Electric Bill- Riddle me this... (1 Viewer)

[marty9876]

So I've been trying to reduce my electric bill, replacing existing pumps with more energy efficient pumps and alike. The challenge is I try to justify things by measuring actual consumption and correlating it against my electric bill. This last part is where it don't make sense... I can't get things to add up.

Per the bill, I figure my house has a~ 2000w usage floor based on overnight usage. No AC running.

Per Apex, my tank has a draw of ~ 775 watts w/o lights on (6.4amp draw). This leaves ~ 1225 unaccounted for. So I took my kill-a-watt around and found a few leading offenders.
- Firewall/switches 145w
- My computer 150w
- Wife's computer 105w

That gets me about 400 of the missing watts, only 825 watts to go...

Refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and all that are going to even themselves out and I don't see them as part of the 2000w floor (fish tank + known 24/7 things + missing 825).

So, what am I missing here? Anyone else have hour by hour electrical consumption charts? (this is MVEC)

 

[patent]

Refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans and all that are going to even themselves out and I don't see them as part of the 2000w floor (fish tank + known 24/7 things + missing 825).

I don't think I understand this, why wouldn't they be part of the floor? They should run at night, typically. Not sure about your furnace, but mine runs a fan 24/7. Fridge and freezer run on and off at all times.

Otherwise:

Not sure how much it would add up to, but we have our outdoor lights on at night, lots of electronics have small draws all night (stereo, vcr, tv, night light, keurig, microwave, phone, chargers, etc.)

 

[marty9876]

I don't think I understand this, why wouldn't they be part of the floor? They should run at night, typically. Not sure about your furnace, but mine runs a fan 24/7. Fridge and freezer run on and off at all times.

Otherwise:

Not sure how much it would add up to, but we have our outdoor lights on at night, lots of electronics have small draws all night (stereo, vcr, tv, night light, keurig, microwave, phone, chargers, etc.)

Let me rephrase this a bit- With all the miscellaneous items that do comprise the floor ( Refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans, stereo, vcr, tv, night light, keurig, microwave, phone, charger) I can't see that as 825 watts used 24/7.

Wife's monitor which refuses to go into power save mode - 52w

I'm thinking the furnace blower motor is using way more than I'd originally have guesstimated. I'm assuming it's variable which makes a exact usage hard to pin down, reported between 75-400 watts.

My core challenge here is justifying replacing ~ 500w worth of pumps with ~ 300w worth of pumps. 200w worth of savings @ .13/kW ~ $18.72/month or $227.76/year and would cost me ~ $400 upfront. I guess it all adds up. Reducing a $350/month electric bill to $330 isn't very exciting.

 

[LowersMyBP]

Suppose the fridge and freezer each cycle once during the hour with the lowest usage, what does that add up to? Do you think it is possible that they go longer than an hour in the night without cycling? I don't know if you could add an EB8 and plug it into your apex to track when it cycles, or if you have a kill a watt that can do such a thing?


What about your well pump and anything associated with that. Don't know how those work, just asking.


Agree with you. Tank pumps aren't going to make a huge (relative) difference. You still have to move water.

One last suggestion is to verify the apex measurement against your killawatt. Isolate a light or a pump on an EB8 and then run it on the kill a watt, just to rule out measurement error/differences.

 

[patent]

200w worth of savings @ .13/kW ~ $18.72/month or $227.76/year and would cost me ~ $400 upfront. I guess it all adds up. Reducing a $350/month electric bill to $330 isn't very exciting.

Especially now that its winter, and the extra heat has (somewhat inneficient) house heating value so its not as pure of a savings.

I tend to replace things at failure, can't usually justify the cost savings v. the cost of replacing early otherwise. LED v. MH was the one exception I saw.

 

[cheezybuda]

Let me rephrase this a bit- With all the miscellaneous items that do comprise the floor ( Refrigerators, freezers, furnace fans, stereo, vcr, tv, night light, keurig, microwave, phone, charger) I can't see that as 825 watts used 24/7.

Wife's monitor which refuses to go into power save mode - 52w

I'm thinking the furnace blower motor is using way more than I'd originally have guesstimated. I'm assuming it's variable which makes a exact usage hard to pin down, reported between 75-400 watts.

My core challenge here is justifying replacing ~ 500w worth of pumps with ~ 300w worth of pumps. 200w worth of savings @ .13/kW ~ $18.72/month or $227.76/year and would cost me ~ $400 upfront. I guess it all adds up. Reducing a $350/month electric bill to $330 isn't very exciting.

I am starting to not feel as bad about my electrical bill. At peak we are at 250 with an electric water heater and a 25 year old A/C. Granted you have a lot more gallons of aquarium to feed.

 

[marty9876]

Suppose the fridge and freezer each cycle once during the hour with the lowest usage, what does that add up to? Do you think it is possible that they go longer than an hour in the night without cycling? I don't know if you could add an EB8 and plug it into your apex to track when it cycles, or if you have a kill a watt that can do such a thing?


What about your well pump and anything associated with that. Don't know how those work, just asking.

Well pump is on demand, should really only use much when in operation. I'll confirm Apex loads with kill-a-watt, logical answer is my tank load number is off.

Agree with you. Tank pumps aren't going to make a huge (relative) difference. You still have to move water.

One last suggestion is to verify the apex measurement against your killawatt. Isolate a light or a pump on an EB8 and then run it on the kill a watt, just to rule out measurement error/differences.

I've run a kill-a-watt on the garage freezer, it was way lower than I'd thought. ~ $5-10/month to run. Yes these things are cycling on/off overnight to some degree just the charts look static as heck, the load is stable over night. Makes me think I should be able to add up usage and be +/- 10-20% fairly easily.

I am starting to not feel as bad about my electrical bill. At peak we are at 250 with an electric water heater and a 25 year old A/C. Granted you have a lot more gallons of aquarium to feed.

This is without AC.... $450/month in the summer. My baseline number is ~ $100/month for a typical 1500-2000sq ft house (no fish tank etc.) and I'm just always amazed how far from that I've come. We have a well and electric dryer now so that's defiantly different but I'm not seeing those as adding to that 2000 watt floor (~175/month electric floor).

@ Patent- replacing at failure I get, these pumps last 20 years... I'm way too impatient for that.

 

[marty9876]

Simple version:

$100/month AC
$175/month fish tank
$100/month standard having house stuff
$50/month well/electric dryer/extra freezer/extra crap fee

~ $425/month there...

 

[Nickz]

You just have to not pay attention to the electric bill, it's high and that's that, is my solution

 

[jjwhiteboy]

Do you have electric roof vents or air exchangers?

 

[marty9876]

Air exchanger, my understanding is that's mostly a passive device unless I'm miss understanding it (flaps change position based on exchange rate)

 

[Gary]

I'm real upset with MVEC right now. They replaced my meter last January and screwed up my power to the heat pump. The large fan on the heat pump ran all winter long but the gas furnace was doing all the heating. The cycled air program I am on is supposed to give me cheaper rates out of the heat pump's meter but the fan was connected to the main meter after they screwed up. Bottom line is that running everything but the compressor all winter long burned up my heat pump. Now I'm out $6700 in replacement costs for it. They managed to fix the meter problem and gave me a mere $100 credit on my bill. Meanwhile my gas and electric bills (on the budget plan) have skyrocketed due to their mistake. I had no idea that they had even been to my house until spring when the AC didn't work.

So, I replaced my furnace with a high efficiency unit that uses a DC variable speed motor. According to the specs it should cut my cost to run the furnace fan 10x. I am now looking into solar panels to further reduce my bill from the evil MVEC.

 

[Riley]

Hey Marty, I thought you would have this all figured out by now. Good luck as you work through it. The only thought I've had is your return pump is high draw, but since you are monitoring this it probably isn't the case.

I had a moment a couple months ago that made me think of you. My wife told me that our electric bill was $100 more than usual. I instantly thought "Marty." Once we were shut the air off again it went back to normal. We consistently run $100 less than you do per month which I find a little odd since we have the same or more square footage, with the same or more worth of aquarium equipment running. One difference is I'm running all reeflo and eheim pumps, but can't be that drastic. Maybe your neighbor is stealing electricity from your outbuilding. I can't remember how close they are but probably too far so probably not. Anyway, good luck solving your riddle.

 

[marty9876]

Thanks Riley, I was just about at the point of thinking this is all 'normal' and you crushed that for me.... It really does seem like my bill is ~ $100 off from where I think it should be. It is frustrating as I've taken a few runs at this and honestly not figured it out yet.

Being that the online usage data available within 24 hours I think I'll run a few experiments and see if I can't figure things out.

- Confirm apex is reporting amp draw correctly by comparing to kill-a-watt
- Turn off everything I can think of for a night and see if the floor drops considerable - furnace fan, well, all pc's/monitors etc.
- Run the tank off a generator for a few hours and see how that changes the graphs.... ok, maybe...maybe not on that one

My shed is on a different meter. Few months ago switched the primary living areas to all LED lighting, I forget the exact difference but I think that knocked $20-30/month off the bill.

I keep trying to justify switching to Reeflo pump(s) but it just seems like a drop in the bucket.

 

[Reefking]

You could always sale some of your corals (frags) to reduce the monthly electric bill. I believe reef hobbyists should trade and sale more as it adds a lot of fun and preserves our reefs.

 

[Bschowa]

Lol Marty having corals to sell?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Jager]

Simple version:

$100/month AC
$175/month fish tank
$100/month standard having house stuff
$50/month well/electric dryer/extra freezer/extra crap fee

~ $425/month there...

holy crap man

my total monthly bill is less than it costs to run your AC.

Now my wife may turn the lights off behind me all the time but my PC stays on 24/7, i have a standard fridge/freezer and a chest freezer, 4 tvs plugged in. I only run a 25g cube right now so thats obviously smaller but i must have a lower rate or something.

also my furnace fan only runs when the heat or air is on but i do have 3 ceiling fans which run regularly... they just happen to all be off right now when i look at them lol

 

[acharpenter]

This might be a stupid question - but is there anyway to bring someone out to test/evaluate to figure out the usage?

 

[ArstenA]

DC pumps will cut your costs

 

[marty9876]

Lol Marty having corals to sell?

Are you implying I suck at corals? Oh wait.... I do.... Carry on.

This might be a stupid question - but is there anyway to bring someone out to test/evaluate to figure out the usage?

Yea, I've been thinking that too. At think point the only really unknown variable is aquarium lighting usage. Since I flunked my calculus class (but had a really good time doing it when I was 18...) figuring out the watt usage on a bell curve with the dimmable T5/LED's is beyond me. Maybe I'll just turn them off for a day. Calculus meet hammer.

DC pumps will cut your costs

DC pumps can't do the head to flow ratio I need. There is one pump out there than can do it, it's way over $1000 bucks.

Random updated:
- Confirmed Apex reporting of amp draw matches kill-a-watt (sorry to disappoint the Apex haters)
- Iwaki 100 draws 350w
- Iwaki 40 draws 120w
- Bubble Blaster 10000 draws 180w

Based on the Iwaki numbers switching to a Reeflo Hammerhead will save me as projected... 100-120 watts. Likely more flow, but not a massive savings.

Next steps I dunno. Shut stuff off and see what the impact is I guess along with calling the electrical folks. FYI my per kW charge after all charges is ~ .13/kw (bill total divided by kw usage)

On the plus/negative side turned out I had my UV off in the Apex so +80w to the system!