I’ve heard in the past that unplugging things while not in use can actually save you money.
I think I might give it a try.
I’m thinking phone charger, microwave, toaster etc.
Has anyone done any of this ? If so did you notice any savings ? Are there other things you can unplug that I didn’t mention ?
Yes, those thing may help a bit as they all add up. TV’s that have a ‘quick start’ option also use electricity as they are running a program in background.
However, larger savings can be had elsewhere as I am sure that you know.
Reducing stove, oven and dryer usage can make a large drop in electric useage. Also making sure that you efficiently use appliances. If you have an electric hot water heater, read up on the proper way to drain it. Settlement in the bottom of the tank can effect its ability to properly heat things. Also perhaps lower the temperatue a bit.
Change your light bulbs to LEDs.
Have your heating and cooling filters cleaned.
Personally, I have changed all bulbs to LEDs, I use the microwave often. Because my electric rate is double or triple other peoples, I changed to a propane on-demand hot water heater. It is far cheaper for me to buy propane than electric.
Recently I started installing my own solar electric. Because I am installing it myself, the return on investment will be a few years at my electric rate or 55 cents per kilowatt hour! Even cheaper for me is that I can mount the panels at ground level instead of a costly roof install.
You can buy a KIll-A-Watt meter that measures electric usage of 120 volt devices and determine what each thing plugged into it are using and if you configure your electric rate, can tell you yearly cost.
The two main electric uses here which are always active is the freezer downstairs and the refrigerator/freezer upstairs. They are the first two things I moved to the solar power.
Other responses here may mention things I forgot.
I haven’t unplugged but 1 or 2 items…I think the savings there is too small to be noticed in the electric bill compared to other appliances like the water heater, refrigerator, heat pump, maybe well pump.
Something I tried for the first time last year was turning the water heater temp down from about 135 to 125 during the 6 warmest months, April-October. It might take 2-3 years to know if that’s going to have an effect on the kWh usage.
My electric company changed my electric meter for a smart meter (it has an LCD screen rather than dials). They allow me to log in to my account and see what power I am drawing (or sending back to the grid if allowed). The granularity is as small as 15 minute increments.
This is the data that I began looking at when I decided to install solar as our rates soon will be goverened by usage at various times of the day. Knowing what you use and when you use it makes all the difference. Because we are being served by many types of generation (including solar) our rates will be cheapest when the sun is out (9am to 5pm). They have been adjusting rates but last I saw was 25 cents per kWH days and up to 55 cents per kWH overnight.
So in my case, if I am drawing from the utility, the 9-5 rate is the cheapest for me, yet still probably twice what others out your way may pay. With almost no heavy loads here and after all the reductions I mentione in the last posting, I was still paying $280 or so a month for electric.
Just tonight I was looking at my initial solar production and usage. I can see what I am drawing from my outlets and 3 things I can easily control and watch are the fans I run in the house, and the two refrigerator/freezers. One of my LED bulbs might draw 17 watts but the fans draw perhaps 100 watts each. I know these numbers are down in the weeds for the most part, but for me trying to all but eliminate drawing power from the grid and just use solar, the numbers are telling.
That is why, since I cannot yet move the stove and drier to solar electric, I can at least halve their cost by using them during the cheapest time of day. The difference between cooking dinner or drying clothes from 4pm to 5pm costs half than if I start them at 5pm.
So it might just be that even without changing what you do electric wise in the house, you might save money by changing when you do it. See if your house has a smart meter and if the elctric rates change for you based upon time of day.
In my case I spent $5,000 with a do-it-myself solar install. I am aiming to drop my electric bill from $270 a month to perhaps $100 a month or less. That means that I pay off my system in 3 or 4 years and then coast through the next 10 or 20 years with little electric bill. Granted, I can save because a major cost of solar is the installation cost and those who take a lease and (perhaps) believe the numbers a solar company tells you you will save. My utility stopped accepting new users to feed power back to them and has I hear cut the payment amount. Thus people are not saving as much as they hoped. I never counted on selling back power. I do have electronics and residential electrical background so that helps, but electricity from solar is not all that mystical.
By the way, having land where I can set up my system AND not having an HOA make a world of difference too. My utility also offsets the cost of things like LED bulbs to really encourage people to stop wasting power! My state is on track to be 100% energy independant by year 2045. In 2020 about 80% of our electric was from burning petroleum fuel imported at great cost. We here cannot “Drill baby drill” which is stupid. Even if we could, use of the sun is free and if the sun ever stopped shining, we would be in a lot worse shape than just not getting electricity!
During Asheville NC flood, many appliances in my daughters rentals were destroyed when electric finally became re-established, even though there was no water in rentals.
I could understand if there was water in building.
When they turn on electric after a few weeks, does it come into homes at a different rate? Some people had lamps catch on fire. Is there a way to prevent this.
The devastation in this popular vacation town is one of the biggest disasters in our history, and the rebuilding efforts are going on and will be for years, and Asheville will bounce back, as the people and dedicated.
The electric grid is a well-regulated but fragile system. There are many conditions which effect the ability of the grid to recover from a disaster where some or much of the infrastructure has been damaged. This can also be complicated where houses may be also feeding electric back to the grid from grid-tied solar.
Another problem which happens during a storm is that some of the transmission lines may come down and not in the best way. Our electric grid uses transformers to step up the voltage and then back down again. Most houses in the U.S. are fed from a transformer which has 3 wires to your house. Two of those wires carry 120 volts AC and one wire is a neutral. The two 120 voltages are opposite phases and between each to neutral is 120 volts. Across the two 120 lines you get 240 for your range, water heater and drier and so on.
If that neutral line is broken somewhere along the way, you will have significant voltage flucuations and damage to some equipment and appliances.
Also you may have noticed that after a storm where your power went out, when power is restored, it may come on, go off and back on a few times. This is because as the electric company starts supplying power, motors and heavy loads can drag down the system and effect the voltage. You may have seen where in your own house, an air conditioner starts up and the lights dim until the motor gets going.
This video shows a startup of a larger grid but will give you an idea of how a smaller system would also have issues.
When damage is so extensive in a power grid it’s really hard to tell what might happen when the power comes back up.
Ideally, before power comes back on, it’s probably best to turn all the breakers off in your service panel except for a few 110v light-duty circuits. That way you can power the rest of the stuff up after you see your power acting normal again.
A high use appliance is the water heater. If your rates differ based on time of day, if you use a timer to not power the water heater during high rates, it can save quite a bit of money. And it should rarely actually impact having hot water due to what is stored in the tank.
I wonder what the payback is to setup a solar system, wire it into your home and maintain it? It’s going to be like the new water heater mandates. A $500 water heater will cost $1,500 plus installation and maintenance.
In my case, the panels are ground-mounted, means I can prop them up along the ground (like a lean-to) and not drill into the roof. My utility is not buying back electric so I don’t need to involve the as my system will not feed electric to them, it can just use power from them to power my devices and/or charge my batteries. I am elecric-saavy as I have wired homes and circuit breaker boxes. I am not trying to eliminate all alectric costs from the utility.
My costs are shown below. Maintenance is minimal to non-existant except to wipe down the panels if they get dirty. The panels, controller/inverter and batteries have long life.
Except for my shipping costs (which are extremely high), the costs are not excessive.
My controller/inverter is capable of 220 volts for things like a drier, hot water heater, stove/oven, I am not using it for that. I am just powering most 120 volt devices in the house. I don’t have heat or AC/
The controller/inverter is about $1500 (if I was a cabin in the woods, I could use a $700 unit for single phase). The panels for my need were $1400. 3 batteries totalled $3300 (I just added a 3rd battery incase tariffs limit my purchase later). A 10 circuit transfer switch was a few hundred dollars. That allows me to swich certain connections from grid to solar a I wish and not have to make major changes to the breaker box. Assorted wire, connectors and some PVC, labels and accessories and tools, maybe $500.
That $7,400 might reduce my $280 a month power bill down to $80 a month, so lets say $200 a month savings. That break-even point is 37 months which is just over 3 years. If you add in the excessive shipping I had to pay (mostly because of the Jones Act).
If I need more batteries, I can just order one and add them and the same for more panels.
Essentually I have a big UPS (Uninterruptable Power Suplly) which is charged by solar and runs various outlets. I can also take advantage of the utility if the days get overly cloudy for any length of time.
For me, with my excessive electric rates, it is a no brainer. For people with very cheap power, or live in an HOA regulated area or have limited sunlight, it may not be as useful. Some locations may need permits.
An excellant source of information on Youtube is Will Prowse’s DIYSOLAR videos. There is a forum at DIYSOLARFORUM.COM.
That’s impressive to save $200/month on just a Refrigerator and a Freezer! Most of my electricity usage is my AC and Ovens, both being 240Vac. Are you getting a 70% savings running AC and Cooking? If so, that really is impressive. Thanks, Joe
The oven and drier are still on the utility. I have no heating or AC. Almost all other circuits are on solar. That is the TVs, computers, lights and so on. All those are 120 volt circuits even though my solar controller can handle 240 volts if I wanted. I have converted all lights to be LED now and our utility offsets most of the cost of that purchase. My cost savings are easier to obtain primarily because our electric rate are the highest in the country.
In January 2025, the average electricity rate in the United States was 16.94 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). However, rates vary by state, with Hawaii having the highest average rates and Utah having the lowest:
Hawaii
The highest average electricity rates in the country at 41.27 cents/kWh. Hawaii’s electricity rates are generally higher than the U.S. mainland due to the cost of imported oil used to power many of the islands’ generators.
Utah
The lowest residential electricity rates in the nation at 11.42 cents/kWh.
Our KWH time of day rates will be:
21 cents from 9am to 5pm (Day)
64 cents from 5pm to 9pm (Evening)
43 cents from 9pm to 9am (Overnight)
So I will collect free energy from the sun during the day. If I have to buy electric to charge the batteries, I’ll do that from 9am to 5pm when it is cheapest. Then I will use that free or cheap electric during the evening and overnight. That is not unlike stocking up on grocery items when it is on sale or getting items when they are free for use when they are expensive. My goal is to almost always just use solar rather than buy electric at any cost, but I always have that insurance. My capacity is easy to increase in stages.
On our island we have no heavy industry, just stores and lower usage.
The rates for us are cheapest because the utility is starting to depend upon its own solar and thus essentually a direct sun to home connection. At 5pm people cook and laundry etc which puts a large load on the local grin and thus the utility I assume needs lots of stored battery energy to handle those loads. Then people go to bed and usage drops. It’s all supply and demand.
I noticed your cheapest elec is during the day! In most places with “time of use” rates the cheapest elec is during the night. Usually midnight to 6am. Why does your power company do that?
Our state is on target to be fully energy independant in something like 20 more years. We use solar, wind, wave power, geo-thermal and still burn fossil fuels but are reducing that every day.
Because we can generate a lot of solar here that is where the difference is. I believe the following is true:
Since the utility can generate power from solar. much of it can be used during the day and be used to top off batteries. Those batteries are used to supply power during cloudy times and over night.
If all useage was during the day and there were no cloudy days, they would not need to store power. We don’t have ‘industry’ here, no steel mills, no big users like that. Places like Costco and others just put panels on the roof for their own use and to back feed the grid.
After hours the sun goes down and we supply power from batteries. So about 5 pm people get home, they do laundry, cook dinner adn watch TV. Then perhaps by 9 pm people are starting to settle down and go to sleep. So usage after 9 pm is batteries but not as much need as the evening was. As I say, when we have lots of sun, they charge the batteries too.
That is essentually what I expect to do with my system. During the day, use power generated by the sun and charge the batteries. After the sun goes down, my system automatically starts using the batteries to generate electricity. If I need to, I can still power things from the grid and can also charge the batteries from the grid. If I estimated capacity and production, I am almost completely self-sufficient.
The last few days we have had lots of clouds and VOG. VOG is like smog but is smoke and particulates from the volcano which recently decided to spew lava and smoke.
Here is the providers info from the webpage. Note that Hawaii Island is the BIg Island and the island that the state is named after. It is not Oahu where Honolulu is. We are rural, the size of Conniticut (4,000 sq miles) and a population of 200,000.
From the utilties website:
Hawaiian Electric is proud that Hawaii Island has been nationally recognized for its varied portfolio of generation resources, with 52% of electricity coming from renewables, including 17,000 rooftop solar systems, grid-scale solar and battery, wind, hydroelectric and geothermal.
99.9% of the time it works the way it’s supposed to, but on the rare occasion it doesn’t, there’s no one to call on for backup - we’re on our own.*
That’s why we will need everyone to work together over the next month, and possibly longer, to conserve electricity. We are extremely tight on what we call our generation margin, the margin between the demand for electricity and our ability to supply it. This demand typically peaks on weekdays between 5 and 9 p.m. and that’s when the margin is most critical.
We now turn off Wi-Fi at night and TV when not use by having cord extension plugs that also have Voltage protection in them. Easy to do and you’ve also cut off those stray radio waves running around your house.
For the Fridge we have a Voltage Protector that instantly shuts off power for Over Voltage or Under Voltage then turns it back on when Voltage returns to normal.
BSEED Surge Protector $17 Amazon.
We’ve been trying to cut back on electricity too. Instead of using dryer we’ve gone back to hanging clothes to dry , then “fluffing” in the electric dryer. Even here on high humidity Oahu in our apartment we find we can hang our clothes over the tub and they are mostly dry overnight and certainly dry by the end of the second day.
I’ve tried putting the electric water heater on a timer with mixed results.
The problem with electric water heaters is twofold. They take a lot of power to heat the water and Oahu power isn’t cheap. Also they heat the water in an enclosed tank, it then cools off and is heated again. You use power even when you are not using it.
I installed an on-demand propane water heater with mostly good results. The BBQ tanks from Costco have gauges on them which lets me avoid the surprise when you need hot water and can’t get it. Also, I put a UPS on the power cord for it so if the power failed while showering, the unit could still make hot water because the pilot was still able to be lit. Unfortunately there is an upfront cost. My system was in new construction and I failed to centrally locate the system. Some runs were longer than others and take a bit more time to get hot. Still, I only use propane when the water runs. There are propane, natural gas and electric on-demand units and once installed should save money over any gas or electric tall tank heater.
You always have to balance cost vrs savings, For me, the solar was a no-brainer because I have the ability to do it myself and we don’t have some of the regulations or oversight others have.
Making sure there is no sediment in an electric water heater tank (it must be turned off before draining and refilling) is one help. You may be able to also turn down the thermostats in the water heater to help.
Changing as many lights to be LED as possible is also a big savings. An old 60 watt incandescent bulb might cost the same as 8 LED bulbs. In your case Hawaiian Electric probably offsets most of the cost of those bulbs (at least HELCO does over on the Big Island) if you can get them at Costco, where they were often on sale. I stockpiled bulbs everytime they had sales.
Oahu’s time of day rates look to be:
So any heavy uses like driers, stove, AC, heat, dehumidifiers if you have them, even the hot water heater are best to use between 9am and 5pm because they will cost half as much. That is IF your place is on the new smart meters and you are signed up for the rates. They may become permanent rates if the PUC approves them.
Here in N.E. NC we don’t have narural gas, just electric. Much cheaper than Hawaii, I’m sure!
When you drain the sediment out of your electric water heater you don’t have to drain the whole thing. I just hook up a garden hose and run it outside for 10 or 15 seconds. I use an old white sheet so I can see what comes out. My current WH is only 2 years old and I was pleasantly surprised when the water came out relatively clean. I leave the water and electricity on doing this.
