How to Slash Your Home Power Bill

In today's economy, most people can benefit from a decrease in monthly expenses. Fine tuning your home power consumption is a great way to cut costs and "Go Green" at the same time. This article will outline some simple steps to help cut your home electric bill.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Copy of a recent power bill

1. 
    

   Tune up your computer.
   A poorly managed home computer can account for nearly 10% of the carbon dioxide emissions from your family car. Consider tuning up your PC or, if you have the ability, upgrade to a new Energy Star computer. Some simple tune up steps include:
   1. Turn off your screen saver. These colorful animations used to help preserve your computer monitor, but serve no useful purpose in today's technology.
   2. Take advantage of the power-management software included with most computers.
   3. Switch to a laptop for more flexibility and up to 1/4 of the power consumption.

2. Turn off power strips.
   Some consumer electronic devices enter a "Standby" or "Sleep" mode when you think you've turned them off. This unseen power drain is often referred to as "Vampire Power Drain" can can add hundreds of dollars to your yearly power bills. Plug your DVD player, TV, VCR, surround-sound system and cable TV boxes into a power strip/surge protector, and turn it off when you're not using these devices. When they're not in use, turn off the power strip to plug up the power drain.

3. 
    

   Disconnect external power supplies.
   Most people don't realize that chargers for cell phones, Blackberry's, pagers and many other devices actually use power when left plugged into the power socket. When not being used to charge up your electronics, be sure to unplug them.

4. Turn off video games.
   Most newer video games, such as Xbox or Wii, have a user-enabled option to auto-power off the system when not in use. If your system doesn't have this feature, save your game and turn off the unit when not in use.

5. Fine-tune or update your television.
   A 52", HD television can use nearly the same amount of electricity as a refrigerator, over the course of a year. A simple method to cut some of this usage is to turn down the brightness of the screen. In most new sets the recommended setting is "Home" or "Standard" brightness.

6. Upgrade your cable box.
   Cable or satellite control boxes are often left running 24x7, 365 days per year. While this is typically necessary to control your DVR or pre-programmed settings, you can still cut some of the costs by asking your provider if they offer an Energy Star box. These new set-top boxes are typically 1/3 more efficient than older models.

7. Install timers.
   Consider installing timers for lights, appliances or other devices which are only used during certain times of the day. This will ensure that they are not draining power when not in use.

Tips & Warnings

• Turn off clocks in rooms that are not regularly used.
• Unplug extra or 2nd refrigerators when not in use.
• Run your dishwasher in "Power Saver" mode.
• Be sure that you don't accidentally disconnect fire detectors or smoke alarms.

Resources

• CNN Money article

[niteowlgardener]

on 8/20/2009 Thanks for some additional tips on how to cut down on the electric bill. I'm going to be turning off that power strip now.

[1wiseguy]

on 6/4/2009 GREAT ARTICLE 5 stars!