Utilities and Solar

[bystander]

I think I have all of you beat in electrical frugality. My Helco bill used to be less than $60 until recently when the energy cost adjustment shot up. I don't even have solar. Check out my last bill:

DATE KWH AMOUNT DAYS KWH/DAY $/DAY
09/07/05 244 75.94 33 7.4 2.30
10/06/05 203 66.84 29 7.0 2.30
11/07/05 247 80.43 32 7.7 2.51
12/07/05 217 72.34 30 7.2 2.41
01/07/06 230 76.66 31 7.4 2.47
02/06/06 221 73.45 30 7.4 2.45
03/08/06 228 73.95 30 7.6 2.47
04/06/06 224 72.65 29 7.7 2.51
05/08/06 236 77.02 32 7.4 2.41
06/07/06 215 72.44 30 7.2 2.41
07/07/06 210 72.66 30 7.0 2.42
08/07/06 229 83.10 31 7.4 2.68

[Kapohocat]

For our stove and water heater - we went through a 20 gal tank in about 4-5 months - the current cost is just over $3/gal at the propane place next to Pahoa Ace Hardware.

Tank has to be outside. You can get a big 250 gal tank set and the gas company comes and fills it on a schedule for you.

-Cat

Catherine Dumond
Blue Water Project Management
808 217-7578
http://bluewaterpm.125mb.com/index.html
"We help make building your dream home a reality"

[lquade]

just got my helco bill in mail today... 2 of us runs just under 80$ per month. all electric home... we live simply i suspect biggest use is hot water and the water pump we are 2 storey on catchment system.

[Kapohocat]

HMMMMMMMMMMM..... wonder if we have a wire grounding? or something.....

Where is my electrician?

-Cat

Catherine Dumond
Blue Water Project Management
808 217-7578
http://bluewaterpm.125mb.com/index.html
"We help make building your dream home a reality"

[HADave]

Anyone who is interested in finding out what your appliances or plug in electrical device comsumes for energy might consider purchasing a power meter very simple device that allows you to plug your appliance in series with the device and instantly display and record watts & kwh, elapsed time, cost per month....

See it,, read about it here,

http://www.brandelectronics.com/meters.html#model20ctr

and

www.doubleed.com

Aloha HADave


















Edited by - HADave on 09/18/2006 14:32:28

[jdirgo]

Mine runs $200 a month and I have to be honest, I'm not as good about managing it as I could -- I use an electric dryer. I try to be good about light and using compact fluorescents, but I could do better.

Oh, and that is for two people.

John Dirgo, RA, ABR, e-PRO
Island Trust Properties, LLC
808-987-9243 cell

Edited by - jdirgo on 09/18/2006 18:06:02

[sher]

The http://www.heco.com site has a home energy check to get a handle on your electric use, and some great energy saving tips. Turning lights off is great, and I have all fluorescents, and look forward to the new generation of LCD lights. They last “forever”, don’t get hot like halogen, and use manini power. Just waiting for the prices to come down. But the real savings comes from the energy hogs.
Biggest is hot water. Instantaneous heaters are super. Absolutely loved the one in my last house. But here I am putting in solar as soon as I repair my roof. Technology has improved greatly in recent years. If you live in an area with a lower solar index you just get an extra panel. Actually I have decided to get a full solar system to run my whole house. When my system is generating extra power it runs my meter BACKWARDS. It takes a while to pay for itself, but if the world gets really weird I will be able to be self-sufficient. Anyone who has lived here through a hurricane/windstorm, tsunami/flood, or longshoreman strike knows just how isolated life on a rock can be.
I also suggest investing in energy saving appliances. I have a European style washer/dryer. Washer uses low energy, washes twice the load with half the water and half the soap, and gets clothes almost as dry as an extractor. They are almost dry when done, and I have never seen cleaner clothes. I line dry when I can, then just fluff for a couple of minutes. I had a greenhouse uv-protectant 10x10 tarp made to go over my clothesline, although sometimes I just put clothes on hangers and hang on shower rod.
I got an energy efficient stove with convection oven and that took off $20-30/mo. But the biggest change came from replacing my old fridge. I looked for an energy star model and found that the usage among these models have a huge range. I found one with about 400KWH/yr model. Some energy star had 700 or more, almost twice as much! I expected a $20-30 savings, but my bill went down, get this, $70 a month!
I am sorry this post is so long, but saving energy is a bigger issue than just saving $ on electric bill, especially living on the most isolated land on the planet.


Do what you like. Like what you do.

[Kelena]

Thanks for the great information on energy savings. I, too, think that being energy independent in these uncertain times is a really good idea. I am leery of instant hot water heaters, because the only one I ever had was when I lived in Paris and took baths in my sink (back when I could fit in a Parisian sink without looking absolutely ridiculous --the apartment was six flights up). The water never got warm. I presume they have gotten a lot better.

I think I know the washer-dryer you are talking about. I have one in my little condo in New Orleans. It is a combination. Fits in a closet, and gets the clothes very dry, but not crispy dry. You have to fluff them a little (it's an LG). Very little soap. Very little water. Works like magic and you don't have to switch from washer to dryer.

I would like to have a solar hot water heater, but I haven't really seen any of those in Puna so I am thinking it might be too cloudy.

[Carey]

Glen, There are quite a few solar hot water heaters in Puna, In fact when we rented in HPP we had a pseudo solar hot water heater. The normal electric hat water heater was in a separate 'shed' in the car part, on teh west side of the house. On most days, that was enough sun to heat the water in the tank for toasty showers. There seems to have been a lot of heaters added a few years ago, then not so much, and now they are being added again (most likely due to the price of fuel here).
Aloha, Carey

[Hotzcatz]

I adore Helco, their ticker symbol is HE and they pay great dividends and have been doing it for the past seventy years! Of course, our house runs on sunshine so we don't have to pay them, they pay us.

We have four photovoltaic solar panels feeding a 1,500 watt inverter and a battery bank of twelve batteries. Those are five years old and still working fine. However, it will cost about $600 to replace them in a year or two. There is a power pole 50 feet from our house, but since we didn't have a building permit - our house was built in 1911 before the building department existed so Helco wouldn't attach us to power until we had one. At the time it was easier to go solar, since then we've found out that we could have gotten power anyway since our house is grandfathered and doesn't need a building permit. Anything built before 1915 which has documentation prior to 1930 doesn't require a permit. I'm sure there aren't many buildings which can fit in that category, but this one does so had we known that at the time, we could have gotten attached to the grid. It is nice to not have any electric bills and kinda fun to turn all the lights on when the grid goes down.

The refrigerator is electric, the aquarium pump is always on, the lights are all flourescent (I'm waiting to get the new LED lights which use a fraction of the power necessary for flourescent lights), the TV is huge and there's several computers as well as a plotter. The washing machine and miscellaneous power tools - grinders, saws, drill press, etc. are all electric too. We can run the electric popcorn popper if everything else is off since that pulls 1,450 watts. (Unless we start the generator, then we have many more watts.) The stove and instantaneous water heater are propane, although we have some solar water heating panels which we will install at some time. We have the "iron sun" (gas generator) for when we either want to run too many power tools or have had too much shade. That will be run several hours a month in the summer and several hours a week in winter. Eventually, we will add a few more photovoltaic panels and then hopefully we won't need to run the generator at all.

The whole system was $4,600 for parts only. There are the four panels, the inverter and a charge controller. The wires to connect the batteries together are welding cables with soldered on ends (cheaper to build our own cables than to buy them - especially when we needed a dozen of them) and the rest of the electrical system for the house is just regular 120 volt stuff.

It has been about five years since it was installed and the system has probably just about paid for itself now. We still have a few expenses for propane and gas for the generator so we wouldn't be saving the full $125 each month that we had been paying for electric at our last house. If we have been saving $75 each month for the past five years, then the system has be paid for by now.