My Top Five tips for lowering an Electric Bill

I write this now, coming from about 4 months, give or take, experience now at reducing our electricity bill each month.
Energy here in Fairbanks, Alaska is expensive.  In fact per the US Energy Information Administration only a few other states are higher.  In case you're curious, Hawaii is the most expensive with New York and Connecticut following.  We're number four on this list.  Unfortunately for us here in the Golden Heart City though, we have a nasty little surcharge added onto our bill due to a legal issue that our Electricity company had some time ago, so it pushes that cost per kWh up around an extra .9 cents.  That doesn't seem like a lot but when you multiply that times 400, 500 or 800 kWh. It adds up.
The most important thing one has to keep in mind when trying to lower an electric bill is, while keeping an eye on your cost per month, you really want to look at your total kWh usage per month.
If you do this you will be able to dissect the appliances and electronic devices that hit your bill the hardest.
I have found a really neat site here that will actually break down the average monthly cost per appliance or electronic device.  The trick here is balancing your savings with your own personal quality of life.  Some appliances we unplug when not in use because its not something we use a lot and its easy enough to unplug. Others are plugged in behind a heavy piece of furniture, or they have built in clocks which makes it a hassle to unplug.  This means lost time which is also important to us.  It's all about balance.
Now, if you've read my previous blogs on saving money on our electricity bill, I tried also a few other tricks. I knew that some of my bigger appliances took more energy but what about the smaller ones?  What about the surge protector that I plug our laptops in to? Or how about night lights, or fish tanks?
So, a while ago I purchased a Belkin Conserve Insight Monitor which which I wrote about here.
I plugged this in all over my house and I would let it sit for at least a week to get a good idea of the true cost of that item.
If I found that item had an over the top cost, then I worked to lower the cost of it.  This is not an overnight, rapid process.  This, like a diet or lifestyle change, takes time.
So, here it goes.  My own top five tips.  These are things that I have tried so I know they worked for us.  I will not include tips that include hot water heaters or air conditioners like many energy blogs do because we don't have that issue here.

1. Start first by looking at your past electricity bills.  Get a good idea of how much energy you and your family actually use.  The US Energy Information Administration reported that in 2012 the average US family used 903 kWhs per month.  This is where it gets really personal, because each of us are different and we all have different needs.  This is why its important you get really familiar with your average kWh usage and your regions cost per kWh.  
2. Next, start determining which appliances, which items in your house use a lot of power.  For us that meant our freezer, our heater in our garage, our oven, our fridge, our dishwasher and our clothes dryer.    
• Freezer is now on a timer.  At night it turns off and it is programmed to turn back on at 9a.  During the summer months that might be switched to 5am or 6am if I find that the food is starting to thaw.  
• Our heater in our garage uses a fan to distribute the heat so now, unless its severely cold out (talking in the negative 30's and beyond) we keep it off. 
• Oven.  We still bake our own bread, believe it or not!  The cost of our bread is much, much cheaper than if we were to purchase artisan bread, sourdough bread, English muffins and the like at the store.  Now I just make sure I use my oven wisely.  If I am making bread that day I plan to also make some other baked dish as well or I just bake a lot of bread that day.  I also have invested a while ago in stone baking sheets and cast iron pans.  These all retain heat for a while after.  This means I can turn off the oven 5 to 10 minutes early if baking dinner, or I can turn off the stove top just a bit earlier as the frying pan will stay warm long enough to finish cooking whatever it is I'm frying.  
• Our fridge, unfortunately, is hard to control. I did purchase three LED appliance lights. We have seen a slight difference in cost but I'm not certain if the cost of the lights will actually save us more in the long run.  In the meantime I have the Belkin Conserve Monitor plugged into our fridge.  This allows me to watch the cost of fridge closely.  Our fridge is poorly designed so when the refridgerator door is opened and then closed the freezer pops open.  And sometimes stays open.  Many times, coming home from work, I have noticed the monthly cost of our fridge has gone up and upon a closer look I notice the freezer was left open. All day long.  This just simply keeps us aware.  I would love to put my fridge on a timer but so far, our attempts at this have been unsuccessful.  
• Dishwasher.  While we try to conserve dishes, watch how much we use, we don't go overboard.  I just simply have turned off the heating cycle on our dishwasher.  While I do like the heat that, I feel, kills any germs or other nasties that might be lurking on my plates, silverware or cups, I don't really feel like paying extra just to appease my own uneasiness about possible contagions in the dishwasher.  
• The clothes dryer is one of any homes BIGGEST energy draws.  It takes a lot of power to heat that machine, keep it heated, and toss the clothes.  So our solution?  We have a drying rack that we first transfer our clothes to after being washed. We allow them to air dry for about four to 8 hours, then we throw the now mostly dry clothes into the dryer for 10 minutes.  This means that now we are using the dryer for about 30 to 40 minutes per week (10 minutes per load, 3 to 4 loads per week) rather than 180 minutes per week. 
3. Start looking closely at your electronics.  These are stealthy in their energy consumption.  TV's, DVD players, DVRs, computers, printers, laptops, Playstations, Wii's, etc etc.  These all consume power, even though you might not even be using it!  We have everything in our entertainment center on a surge protector that kills the power to everything when the tv is turned off.  Our laptops now are attached to a surge protector with a remote control.  When we are all done using our laptops, we turn off the surge protector which then kills any power to the items plugged in there.  For our phones and kindles, I have approached this two ways now.  First, I have all our kindle charging cords connected to wall through a Belkin Conserve socket.  This allows me to control when this is drawing power by a simple button on the top of the plug.  Unfortunately, kindle chargers draw a small amount of power, even when not in use, so this kills this. I have all of our conserve sockets set to 3 hours as usually this is a good enough time to charge whatever is plugged in there. I have recently gone one step further and invested in a neat little gadget called a Newtrent Battery pack. This is charged via USB cable to a computer.  So now, along with any kindles, I charge this while I am sitting at work.  Now, in all honesty, is this really saving us massive amounts of money each month? No.  But, like my son likes to say "a little bit adds up to a lot"        and for $37.95 its not too much of a hit in the wallet.  Plus we have the convenience now of charging our electronics when we're out and about, traveling or if we lose power for an extended period of time.  For our big computer in our study, we have everything attached to a surge protector.  When not in use, we just flip the switch and turn it all off.  Believe it or not, a shredder draws a significant amount of energy when plugged in and not in use.  It makes no sense, in my opinion, to pay for something I am not using.  So it's all turned off via surge protectors.  
4. At this point, you should expect that you've been watching your energy consumption for at least two months, maybe more, maybe less.  It just depends on how much time and energy (yes, excuse the pun) you have spent on all of this.  Now you should start looking at your lights in your house.  Of course, everyone knows you shouldn't leave lights on when in a room but once you get past that you can start watching daily which lights are used most often.  For us, this means our laundry room, our kitchen, our dining room, bedrooms and bathrooms.  A few months ago we bit the bullet and started investing in more LED lights.  We do have a few CFLs but we only use those in areas where our use of lights is sporadic.  We are currently in the process of switching our bathroom globe light bulbs into LED bulbs instead.  Like with my fridge, I'm not certain yet if the extra cost of these lights will save us in the long run.  This I feel, we will not see a true difference until we hit the late Autumn and Winter months and then at that point I might be able to say "yeah, they're worth it" 
5. Other lighting ideas.  Rather than turning on a switch each time you enter or exit a room, perhaps contemplate placing motion sensor night lights in bathrooms, hallways, garages, etc.  These barely take any energy and on top of that, they shut off when it hasn't seen anything moving in 5 minutes.  These are a tad bit expensive but if bought in small bunches of 2 or 3 at a time, it can become affordable. We have these scattered all throughout our house, with several even in our garage.  This way we do not have to actually switch on a light as the night lights are bright enough to illuminate a dark garage or hallway.  

So, that's it. When we first moved back into our home, our usage was 1,427 kWh which cost us $299.  From there, it has gone down, each month.  For the month of April, which by the way after looking at our electricity bills from several years ago looks to always be the lowest usage month for us, we were charged for 446 kWhs. Total cost? $102.  Pretty impressive, at least to me.  

Please follow me at my new site Bells of the North Homestead.  All future articles will be posted there where I will also have much more new content.  Hope to see you soon!