How do I figure out what energy I am using and how much it costs.?
It is fairly easy to figure out you energy usage and the cost of that usage. Take your current light bill and look at the kwh (kilowatt hour) you used during your billing cycle. For example let’s say that it is 2100 kwh. Then look at you at your billing cycle. Were you billed for 28 days, 30 days, or 31 days. Each bill will be different depending on when they read your meter. Again for example le’ts use a 30 day billing cycle. That means you used 2100 kwh in 30 days or 70 kwh per day.
So you use 70 kwh per day, how much does that cost you. Most companies have their kwh charge, surcharge for over a certain amount, fuel surcharge, taxes, fees, additional equipment charges, etc. The easiest way is to take your total bill and divide it by the kwh and that will give you your true cost per kwh. In the example we used 2100 kwh for the month. If our bill was $420.00, that means our kwh cost was $.20 per kwh.
How can I save energy without spending a lot of money?
I recommend that you get the family together and take a look at what your individual habits cost. For instance, if you have an outside light that stays on all night (average 12 hours per day) and that light has a 150 watt bulb. That means it uses 150 watts per hour. So each day it uses 12 times 150 or 1800 watts. That is 1.8 khw and is you pay $.20 per kwh then you spend $.36 per day or around $10.00 per month to have that light on.
You can either make sure it is turned off when it is not needed or put an inexpensive motion detector on the light. They usually run about $15.00 to $20.00 so the payback from the installation of a motion detector is only a couple of months.
Take a look at each appliance, light and utility you use in you home and analyze how you can save a few kwh per day and at the end of the month you may be saving hundreds of kwh.