Monday, April 26, 2010

Saving on Electricity (Meralco Woes)

We got our electricity bill last Friday, and I must say, we're bordering on panic on electricity spending! With the hot summer days its so hard to scrimp say, on electric fan costs just to avoid some costs. We live in a house with complete appliances so while our electricity spending is not too much, I won't says its the least bit cheap.
First thing we did was to clean our air conditioning unit. Admittedly we're quite stubborn when it comes to maintaining the A/C unit and we haven't had it professionally cleaned since we bought it in 2005. And we did feel that's its due for some cleaning because the room is not as cold anymore even with a temp of 19degC.  What we did is take out the AC from the case, wrapped up the electronics parts in plastic (the timer/controls), and then hosed down the tubes and the body with water.  Its such a good thing that water pressure is good from where we live and we have a great water hose that adjusts the pressure of water so its easy to take out the dirt. After cleaning we left the A/C outside under the sun to dry it completely.  We installed it back after lunch but we didn't test it till the evening, since its the only time we actually do use the A/C. Oftentimes its quite breezy here even if its too hot, so we really don't need the A/C anyway.
Oh, and just after we've received our bill, I made it a point to monitor our usage for electricity, meaning I take readings every morning and evening to see how much we use. So for the A/C, we normally use 8-10 kW per night, thats from around 8pm till 3am, If I shut it down at 5am, it goes up to 10, which is why we are now diligently using the timer to make sure it shuts down on time. The result of the cleaning has been really good, we're now down to 6 kW for the evening, that's already good considering that our daily consumption is at an average of 13.5 kW per day (24hours).  Our consumption during the day is at 4 kW. So next step is to see where we can reduce with the daytime consumption.
And as a first step, I decided to measure consumption of every electrical item we have. This is to see where we are spending so much of electricity and then reduce its usage. Starting at point 0 - meaning all sockets and appliances unplugged, I measured each and every appliance, lighting, and electronic items in the house. That way I see where the big chunk of the electricity is. And true enough, I was taken aback by the results. The appliances I wasn't expecting could contribute to a higher electricity rating were actually the simple, unexpected ones, like the oven toaster and the water dispenser (heater). Now at least we know where to adjust. And then I looked at meralco's sight for estimating the consumption) per month for electricity, and now I have some monetary value estimates for the appliances' usage. Pretty good benchmark. Now all that's left to do is to check how we do with the adjustments we made.

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