Obviously, the amount of electricity you consume directly impacts your monthly expenditures on electricity.  The more you use, the more your bill will be.  Conversely, the less you use, the less your bill will be.  In high-consumption months, the majority of the electricity usage increase (at least in this area and climate) has to do with the air conditioners running more.  The majority of this writing as it relates to energy efficiency ultimately has to do with running the air conditioners less and making them more efficient when they are running.  But there are other things in the home that do consume electricity, and this section deals with that.

So I started researching and looking for ways to reduce my overall electrical consumption that doesn't deal directly with the air conditioners.  A more complete breakdown of the items I've either undertaken or will undertake are contained in other pages within this site - HVAC equipment, sealing, attic efficiency, etc.  What I want to touch on here relates more to items that consume electricity (with the exception of the air conditioner units).  In particular, I'll touch on things like appliances, computers, and light bulbs.

Air Conditioning, Thermostats, and Fans

I cover the equipment side of this in detail in the HVAC Equipment article.  What I want to mention here is how you can reduce the actual utilization of the equipment as it relates to temperature and thermostat settings.  Studies have shown that for each degree you increase the setting on your thermostat, you can reduce your electric bill by 3% - 5%.  So if you keep your thermostat set at 75, try raising it to 76 or 77.

Another item:  fans.  Use floor fans or ceiling fans or the like.  They use a lot less energy than the air conditioning equipment and will allow you to remain comfortable at a higher thermostat setting.  They do this by creating a wind chill effect - the breeze created by fans actually makes it feel cooler than it actually is.  Using this in combination with raising your thermostat can go a long way to reducing your electric bills. 

I have ceiling fans in every one of my rooms, and when I'm in them in the warmer months, the fans are running.  During the day, around 8:30 in the morning, I have my programmable thermostat downstairs set to allow the indoor temperature to go to 78.  Upstairs, I let the temp go up to 84 since I'm not up there hardly at all during the day.  About 6:00, I step the temperature down to 77 downstairs and begin cooling the upstairs - bringing it down to 78.  After dark, around 10:30 or so, the upstairs temperature goes down to 76 for sleeping - and the ceiling fan in the bedroom is going full blast.  I let the downstairs unit go to 82 so that it doesn't run much (if at all) at night.  When I leave town, I set the thermostats to hold (i.e. the programs do not run) at 81 or 82 to reduce the amount of time the units run when I'm not there to enjoy it.

Speaking of programmable thermostats, if you don't have one, get one.  They are well worth the investment and have come down in price significantly.  You can get one that is Energy Star rated for around $50.  By programming them for higher temps during the day while you're away, and then stepping down the temperature in the evening, you can really make an impact on your electricity bills.  Be sure to get one that is at least a 5-2, meaning that you can have a program for during the week while you're at work, and have a second program for when you're home on the weekend.  They also offer 7-day programmable thermostats, and if you need the kind of flexibility these offer (a program for each day of the week), they are worth the extra cost.

A final note on fans.  In general, you should only run the fans in a room when that room is occupied.  Fans do not lower the temperature in a room, they just make it feel a little cooler because of the breeze they create.  They do consume electricity and generate heat, so if you're not in the room.  Personally, I did violate this rule of thumb in the great room of my previou house and left those fans running pretty much all the time. The reason:  the room was quite large, and there were only two relatively small supply vents in there.  Also, the downstairs thermostat was in that, so I ran the fans to keep the air stirred up and circulated.  Did it make a difference?  I don't really know.  But it made me feel good, so I did it. :-)  But I definitely turned off the fans in the other rooms when I wasn't in there.

Appliances

If an appliance plugs into the wall, it will at some point consume electricity.  TVs, DVRs and audio/cable/satellite equipment, refrigerators and freezers, laundry equipment, and the like all fall under this category.  Well, I'm not turning off my satellie DVR receiver - gotta have my shows!  Can't unplug the fridge because I need to keep food!  One purchase I made recently has definitely helped, although I don't have the data to quantify exactly how much.  I purchased a Kenmore high efficiency front-loading washer and dryer.  While the washer is super-efficient in terms of water consumption, it definitely cut down on electricity usage.  The EnergyGuide sticker said it costs $10 per year to run that guy!  I guess that's all relative to the amount of clothes washing you do.  The major electricity saver, though, was the dryer.  Luckily my utility room here is plumbed with natural gas, so I purchased a natural gas dryer.  No more electric resistance heating element - and the unit plugs into a regular 120V wall outlet.  No more monster 220V plug required!  If you have gas plumbed into your utility room and are in the market for a new dryer, pay the $100 premium to get the gas dryer.  That up-charge for gas over electric will pay for itself in electricity savings in less than a year if you do an average number of laundry loads.

Water heaters and furnaces are another area where you can save money.  If you have natural gas at the house, it is likely you already have a natural gas water heater and furnace.  If you have electric, you should consider investigating whether or not natural gas is available in your neighborhood.  In one of my previous homes, it was not.  There was a gas main approximately 2,500 feet from the house, but it was going to cost about $3,000 to have the main extended, and another $1,500 or so to have a line run to the house and plumbed for the furnace and water heater.  Definitely not worth the investment at the time or for that house, so I replaced the old electric water heater - which was in need of replacement anyway - with a new, higher-effeciency electric water heater.  But if you have gas in your neighborhood already and plan to stay in the house for a while, you should weigh the costs and benefits of having it plumbed to your home if it doesn't have it.  Gas is more efficient at heating and cheaper to operate than electricity, and over time the units will pay for themselves.

Speaking of water heaters, I had to replace both of them in the big Katy house back in March of 2005.  They were original to the home (1982 vintage) and were full of sediment.  As I was shopping, I investigated the "new" tankless, on-demand water heaters.  In terms of efficiency, the units available at that time were somewhat more efficient than traditional storage-tank, standby heaters.  However, retrofitting the home was cost prohibitive.  The natural gas supply lines were not of a sufficient size, and the plumber would have had to build a mounting unit (as these units hang rather than stand) and alter the plumbing.  It also would have required changes to the exhaust flues, which would have resulted in roof work.  In all, changing the two water heaters to tankless would have cost around $9,000 in units and modifications.  Definitely not worth it since the efficiency isn't that much better than traditional heaters, so I opted to have traditional water heaters installed for $1,900.  If you're doing new construction, I believe the tankless heaters are definitely worth it in the long run. They are not that much more expensive than traditional heaters, and as efficiency improves, the payback will be worth it.  And another plus of the tankless heaters:  you never run out of hot water!

Although it is on the list at some point, it is not high on the list.  But at some point in the not too distant future I'm going to need to buy a new refrigerator.  The one I currently have is 14 years old at the time of this writing in early 2009.  According to Consumer Reports, you have to carefully balance purchase price with efficiency, because many of the higher-efficiency models will not pay for their extra cost during the life of the appliance in terms of energy savings over a somewhat less efficient, lower-cost model.  So watch out for that and do your homework before you make a purchase.

In the old Katy house, the kitchen cook top was electric.  The kitchen was plumbed for gas, but previous owners had chosen to install an electric cooktop.  Had I stayed in the house longer, it was my plan to replace the electric cooktop with a natural gas cooktop.  My new house is completely plumbed for natural gas.  In fact, every large heat-generating appliance (clothes dryer, water heater, furnaces, stove and oven) with the exception of one are all natural gas appliances.  The only electric resistance heating appliance in the entire house is the dishwasher - and if they offered one of those in natural gas, I'd buy one of them, too!  Obviously, I'm not including electric skillets, toasters, or other small cooking appliances.  Electric resistance heat is terribly inefficient and consumes large amounts of electricity, whereas you can generate far more heat for far less money with natural gas.

Computers

Being in the line of work that I'm in, I have a plethora of computers. Until recently, I had three server machines that ran 24/7 (they did stuff like serve up my previou web site and e-mail, among other things).  My laptop/docking station setup is on all the time when I'm home.  I also have a second laptop that is on a large part of the time, too.  I'm big on the convenience of not waiting for my computer to boot up - especailly with Vista - so my stuff is on pretty much all the time.  In all, that meant at one time I had at least 4 computers running all the time.

After absorbing the hurt of several high utility bills, I decided to get some hard data on exactly how much it was costing me to run my servers and other equipment.  I found this meter called WattsUp.  You plug it into the wall and then plug your appliance/device into this little gem.  It tells you in real time exactly how much power the attached device is consuming.  It tells you watts, KWh, amps and a whole lot of other things.  You can even plug in how much you're paying your utility per KWh for electricity and it will tell you in dollars and cents how much the attached device costs to operate, both in real time and average monthly cost.  Well, I plugged in my three servers and network gear (which are all attached to an UPS battery) and found that all that stuff was costing me $75 per month to operate!  Time to rethink my server setup!

My main home server at the time was running twin 1.2GHz AMD Athlon MP CPUs, 1GB RAM, and four 40GB hard drives. My other home server was running 3 hard drives, 768MB RAM and a single Pentium III 700MHz.  The third box was a work server with a single 1.8GHz Pentium IV, two 40GB hard drives and 512MB RAM.  I had some old hardware laying around that would work in my main home server, so I upgraded the CPUs to 1.53GHz AMD Athlon MP 1800+, went to 2GB RAM, and added 2 more 40GB drives (those I didn't have; had to buy those).  I also bought some new case cooling fans to help reduce the noise level.  Without getting too technical, I had enough resources on the upgraded server to consolidate my second home server in with my main server and turn that one off.  I still had some resources left over, so utilizing virtualization technology by VMWare, I was also able to consolidate the work box into a virtual machine running on the same hardware as my home stuff.  So I was able to turn off that box as well.  At that point, the monthly cost to operate my home server/network stuff just dropped from around $75/month down to about $20/month.  And I did it with an investment of about $450.  That works out to about a 9 month payback on that investment just in direct energy savings.  Not too shabby if you ask me!

At the time of this writing, I've upgraded my server equipment to a single Dell Optiplex machine.  It has a Pentium D dual core CPU, 4GB RAM and two 500GB hard drives in a RAID-1 mirror in case one of the drives fails.  With it, I'm able to have plenty of personal storage, serve up my weather station stuff to this website, and run a virtual machine server for my work.  It has definitely made an impact, as I'm down to only 2 machines running all the time when I'm home (and one when I'm away).

Something else:  any of your equipment that has power save mode - turn it on and use it!  Later Windows operating systems have the ability to send the monitor into power-save mode after so much inactivity.  I have my screen saver set to come on after 20 minutes of inactivity, and I send my monitors into power save after 30 minutes.

Finally, if you've got an older behemoth CRT monitor, consider replacing it with a flat panel LCD monitor.  Some of those CRTs can consume as much as two hundred watts of power, and they generate a tremendous amount of heat.  There are many benefits to the flat panels:  they provide better viewing quality, they're easier on your eyes, and they take up a lot less desktop real estate.  As far as power consumption, they use a lot less power and produce a lot less heat.  I have a 22" widescreen Dell flat panel, and it consumes only 35 watts - less than most light bulbs - and generates very little heat.  In fact, I currently use only flat panels.  So if you're in the market for a new computer and are thinking of keeping your old CRT around, if you can afford it, pony up for a flat panel.  They've come down in price substantially and are really affordable now - I only paid $240 for the big 22" widescreen I'm using now.  Over the life of the system, the energy savings alone will likely pay for the cost of the new flat panel.

Light Bulbs

I'm sure you've seen all the crazy new fluorescent light bulbs on the shelves in your favorite hardware store or supercenter.  You can also find them on the Internet - one of my "favorite" bulb sites is Bulbs.com because if it's fluorescent, they've got it - and their prices are good.  Anyway, what are those all about?  Here's a little skinny for you.

Compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) are meant to replace conventional incandescent bulbs.  They've vastly improved them in recent years, and although they are initially more expensive than the old bulbs, they are definitely worth the extra up-front cost, and all the positives associated with them will usually outweigh the very few negatives.  Why?

First, conventional bulbs just don't last very long, even the ones rated as "long life."  Most of them installed in higher-use fixtures die before they've been in use a year; some longer, some shorter.  Most of the CFL bulbs are rated for a minimum of 6 years of life, and some of them are rated for 10 years!

Secondly, CFLs consume considerably less power than incandescent bulbs.  A Lumen is the measure of visible light output by a bulb.  A typical 75 watt incandescent bulb will output 1,220 lumens.  In doing so, it consumes - yep - 75 watts of power.  An equivalent CFL bulb will produce 1,200 lumens - virtually the same visible light output as the 75 watt incandescent - but it will only consume 20 watts while it does it!  So you get equivalent light for pretty much one quarter of the electricity consumption.

Third, incandescent bulbs produce a lot of heat.  Have you ever tried unscrewing a regular bulb right after you turned off the light switch?  OUCH!  CFLs, while they can get warm, produce considerably less heat than incandescent bulbs.  This in turn equates to less heat that the air conditioner ultimately has to extract from the living space.

So how much money will switching to CFLs really save you?  Here's a breakdown of direct costs.  Note that this does not include the savings from the CFLs producing less heat than incandescent bulbs - these are direct acquisition and operating costs only.  The data in the following table is reproduced from Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings, Eighth Edition, 2003, by Alex Wilson, Jennifer Thorne, and John Morrill, ISBN 0-918249-46-5, page 151.

Table Assumptions: