OT....Power draw of a home PC ?....OT

[Reg Evans]

I got a very large power bill this month and am trying to shrink that down this month. I went on Pacific Gas and Electrics web site and took an energy audit of my house. In every category but one they had no suggestions. Their only suggestion was to turn off my computer at night. They said I could save about $35 per month. Can this be true? I've been leaving it on standby for years.

[Norm's Coupe]

I guess the amount of savings would depend on the rate charged by each different electric company over the US. But.........you would save money by turning it and the monitor off overnight. There is no real need to leave it on. I've always turned ours off when leaving to go somewhere, and overnight.

It's also a safety issue. Several years back David Maxwell had his computer catch on fire while he was using it. So...........if you're not around, you wouldn't be able to put the fire out, if it did catch fire.

[greg g]

Not just the computer...

Garage Door opener reciever on all the time

TV on all the time

Cable reciever on all the time

DVD etc. on all the time

Computer printer

cordless phone chargers

cell phone chargers

cordless tool chargers

security systems

coffee pot

microwave ovens, every item with a digital clock

landscape lighting timers, irragation timers, motion detector lights

cordless groming items like electric shavers, curling irons, electric toothbrushes

electric meters, gas meters, water meters with remote reading transponders

anything with a remote control

I have been told to leave mine on (computer) as it takes less energy and there is less stress on the components than shutting down ad restarting all the time.

Try this, unplug everything you can and shut off all the lights. You should be drawing no current, but if you watch your meter the wheel is still spining.

[theDyls3]

It used to be true that repeatedly turning your computer off and on would damage the hard drive (thus the reason most businesses would leave them on), but the technology has gotten better and now most hard drives can handles 10's of thousands of boot ups with out problems. So, yes, to save energy you should turn your computer off when your not using it, or at least hibernate it.

A couple of other relatively painless ways of saving electricity:

Change your incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent ones.

Insulate your water heater (assuming it's electric:) )

As Greg said, unplug items that aren't in use.

You mentioned PG&E, if you live in Oregon you can get the Energy Trust to send an inspector out to your house and they'll tell you all the ways you can be saving energy and even give you some incentives to do so.

Though, if you really want to make sure your not using electricity when you leave the house, you can always just trip your master breaker.

[TodFitch]

Depends on the computer. A typical short tower machine of a few years back probably draws 75 to 150 watts. If you have an old CRT monitor that will probably draw between 75 and 500 watts depending on size.

The "server" I run at home is a Mac Mini that I picked because it draws about 25 watts and I leave the monitor on it turned off. There was noticeable decrease in electrical bills when I swapped out the old server for the Mini because that runs 24x7.

A few years back I was looking into photovoltaic solar panels. At that time it turns out that the cost/watt was greater, even with tax incentives, than replacing incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. So as bulbs burned out I replaced them with the CF bulbs. That has made a difference.

I noticed a bunch of heat (=wasted energy) in the cabinet that houses the TV receiver, DVD player and, formerly, the satellite receiver. I put the TV and everything in that cabinet onto a switchable plug strip and leave everything off when we aren't actually using it. That made a big difference in the electrical usage.

[claybill]

wow! i thought all that small digital stuff, like clocks and tuners for dish and dvds was negligable usage...would i save a dollar a week, or a dollar a month? my bill shot up 50. per winter month due to heater/furnace fan, i am thinking,

bill

[Reg Evans]

My 4 year old Gateway says it draws 105 amps max and the flat screen monitor says 1.6 amps.

I too over time have replaced all my incandescent bulbs with the mini florescent ones. 2 months ago I turned off the forced air furnace and burned wood for heat, cut the power to my hot tub,unplugged a small garage refer,neon garage clock,and cut way back on what lighting we do use. Over the last 2 months my bill after all these cuts has averaged $242 for electric only.

So I'm curious.....what are you guys paying on the average for elec. per month. Am I being gouged by being charged an average of $.25 per kwh?

[Young Ed]

Reg mine runs about 30-40 a month.

[BobT-47P15]

Yes, there are numerous power "nibblers" throughout the house.

Stuff that was already mentioned.

I turn my computer off some nights and leave it on others....just depends

on if I think of it. I suppose a person could use one of those plug-in

bars with an on/off switch to turn off several things at a time without

having to unplug them.

[Don Coatney]

My electric bill last month was seventy five bucks. When I am away from home (two of every three weeks) I always kill all three computers in my home office. Lisa (she is not trainable) runs her puter 24/7. She also has 2-3 TV's running all day long. In the summer when the air conditioner runs 24/7 my bills esculate to 180/month or so. Any ideas on how to train Lisa will be appriciated. All attempts to date have failed. No such thing in my house as opening windows and doors in the spring and fall. Lisa goes from heat to air conditioning and back many times and sometimes on the same day. As I said she is not trainable.

[TodFitch]

So I'm curious.....what are you guys paying on the average for elec. per month. Am I being gouged by being charged an average of $.25 per kwh?

I am in the PG&E service area too with a standard residential rate structure. Don't know if that varies geographically within the PG&E service area or not.

By raw numbers, dividing the dollars by KwH on my March 2009 bill I get $0.14/KwH. The $/KwH listed on the bill is lower but there are some fixed connection costs that I am including so that raises things a bit.

It appears that you are in a different rate structure than I. The more you use the higher and more expensive rate tier you end up in. For the last 6 years I have averaged 537 KwH/mo and it does not vary much from one season to the next (we don't have AC and the pump on the radiant heat boiler does not draw very much power so our electrical demand is pretty independent of the heating/cooling load).

Natural gas usage is very seasonal and can be quite high in what passes for winter here what with the walls of floor to ceiling single pane glass. Got to love the 1950-60s "mid-century modern" house thermal efficiency. Not.

[Norm's Coupe]

Our electric bill runs about $85 per month without the A/C in the summer. We also run a dehumidifier in the basement, which is almost as bad as running A/C. However, the dehumidifier doesn't come on that much. As for heat and hot water, they are run off gas.

That said, I am about as much energy conscious as Don Coatney said his wife Lisa is. For example, was working in the basement for about an hour just prior to coming upstairs for a cup of coffee about 20 minutes ago. I left the lights on in the main section of the basement and also those in the shop, because I'll be going back down. If for some reason I don't go back to work down there, the lights will probably be on until bedtime (about 11 PM). My wife is always following me around turning lights off after me.

As for running the A/C in the summer months. We don't do that very often. We usually don't turn that on unless the temperature is about 85 with high humidity. Otherwise, we just open the windows and doors and let the fresh air blow through the house. Personally, my wife and I both really dislike closing up the house to run the A/C. It's like living in a tomb when you do that.

[greg g]

We have gone from Niagara Mohawk, a producer and supplier of gas and electric, to National Greed,(Grid) a British company, a purchaser and provider of utilities. We replaced an old electric stove and refrigerator with newer more friendly units. According to National Greeds historic information provided with my bill, last march we were using 20Kwh daily, this year we are down to 14.3 KWH cost for this is .06478 cents per Kwh for a total of $29.73, on top of this our wonderful provider charged us $46.90 to hijack these electrons from the grid and deliver them to our meter. So what we may save in being able to use relatively inexpensive hydro power, the company "corrects" this by charging variable amounts for "delivery charges". One hand gives and the other takes away.

Total electrical charge for the month 76.63. Don't get me started on Natural gas.....can any one explaiN a system benefit charge of .006 cents per therm used??? then there is the stand by charge, wonder who or what is standing by, it ain't me, I am always ready.

Our usage chart shows a high of 600Kwh in January to a low of 360 in October. Guess going to Hawaii saved us some bucks. Avg is about 450 per year.

[Norm's Coupe]

Reg,

Just thought of a possible reason for your electric charges being so high.

Around here a customer can elect to have lower electric bills during daylight hours. Don't know the exact times, but would be something like 6 AM - 6 PM. During that time the customer would get a lower KWH rate if they used under so much electricity during those hours. Think it's called a "Time of Day" rate or something like that. Now, if you go over that maximum allowed during that time period, the KWH rate could just about double what one would have on the normal billing rate. So.......just something else for you to check into. Maybe you are on that "Time of Day" rate (or whatever it's called).

ADDED: Just remembered what that rate plan was called. Off Peak Usage and Peak Hour Usage. Peak hours being the hours during the day when all the businesses are running. It's designed to lower the usage during peak hours.

[David Maxwell]

...$90 per month including our jacuzzi which accounts for at least half of that. Our son moved back home and the bill shot to over $200 per month. Like Don's wife, my son is apparently untrainable. Any hints on how to move my son back out without incurring Lydia's wrath would be appreciated lol....

[Norm's Coupe]

...$90 per month including our jacuzzi which accounts for at least half of that. Our son moved back home and the bill shot to over $200 per month. Like Don's wife, my son is apparently untrainable. Any hints on how to move my son back out without incurring Lydia's wrath would be appreciated lol....

This may sound a little drastic and over the top, but you could do what my first wife's brother did. He and his wife had 3 sons. After the youngest one got married and moved out, they sold the house and bought a one bedroom condo. He said, that way the kids couldn't move back in, and as far as I know, they never did.

[TodFitch]

This may sound a little drastic and over the top' date=' but you could do what my first wife's brother did. He and his wife had 3 sons. After the youngest one got married and moved out, they sold the house and bought a one bedroom condo. He said, that way the kids couldn't move back in, and as far as I know, they never did.[/quote']

They waited that long? My parents down sized their house when we all went off to college.

[Plymouthy Adams]

it probably paid your college and has contined to be benfical in the fact there is no room for you to return...pretty shrewd I think..lol

[steveplym]

Well here in So. Ill. where Ameren continues to jack up rates I'm running about $212 a month on budget billing. I have electric heat which causes some of it, but electric in this area is outrageous.

There looking at another rate hike too, so it's probably not going to go down anytime soon. Guess I'll just have to keep unplugging things and turning off lights.

[Norm's Coupe]

Well here in So. Ill. where Ameren continues to jack up rates I'm running about $212 a month on budget billing. I have electric heat which causes some of it, but electric in this area is outrageous.

There looking at another rate hike too, so it's probably not going to go down anytime soon. Guess I'll just have to keep unplugging things and turning off lights.

Actually, if you add our heating bill to our electric bill (in fact it is one bill for us), our gas and electric will average out to about the same as you are paying for both. We have natural gas heat. So.......I'd say you are probably paying about the average amount of combined bills, if you heat with electric.

[Reg Evans]

My billing rate is broken down into 5 different kwh's used categories.

The first 425 kwh's cost me $0.115

The next 127 cost .............$0.13

The next 198 cost .............$0.255

The next 425 cost .............$0.36

The last 827 cost .............$0.425

My total kwh's used last month was 2095 which is a lot but I'm running two houses on one meter. My house and a small rental cottage.

Anyone here feel like digging out their bill to compare kwh charges ?

Is there an electrical engineer in the house?

The power to my house is run underground in a conduit. I installed this 300' line about 12 years ago in very rocky ground. Is it possible for this conduit to have separated allowing a sharp rock to penetrated the insulation slightly causing a small but constant loss of elect. power into the ground ?????

[greg g]

Based on my post you are paying double but is there a delivery charge??? You Kwh usage looks high even for two houses unless you are running a smelter or doing a lot of welding. I guess the first thing I would do is put a seperate meter on the rental unit, then have the utility chach the meter for accuracy. Unless you are heating cooking drying clothes and heating water with elect you kwh looks out of line.

One thing people seem to do is have their water heaters set to high, gas or electric. What is the sense of heating water so hot you need to add cold water to use it. I have mine set at the vacation setting. There is enough for two showers without a lot of mixing in cold. You probably should check what your tenants are doing also. Even if you divide the kwh by 2 its still over 1000 I would thing for residential, 600 would be about avg.

[Norm's Coupe]

Maybe the tenant is the one using all the electricity and not you.

That said, it is possible that the conduit is getting water in it. However, if the insulation was worn off, anything that came in contact with it, like water or rubbing on the conduit would blow the main circuit in the box.

When I first bought our house, the electric line from the house to the garage was also underground, in conduit coming through the basement wall in the house. That pipe would leak all the time when it rained. Finally pulled it out, patched up the wall and ran a new line. That line goes about a foot over the top of the basement wall, down a conduit outside into the ground and stops right at that point. From there to the conduit coming out of the garage there is no conduit. I used direct burial wire for between the house conduit and the garage conduit. Of course, it has to then be deeper into the ground.

So.........I doubt that you are losing power that way.

[Reg Evans]

Of the 2095 kwh's used by both houses the tenant used 880. I have a sub meter on the rental unit so I can bill the tenant. He is a new tenant going on month 2. The previous tenant,my daughter ,was averaging 220 over a 14 month period so I was very surprised to see how much he was using. I questioned him about his high usage and he told me he was running elect. heaters in several rooms trying to save on his propane bill. And another elect. heater in the garage for his two dogs.

Here's the rest of the story. This morning I happened to notice the basement window looked very dark so I went down there for a closer look. The window has black plastic taped over it so I unlocked the door and peered in. Well, I'll be !.... the guy is into agriculture and is running a very large grow light,a fan and a humidifier. Mystery solved !!!! I don't really care what he does at his house but when it costs me extra on my elect. bill he's gonna have to pay for the higher category of kwh's.

Hummmmm....how do I put this to him without becoming an accomplice?

I'm still baffled though why my house used 1200kwh when I've unplugged the hot tub,garage refer,elect clocks,and stopped using the forced air furnace. Last years bill for the same month was only 940 kwh's for both houses and I was using the items I've unplugged this year.

Can a meter go bad and register false readings ?

[TodFitch]

If he is growing stuff he shouldn't then your house and property can be seized. Not sure what advice to offer here but I think a talk with a lawyer and or friendly (local) law enforcement might be in order.