Ways to Save on Your Energy Bill
Since COVID hit, many companies are seeing a benefit to having employees work from home. Because of this, power bills have sky rocketed and will continue to do so now in 2023. Here are a few hacks to help save you some money on your power bill.
Run your Dishwasher at night
After dinner, it is common for most families to run their dishwashers. Have you ever noticed that your dishwasher may have a 4 hour delay as an option? Before you go to bed for the evening, set your dishwasher for a 4 hour delay. This will run your dishwasher in the middle of the night during non-peak hours. Non peak hours typically have a lower cost rate with power companies, and may help in your energy costs. Check with your local power company to see when their peak and non peak hours are!
Run your dryer at night
Your life is busy and that laundry piles up! Instead of dedicating an entire day off to laundry, do 1 load a day! Guess what? You may have a newer dryer that offers a delay option just like your dishwasher. Run a load in your washer before bed, throw your clothes into the dryer and set the delay to the non-peak hours. This is the same idea as your dishwasher above!
Turn off your lights
If you have children, you understand this statement more than anyone! Turn off the lights in the rooms that aren’t being used. This is not only wasteful of energy, but money. If you were to leave your lights on in one room in Florida for 24 hours at the current kilowatt per hour (kWh) rate (17 cents), it would cost you $1.22 a day. This is based off using 5 light bulbs in a bedroom (counting a ceiling fan and two table lamps) using 60 watt incandescent bulbs. The calculations are as follows:
5 bulbs x .06 (60 watts/1000) kilowatts x 24 hours x 17 cents = $1.22 a day
Now this doesn’t seem like much, but if you add this up annually ($1.22 x 365), you will be paying an extra $445.30 a year unnecessarily. Now, of course these calculations are based off of 24 hours, but it’s meant to show how much money you can save if you simply turn the lights off in rooms that aren’t being used.
Switch out your light bulbs
If you are still using incandescent bulbs, now is the time to switch to LED bulbs. There are so many benefits to switching! According to the Department of Energy, lighting accounts for 15% of an average household’s energy usage, and the average household can save $225 per year just by switching to LED. LED light bulbs emit very little heat as opposed to incandescent bulbs, which release 90% of their energy as heat. Think of how much you would save on running your HVAC system to cool your home if you were to simply switch to LED light bulbs!