Tag: saving on electricity and gas

The PSC who regulates our electric and gas company has passed this 3 year rate plan through just in time for the height of the heating season. The media is saying the average residential customer’s bill will go up by $200. this winter. We are a regular residential customer. There is no time of use here. However we are not an average customer. We always are above average no matter how hard I try to conserve.

Notice the increase in therm prices which is our natural gas. If you use under 50 therms, the increase will be 2.298 cents per therm. However if you use over that, those therms will increase by 3.754 cents per therm. They are even increasing our gas and electric meter charges( which is a set charge just for having their meter on your house) by $ 2.00 a month for each. With the winters here, no one will be under 50 therms. I read my meters yesterday and submitted them for our November bill and we are over the 50 therms already and it hasn’t even been that cold.

The company says they needed the rate increases because of their increases and to recover revenue shortfalls for the period May 1, 2023 to November 1, 2023. Is that company mismanagement or just the fact that people cut the amount of power they used from May to November? It seems like we can’t win but I will continue to try.

An average electric customer will have their bill go up by $9.94 per month. Again we are not average no matter how hard we try.

So we need to make some drastic changes starting with not using our gas stove unless we cook a large turkey or a number of turkey breasts at once. I will only bake bread in my bread maker. When I do roast turkeys, the entire oven will be used to do other things with them. I will not use the gas cook top if I can use a small electric appliance like my air fryer, crock pot, instant pot, electric fry pan, toaster oven, or microwave, etc.

I am trying to change my sleep patterns. I usually go to bed by 8 PM unless we have a night football game or we are out somewhere. Most of the time, I get up at 4AM. That has to stop so that I can only be up during daylight hours. I would have to use a light in the kitchen until sunrise which would be about 3 hours after I get up. Last night I went to bed at 10 PM and slept until 7AM this morning. I will continue to use this sleep pattern. It was still a little dark when I got up but I only turned on the light on the stove which was enough to get my coffee until it turned light outside. Then I opened the curtains on the sunny side of the house. Hubby does not go to bed until 11PM and sleeps to 9 or 10AM so he is always getting up in the daylight.

My other idea is to use our emergency lantern in the kitchen if it is still dark for a little bit. It will light the entire room and uses rechargeable batteries that I already have. We also have a lot of regular batteries in case of a power outage.

At night we only keep one LED light on in the room we are in. We do keep outside lights on for security reasons but they are all LED’s.

We have to decide to only use one outside door all winter. Since the garage stays warmer than the outside, I think we will use that door that comes into the house. Our garage door opener uses electricity but that is minimal compared to the cost of heat. The front door lets all the cold and wind in. We will only use that if company comes. We will try to keep our going out to a minimum over this winter. The front door and breakfast room door will have cloth snakes in front of the bottoms to keep drafts out.

We keep our heat at 70 during the daytime because Hubby is always cold. I am going to talk to him about pushing it down a degree or two. Our heat is set to go down at 9PM each night to 64. At 7AM, it comes back up to 68 and at 9AM, it goes to 70. Perhaps he would be willing to go down to 69 and then 68 to see if his body adjusts to it. But even with the heat at 70, he is wearing a jacket so I don’t know if that would work for him. We are warm enough at night because we have flannel sheets and two blankets on our beds.

I want to be more conscious about how much hot water we use also. We do have a tankless hot water heater but it is run by natural gas. So if I can use cold water instead of hot, I will. We already use cold to wash clothes and for cleaning. But there must be more things I can do that would use cold. Any ideas?

I need another cup of coffee so I will end this here. I plan on talking more on this topic this week so stay tuned.

I forgot to tell you that we have a King size bed so we have a dual control electric blanket. I can set my side independently from Hubby’s. While I don’t sleep with my side on all night, Hubby does.

We also had a humidifier installed on our furnace. Humidified air feels warmer. We change the filter on that once a season. It does not get very dirty. However, we check our furnace filter on the first of every month. If it is dirty, it gets changed. We want to keep our furnace working at top efficiency.

We have our furnace checked by a professional every Fall. When we called for an appointment this Fall, we had to wait over 6 weeks. Seems everyone is getting their furnaces checked this year since there is the threat of a “dark cold winter”. So it is not being checked until after Thanksgiving.

Every morning once the sun comes up, I open the window treatments on the sunny side of the house to let the sun help with the heating. I open and close them all day as the sun moves. We had these custom window treatments made for our home when we moved in. They are these:

https://www.hunterdouglas.com/energy-efficiency

They have saved us a lot of money since we have a lot of large windows.

The minute it gets dark, I make sure that they are all down to help keep the cold out at night.

We do not turn on lights when it is light outside. The only exception is if we have a very dreary day outside. But then we only use one light in the room or rooms that we are in. We leave that room, we turn it off. That is the rule here. I have been trying to teach my grandson this. When he stays he leaves lights on all over the place.

We have a window in our master bath which gives plenty of light to take showers and even do my makeup. So that light is only used after dark too.

We never leave the TV’s on when we are not using them. I watch You Tube more than anything else. I make sure not to turn on the cable box when I am watching. Those boxes draw a lot of power. If you are not watching cable TV, you do not need the box on.

Hubby uses the DVR to record all of his shows so that he can marathon binge watch them at one time. He hates commercials and so do I. This way he can fast forward through them. This also saves energy because the TV is not on as long.

We looked for leaky windows and doors in September before we turned the heat on. We had a huge gap under the front door. You should have seen the light it was letting in. Hubby fixed that by adjusting the door sweep. Our windows were good.

I don’t go out a lot in the winter. I do not like driving in snow. Since I run most of the errands, the outside doors don’t get opened much. That is a good thing since the hot air in the house just pours out when we do. I have my dentist and doctor appointments finally set up to avoid winter. I am very happy about that.

I don’t sleep well some nights. I make sure there are plenty of large throws in the great room to keep warm with if I am up when it is 64 in here. I don’t want to have to turn the heat up.

The other large expense is the heating of water in your home. We had an on demand tankless water heater installed when we built our home. It only heats the water when we turn on the tap. It takes a bit sometimes to get hot depending on where in the house I am using water. But I collect the cold water in a large pot to use during the day while the water is heating up. We have saved so much money by having this and not having to keep a very large tank of water hot all day. The heater is getting older now and we might have to replace it soon. But we will replace it with another one because of the energy savings.

I take navy showers so as to not have to use so much hot water as it would use if I just let it run. I air dry my hair. My blow dryer gets used more to defrost my chest freezer than to dry my hair.

I try to heat water in the microwave rather than on the stove. I cook the little bit of spaghetti we use around here in the microwave.

We use stainless travel mugs for our coffee in the morning so that it stays nice and hot and we don’t have to reheat it.

I have always had chest freezers over the years. They are more energy efficient than the stand up freezers. I have an organization plan so that I can find things easily.

Don’t stand there in front of your open refrigerator and decide what to have for dinner. Plan before you open the door. Then get in and get out!

Also as a reminder, if you are going away for Thanksgiving, turn your heat down but not so low that your pipes freeze.

I have been sitting here writing to all of you as I listen to my furnace running. It is 37 degrees outside. The bills are going to be high. I will let you all know how much my bill is when I get it next week. I am hoping not too bad since we saved energy over the month. Time will tell.

These are all of the things that I can think of right now. I would be happy if you have others that you could share with us. It helps others and me too.