000Kwh

[TX NRG]

9.1 cents effective rate for 1000-2000 kwh, about 8.7 cents above 2000 kwh. Slightly lower effective rate the more I use.

 

We are mostly deregulated and have retail electric provider competition here and can sign up for various time of use plans from different providers. Looking through what is out there, effective summer rates run about 6 cents off-peak (6pm-10am), 11 cents peak, for above 1000 kwh/mo.

[dlb92]

So I figured out how to charge my car for free*.

 

If I set both our computers to sleep instead of leaving them running 24/7, turn off the fans when we aren't in the house and I think I finally figured out how to turn off my motion sensor bathrooom fan that has been running 24/7 for 4 years straight that more than pays for the electricity to charge the car every day.

[larryh]

It now costs me more for electricity for both my computer and for my home theater system just in standby mode alone than it does to commute to work.  Something is wrong with this picture.  In sleep mode, the computer and home theater system each use about 150 watts.  Leaving them plugged in 24 hours a day, that amounts to 3.6 kWh each per day.   It takes about 4.2 kWh to charge my car each night for the commute to and from work.  The electric rate for the computer and home theater system is about $0.12 / kWh.  The electric rate for the charger is $0.0585 / kWh.  So it costs about $13 / month for for each the computer and the home theater system.  It costs me about $5.40 / month to commute to work. 

 

I think it is time to retire my old desktop computer and use a more efficient laptop.  The home theater system is going to be turned off.  The amplifier is what takes most of the power in standy mode.  It doesn't do much good to buy an efficient car to save in energy costs and then squander electricity pointlessly running things that do not need to be powered on.

Edited September 13, 2013 at 09:05 PM by larryh

[dlb92]

I'll have to check my home theater system.  It's new so I'm pretty confident it doesn't use that much.

 

I had my first electric bill today and it was $37 more than last year.

Edited September 13, 2013 at 10:58 PM by dlb92

[Russael]

150w in standby mode sounds like it's still on to me or something is wrong with the actual standby.  Most everything I find that has a 'sleep' or 'standby' mode uses 5w or less.  If your amplifier has an on/off switch, turn it off. :)

[larryh]

the manual states that the amplifier should enter standy mode and use less than 0.5 watts of power after 30 minutes without a signal.  I had to unplug it to measure the power.  Maybe I need to wait for 30 minutes afterwards for it to shut down.  The power strip/conditioner itself that I connect all the components to uses 40 watts of power even when I turn its power switch off.  That is excessive.

 

My desktop computer is over 10 years old.  It was designed for high performance and not energy efficiency. 

 

I just assumed that everything would enter standby mode and not use much power when I am not using it.  I guess I am going to have to monitor everything in the house and determine how much electricity everything is using.   150 watts of wasted power amounts to $160/year. 

Edited September 14, 2013 at 02:41 PM by larryh

[Russael]

If you were measuring your amplifier before it went in to standby, then yeah, I can see it using 150w since it's still on, even though it isn't playing anything.  I'm surprised it takes 30 minutes... my amplified subs go in to standby after 5 or 10 minutes.

 

Computers, unless you put them to sleep or hibernation mode (where it's off), still use quite a bit of power, even if you're not doing anything with it.  I know computers are pretty wasteful with energy if you leave them on all the time.  I built a low powered Intel Atom server which barely uses 100 watts total at full bore (with 3, 3TB hard drives in a RAID 5), but I even keep THAT off.  It does spin down the hard drives after a pre-determined amount of time to conserve more energy, but even so, it still consumes like 30 - 50 watts in that mode.  So, off it goes.

 

My power bill hovers around 70 - 90 a month and I've been looking for the parasidic draws that's causing my bill to be that high.  I don't have a kill-o-watt, but I want one.  I'd love to see what my fridge eats and my aquarium over a 24 hour period.