My electric bill was $27 last month!!! (221 kwh)
 

My electric bill was $27 last month! Peaked at $68 in January with electric heat! That's the month it went below 20F !!

Mods to my house include:
- insulated windows
- adding double walls to my bedroom (two layers of exterior wall!)
- six more inches of attic insulation
- replacing central gas heating with fanless electric room heaters
- replacing bulbs with CFLs
- ceiling fans in living room and bedroom
- this summer I hung shade cloth from the western eaves.

The shade cloth alone dropped the interior temperature from 80ish to below 75.

I am still using a gas water heater for $12/mo.

This is for a 1300 sq.ft. house!

The outside temperatures this year have ranged from 12F to 95F.

And I am adding more insulation to the attic this winter to try to knock another $20 off the heating bill. Last time, the 6 inches of insulation paid for itself in three months.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...p;d=1283762406

That's awesome, I have a few questions.

How much are you paying per kWh (and is there a monthly fee)?
Is it just you, or are there others in the house as well?
By electric room heating, do you mean oil column heaters, or heat pumps?

The basic fee is about $9.50
Just me
Fanless oil heaters for now

I like the electric carpet pad heaters, but the oil heaters are almost as efficient and cost much less. I also use an electric mattress heater.

With the room heaters, I primarily heat the bedroom suite. The rest of the house is heated mostly by heat lost from the bedroom.

My electricity usage was the same last summer, but with the shade cloth, the house is about 5 degrees F cooler.

I also keep the shower water in the tub so that its heat doesn't just get flushed during the winter, then flush the toilet with it.

More details on the double wall:

Besides doubling the attic insulation, I framed and insulated another wall right inside the existing wall, so there is:
wooden siding | fibreglass | drywall | fibreglass | drywall.

When it was 20F, the inner drywall was cold to touch, now it is just a bit cool. The whole wall is probably about a foot thick now. This is more effective than just one thick layer of fibreglass, and doesn't require any demolition. It has more "thermal mass" and is much quieter also.

I've thought about doing that, myself. How did you handle the windows?

I just built right around the windows. Now the sills are wider, that's all.

The wall is thick enough that you could install a second layer of windows for even better performance.

I also have panels of 1.5" R4.5 styrofoam cut to fit the windows for the really cold months. It is translucent so it still lets light in.

My highest electric bill ever was less than $45 (I'm 54 years old). My average electric bill the previous three years was about $18 a month, with $8.03 plus tax of that being a fixed monthly hookup charge. Rates are about $0.125/kWh in my area. So I was averaging about 90 kWh a month, or 1100 kWh a year.

January this year I finished having my house converted to run on solar photovoltaic power. To date, I'm generating over three times as much electricity as I'm using and selling the surplus back to the power company. More info on this system may be found at Stone Marmot goes solar.

My house is about 1100 sq-ft, of which 900 sq-ft is heated and cooled. I have over 30 years worth of mods, too many to list, to get the electric use this low. But some include:

Extensive effort in insulating
Ground water referenced (geothermal) heat pump
Solar attic fan
Awnings or roll down shutters on all windows (partly for hurricane protection)
Compact fluorescent lights
Extensive effort in eliminating phantom loads
Careful appliance choice (not just Energy Star, but the lowest energy use on the market)

Some other articles on the above website discuss some of these things.

And I'm still making mods (presently fixing some weak spots in the insulation and sealing my ductwork).

I forgot to list the most important reason for my low electric bills: I've been single my whole life and living by myself for over 30 years.

I've been doing that for a few years now too. On several of the windows I "framed" the perimeter of the foam plug with clear shipping tape so I could install/remove them daily without dislodging hundreds of little styrofoam balls every time. In spite of the translucence, the plugs turn rooms into black holes during the day so I like to take some of them out until dusk.

Edit: Forgot to mention I'd painted the ones that I leave in black on the outer surface in a feeble attempt to still capture some solar energy when they're in.

Unfortunately I have no good way to quantify any energy savings there may be.

BTW I went on a phantom load reduction campaign years ago and have been averaging about 120 kwh/month since (down from my old average of 330 kwh/mo). This is in a full-size house with it's own well, an old energy hog fridge, and many other modern conveniences. Oh, and it's up in the frozen north.

The local electric utility keeps raising the monthly fees so the actual electricity portion of my bills is the smallest part of the bill now. :mad: Now dreaming of going off the grid and telling them to stuff it...

I see that you've also painted your roof and siding white.

You're doing better than me ($45.76 last month), but I have electric hot water (solar someday...) and my water is off a well & the pump runs on electricity.

I re-framed the walls on my place too (well, I'm still in the process, but have almost all the living area done), but I took the opposite approach: The new frame's on the outside, and supports 2" styrofoam insulation with new siding over it (the old siding needed replacing anyway), and in the process replaced all the old single-pane windows.

WOW! I see I have a long ways to go. Just got the $195 electric/water bill for Aug(Two window air conditioners will kill you when it's 98F outside). I've been reglazing the single pane windows, added extra insulation to my attic knee wall, and plan to seal the windows with plastic seeing as it's starting to get cold.

My electric last month was $11.66. I am, of course, single.:)

Mine was 70$, but it's split 5 ways. We used roughly 750kwh and that's with my roommates loving freezing themselves out with window air conditioners.

Wow, everyone's utility bills are sooooo low. My last three Electric/Gas bills were over $360/mo. In fact, my last bill (for August) was about $550! I do live in a fairly warm area (Stockton, CA) but the big thing is that my wife runs our whole house at 70deg F all the time. Also, we have multiple computers always on, a hot tub, TVs, and tons of lights. My house is 2700sqft so I would expect a somewhat high bill but now I am really jealous. I will have to look into this a bit and see if there is some 'engineered' method I can use to help reduce our bill without losing any creature comforts.

There's a lot you can do. Turn down the brightness on the TV's, draw the shades to compensate. Use a dark curtain during summer and a white, thermal curtain during winter to keep HVAC loads down. Put certain things on timers, unplug other things and throw them out (incandescent and halogen lamps, for a start). Make sure the house is sealed up tight against air leaks...

Heck, why not have a professional do an energy audit? It looks like it could pay for itself in a month in your case.

Also, Ecofriendly DIY Home Projects .

With computers, if you're not using them, put them in Standby (also called Sleep), that way they use almost as little power as being off while still being able to be used within a couple of seconds. For things that are accessed over the network, try to keep them all on one computer.

A laptop left on with the monitor off uses about 15-25 watts, monitor on about 20-30W. In sleep it's 2-5W.

A desktop with monitor off uses about 75-100W, monitor on 100-150W. In sleep it's usually 5-20W (desktop power supplies use heaps doing nothing, it's the same when they are off).

Cycleguy: Why not turn the computers off when you're not using them? (And likewise with lights, tvs, etc.) Not only does it save money on power (and wear, though that's not really a factor these days), it reduces your exposure to people who might try to hack into your system.

Also, Stockton would seem like a pretty good location for a solar hot tub system.

Well the computers all have some purpose which is why they are running. I do leave all of the monitors off unless I am sitting at one of them, but I usually just remote into them. I do think I should look into building up a low power server instead of using the desktops that I currently have set up, though. Also, my wife works from home as an online instructor so she is always on at least one computer (usually while she is watching TV with the kids). I did install a few cfls, but we still have a lot of other bulbs in hard-to-reach spots. I might go buy one of those kill-a-watt devices so I can physically track down our problem devices. All in all, though, my wife will never 'work' at saving energy. She likes the comforts she has and won't be parting with them anytime soon. I don't mind. I just didn't realize that a utility bill could be so low as many of you have experienced.

I've had a lot of fun with mine.

For tips on building a low power server, see silentpcreview.com. Also consider an old laptop, or a PC like this undervolted 760g system:

Robertsmalls' 23W (at idle) computer - EcoRenovator

I would love to own a home and attempt to reduce electricity usage to those levels. I am renting a 3000sq ft home built in 1920. We use at minimum 2000kw/h a month and the highest was 3000. That bill was $580 for the electricity. Hoping to buy soon, but that depends on if I leave for deployment or not. Love the military, never know when your coming or going until the last minute.

I`m doing pretty well on electricity, about 150KWh per month. Ever since I got this laptop I haven`t been using my other computers much, and with this ULV Pentium M CPU the power consumption is very low. There is a switch, access point, modem, and another Pentium M -based mini-ITX PC that run all the time. And a silly cable box, which I tried unplugging when I wasn`t watching TV but it would take quite some time to "reboot" when I did need it, and after a short while it stopped working entirely. So after I went and got a replacement I decided to let that one alone. Lighting is mostly CFLs.

There is of course a refrigerator, which is probably responsible for a good portion of the electricity usage. I heard that top-opening units are more efficient, since all the cold air doesn`t roll out when the door is opened. But I just bought a new refrigerator of the usual type about two years ago so I`m not itching to replace it right away.

So during June-Sept. I had the lowest bills, of about $50, with $23 of that being fixed delivery charges.

In Dec.-Feb. the bill spikes to about $170 because of heating (and that is with the thermostat set to 64 F). I have a 93% eff. natural gas furnace, but insulation was sparse (I guess heating was cheap back in the `50s). I just finished adding some insulation throughout my attic so hopefully the cost will improve this winter.

I don't have cable. I've got DSL and I turn off the modem when I'm not using it. I've been doing this for at least three years without any problems. If I turn the modem on just before I turn the computer on, the modem reboots by the time the computer is finished powering up.

Mine's ~30KWh/mo.

A clear vinyl shower curtain, cut in to 4" wide strips, will keep most of the cold air in when you open the door. Downside: mine always has a thin film of condensation which makes it a little harder to see what's in the fridge. Your wife wouldn't approve.

I can't believe how low some of your electricity usage is...30kwh/month?

I think that my cable modem/wireless router/computer uses that much. Only need them for a couple of hours a day so i'd love to turn them off for most of the day but the last time I tried that my better half went insane.

Last year my family of three used 17000 kwh and this year we're on track for 15000 kwh so I am making progress, swimming pool and brutal Phoenix summers are holding me back.:)

No, my fridge is 30KWh/mo. My electricity is more like 100KWh/mo.

100 kwh/mo is pretty good. Is your house all electric?

Mine is all electric and I was typically averaging about 90 kwh/mo. It is hard to tell this year since I converted to solar power. I'm generating much more power than I use and solar power is offsetting most all my daytime use, so my meter is basically just indicating my nighttime use plus the rare times when I'm using more during the daytime than I'm generating, like when it is raining or I'm running my clothes dryer.

Too bad more don't have such low power use. I feel most of the electricity used in this country is simply wasted due to ignorance or laziness. I feel most households could cut their electric use in half with negligible change to lifestyles or comfort if they just put a little effort into it. But that is not going to happen unless rates dramatically rise.

how much did it cost to do that sid?

I just completed a survey from the electric COOP about usage patterns and trends. It will be very interesting to see if I hear back from them heh heh.

I was reading online about drain water heaters... where they capture the heat of the drainwater leaving your house, and shove that heat back into the waterheater...

Pretty cool stuff for saving money. Also there are a lot of solar water heaters that function pretty well...

How much did it cost to do what? The solar photovoltaic installation cost less than $26,000. 30% I get back from the feds as a tax credit. I'm in line to get another $8000 back from the state of Florida, if they ever get more funding for their solar incentive program. More about my system can be found here.

My system includes battery backup, which accounts for about $8000 of that cost. We have hurricanes here, so I figure this is better in the long run than a backup generator.

How much did it cost to get my electric bill so low before adding solar power? I don't know. Like getting good gas mileage, the majority comes from educating the operator and good habits.

How much did what cost?

The solar installation cost less than $26,000. Details may be found here.

How much did it cost to get my electric bill so low? I don't know. Like getting good automobile fuel economy, most of it is due to educating the operator and good habits.

That's interesting. This site locked up on my computer on my attempts to send both of the above posts. I didn't think either got sent. So I gave up.

Was the solar panel set worth it?

The cost is what kept me from doing the same thing. Here in Ohio, not the kind of Sun you get in Fl., so solar & wind might make it better for me. I got a quote for 30K, so if I live for another 25 years I wouldn't get that back in savings. I can't wait for the price of this technology to be more affordable.

So what was used to make the bill cost $27?

Dave

We're settling into a home built between 1920 and 1954 in several phases. When we moved in it was a thin-skinned heat loss nightmare, but despite a lot of work, we still have a long way to go. So far we replaced the electric baseboards with a 91% efficient boiler and tankless hot water heater with a mixture of hot water baseboards and kick heaters (blower through radiator coils). We've replaced the worst door and window, but still have about a dozen single-pane windows to replace and one more door. We had 1.5" of vermiculite and 5-6" of very compacted fiberglass in the attic, but had R60 fiberglass blown in. Now we're building an insulated wall in the garage to separate the car portion from storage and hold more heat under the house, where it's currently leaking out the ancient garage doors. Someday we'll replace the garage doors with insulated ones, but at $1,200 a piece, the wall, at just $450 was a much better way to seal off the are under the house (most of the space over the garage/basement is deck, only a small portion is under the house).

It's a labor of love as we watch the transition. Last month was $69 combined, gas and electric and I expect the colder months will work the bills into the $150 range until we can replace the windows and insulate the walls in one room (all are insulated but one room that was either the first or last piece built). I suspect we'll get it to about $100 a month with those steps, but at a annual high of 250kwh, I think doing solar would be reasonably cheap. Also, we're considering adding a wood stove, which would all but eliminate our need for heat. We'll see; the last six months have been a mix of planned improvements and putting out spot fires. Fortunately with the new boiler and tankless system, the biggest expenses are behind us, but with these older places, you just never know what's next.

We installed our first PV panels around 1982 or so, when the dollar was worth a lot more and PVs were a lot more expensive, so that the effective cost was a LOT higher than it is now. And the utility charged 3 cents a kw-hr back then, too. They still work fine, should continue for decades, and have paid for themselves in the value of energy produced. If you wait until they are as cheap as they are going to get, you will wait forever, and then discover that you missed the opportunity. The way prices are going now, and rebates etc are dropping, it is a good time to get started today.

In what sense?

I feel it was worth doing. It makes my comfort less dependent upon the government, power company, the weather, terrorists, etc.

Will I ever get my money back in my lifetime? At today's costs, probably not. But it is virtually guaranteed that electricity costs will go up in the future.

Also, the cheapest solution is not always the best. It would be cheapest to dump our household sewage into the local stream or the street gutter. But past experience has shown us that these seemingly cheap solutions usually lead to major problems later. Many of us just choose to ignore the problems being caused by our cheap solutions to obtaining energy and just hope the nasty consequences won't occur in our lifetimes or pretend that nature will somehow clean it up. Nature could clean it up when there were less than 50 million of us. With over 7 billion and counting, things are getting pretty iffy.

I also feel the grid is going to be less reliable in the future. 30 years ago, there was typically about 18 to 20 % margin between electricity demand and supply, both generation and transmission. Now, most areas of the US have less than 10% margin, with some areas, like California, having much less than 5% margin, particularly in transmission. We are becoming more and more vulnerable to upsets in the system, from weather, breakdowns, whatever.

I live in south Florida
My house is painted white and I have a very light color roof.
Attic Iinsulation.
Also several large shade trees on the southern exposure.
Upgraded my AC, (died after 15 years) that took another chunk out of my FPL bill. But less is better.
So I've been looking at solar attic fans. Is yours quiet? Is it temperature controlled? Is your roof mount or gable mounted? Any thing in particular to look for? Thanks

Mine is a roof mount, since I have a hip roof with no gables. There is no temperature control, though I have modified mine with a remote on/off switch which I can control from inside the house so I can turn it off in the winter. You can't hear it operate unless you are within about six feet of it either on the roof or up in the attic. It definitely can't be heard inside the house.

This is my second solar powered attic fan and the solar panel included with both was a little on the weak side (both 10 W). I added a bigger panel with my previous fan and it ran much faster with much more airflow. I'll probably eventually do that with this fan, also. They are usually designed to handle as much as 36 Vdc.

I removed my first when I had my cement tile roof replaced (after 44 years). I still have my first fan and will probably add it to my roof this coming spring.