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Click Home Appliance Energy Usage Guide to download the PDF file.
How Much Can You Really Expect To Save In Electricity Costs? - Example 50W Halogen Lights
There is no definitive answer to this this question. It depends on your changes to existing use patterns / habits, to appliances etc. We are going to help you too start saving on your energy costs. We are going to show you how easy it could be too save $330 per year!
Looking at a house using 12v 50W Halogen Lights, the householder plans to change 8 of the lights for 9W fluorescent bulbs. The halogen lights are used for 3 hours per day.
We will use this formula to compute the Savings Per Quarter.
No. Of Appliances X Total Watts Of Appliance/s X Hours Used X Cost Of kWh X 90 / 1000
Existing 50W Halogen: 8 X 400 X 3 X 0.20 X 90 / 1000 = $21.60
Planned 9W Fluorescent: 8 X 9 X 3 X 0.20 X 90 / 1000 = $3.88
Forecast SAVINGS PER QUARTER $17.22 [$21.60 - $3.88]
SAVINGS PER YEAR $68.88 - By Just Changing The Lights!
The above formula works for any appliance/s in the home, where you know the total watts used.
Wireless Home Energy Monitor
General Information On Electricity Use In The Home.
The electricity / power [P] used in the home [measured in watts ], can be worked out when you know the current [A] measured in amps and the voltage [V] measured in volts. Voltage in Australia is 240.
To compute the power [P], multiply the current [A] by the voltage [V], for example:
P = 4.3 X 240 therefore P = 1032 watts
Often [P] power is labelled as watts or kilowatts [kw]. There are a 1000 watts to a kilowatt. In the above example the power [P] could be labelled as 1032 watts or 1.03 kw.
Your Electricity Supplier offers you energy measured in kWh. This is the kw's used per hour. A common rate for On-Peak electricity is 0.20 per kWh. Off-Peak at $0.07 cents per kWh. In layman's terms this means an appliance using 1kW of power per hour, costs $0.20 cents per hour to operate. The cost for any device/s is simply a multiplication / division of that figure once the total power being used is known.
For example: A pool pump 1.75Kw [1.75 X 0.20] costs $0.35 cents per hour to run.
If an appliance has a thermostat to regulate heat / cooling for example, then this will need to be taken into account. A thermostat may mean the appliance is on for only 75% of the time. In this case divide the total cost by 0.75 to arrive at the true cost.
It is not always the high power devices that can cost you on the energy bill. Appliance/s that are on standby for most of the day, can cost a lot over a quarter. For example:
Entertainment devices that are left on 24/7 standby power. Mobile devices / low voltage devices using plug in power packs [the removal of a mobile phone for example still leaves the 240v side of the power pack turned on! - You need to switch off the power pack] A total of 150w is used in the following example.
1 X 150 X 24 X 0.20 X 90 / 1000 = $64.80
SAVING PER QUARTER $64.80
SAVINGS PER YEAR $259.20 : By Reducing The Number Of Appliances On Standby!
By changing some of the halogen lights for energy efficient fluorescent bulbs and making sure appliances are not left on 24/7 standby in total the above home could make:
SAVINGS PER YEAR OF $330!
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