Has your electric bill gone down if you have a lot of LED bulbs?

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

Programmable Tstats save an average of $200 a year, swinging no more than 2-3 degrees. I learned that back in HS.

When I bought my house it had the old mercury stat that would run away with cooling or heat. Lots of wasted power there.

 

[Zerk]

Programmable Tstats save an average of $200 a year, swinging no more than 2-3 degrees. I learned that back in HS.

When I bought my house it had the old mercury stat that would run away with cooling or heat. Lots of wasted power there.

You can do the same thing by turning down at bed. But I agree cheap ones are savings. There are some $$, that are not worth it. Ones you can talk to with your phone. Nice novelty to do it from kitchen chair, but a novelty.

I have an older programmable, and I do like it.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

You can do the same thing by turning down at bed. But I agree cheap ones are savings. There are some $$, that are not worth it. Ones you can talk to with your phone. Nice novelty to do it from kitchen chair, but a novelty.

I have an older programmable, and I do like it.

I have a Honeywell 8000 series which they no longer make, the new version has wifi. I wanted one that would be smart enough to work my heat pump and a NG furnace (I will be installing this summer) without having to have a fossil fuel kit, I also am going to wire up a outdoor sensor to the stat and set up parameters to shut the heatpump down and just run the emergency heat (NG furnace) below 32 degrees.

So I had to spend a bit more for a stat that was smart enough to handle all that.

I will be curious how much I save in utilities setting my system up this way.

 

[Zerk]

Programmable Tstats save an average of $200 a year, swinging no more than 2-3 degrees. .

$200 may be on the high end. I think it is, if only dropping 2-3. But I am not positive.
I heat with LP, which depending on the market can be the highest to heat with. I spend $1000 a year including stove, which really isn't that much. I use nesco alot. I used to be over 1500, before I insulated. Same time prices did drop in LP too.

I drop mine 6 degrees at night, and when I am not at home, to 58. 2x4 walls too.

It certainly helps, 2-3 degrees, isn't much. If heating with nat gas, I would really doubt that.



Plus you are down south. $200 I would think would be a big chunk of your heat bill for the year.

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

$200 may be on the high end. I think it is, if only dropping 2-3. But I am not positive.
I heat with LP, which depending on the market can be the highest to heat with. I spend $1000 a year including stove, which really isn't that much. I use nesco alot. I used to be over 1500, before I insulated. Same time prices did drop in LP too.

I drop mine 6 degrees at night, and when I am not at home, to 58. 2x4 walls too.

It certainly helps, 2-3 degrees, isn't much. If heating with nat gas, I would really doubt that.



Plus you are down south. $200 I would think would be a big chunk of your heat bill for the year.

If you swing more than 4 degrees your wasting money, the energy it takes to heat up or cool off the house takes more energy than your saving.

Just like a hot water tank it's better to let things be consistent.

In order to save the $170-$200 a year it's critical the swing is only a few degrees.

I'm in central Ohio lol we get in triple digits in the summer and double negative digits in the winter. Thanks to the Great Lakes it can be 75 degrees one day and 25 high within 24 hours, it's done that a lot this winter.

 

[Zerk]

If you swing more than 4 degrees your wasting money, the energy it takes to heat up or cool off the house takes more energy than your saving.

I'm in central Ohio lol wer.

I have wondered about the swings. I talked to alot of folks who said if you are not heating you are not heating. Not to say there are right. I have a boiler which heats slow.

Do you have any links to show numbers?

Keep in mind, you are still in OH, lattitude is lattitude. 100 miles makes a huge difference. Few hundred even more.

It's always fun to watch you southern boys get bundled up. Your body adjust to it. I am bare chested in my chair and its 64 degrees in the house. I am thinking I need to take my socks off, getting hot.

 

[sixdogs]

If you swing more than 4 degrees your wasting money, the energy it takes to heat up or cool off the house takes more energy than your saving.

Just like a hot water tank it's better to let things be consistent.

In order to save the $170-$200 a year it's critical the swing is only a few degrees.

I'm in central Ohio lol we get in triple digits in the summer and double negative digits in the winter. Thanks to the Great Lakes it can be 75 degrees one day and 25 high within 24 hours, it's done that a lot this winter.

How can such swings have this kind of energy impact? Isn't heat, well, heat and heating something back to the level it was beforehand cost more? It should cost less but I don't understand the heat concept.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I switched almost everything over to CFLs 20 years ago. The exception was my wife's insistence on having dimmable can lights in the kitchen - 14 of them, each 65 watts, and she was bad about leaving them on. Going to dimmable LEDs dropped the load from 910 watts to 140. Watching the pennies dribble out of the can lights raised my blood pressure, but the LED lights are healthier.

Another big improvement was going from the old CRT computer monitors and TV sets to LED sets. I replaced all the windows and doors with more efficient units, and added attic and subfloor insulation. Energy star everything from a front loading washer to a new computer dropped power consumption too. I have about stayed even with rate increases, so my power bill today is about what it was 22 years ago when I bought this place. What used to look OK now looks like quite a bargain. My highest bill last winter was about $140, and that is my only utility bill. I just met with a HVAC contractor this afternoon to replace the 22 year old heat pump with a modern unit that supposedly is 40% more efficient. I don't need to refrigerate my garage, or I would switch to a heat pump water heater too.

 

[Zerk]

I switched almost everything over to CFLs 20 years ago. The exception was my wife's insistence on having dimmable can lights in the kitchen - 14 of them, each 65 watts, and she was bad about leaving them on. Going to dimmable LEDs dropped the load from 910 watts to 140. Watching the pennies dribble out of the can lights raised my blood pressure, but the LED lights are healthier.

Another big improvement was going from the old CRT computer monitors and TV sets to LED sets. I replaced all the windows and doors with more efficient units, and added attic and subfloor insulation. Energy star everything from a front loading washer to a new computer dropped power consumption too. I have about stayed even with rate increases, so my power bill today is about what it was 22 years ago when I bought this place. What used to look OK now looks like quite a bargain. My highest bill last winter was about $140, and that is my only utility bill. I just met with a HVAC contractor this afternoon to replace the 22 year old heat pump with a modern unit that supposedly is 40% more efficient. I don't need to refrigerate my garage, or I would switch to a heat pump water heater too.

Are you ahead, or behind money, 20 years later?

 

[BrokeFarmerJohn]

How can such swings have this kind of energy impact? Isn't heat, well, heat and heating something back to the level it was beforehand cost more? It should cost less but I don't understand the heat concept.

The idea is a simple one, let's say in heating your set point is 70 degrees and at that temp your comfortable, in order to maintain that 70 degrees takes X amount of energy all day.

If you lower the temp by 2 degrees for 10 hours of the day and multiply that by 365 it adds up to 3,650 hours of 2 degrees less you had to heat which is a measurable less amount of energy saved per year.

In your house if your set point is 70 degrees everything in your house is 70 degrees, the walls, floors, carpet ext. that's your load, that's what the furnace is heating as well as the air, it's like having a freezer full of frozen goods and unplugging the freezer, that space will stay cold a longer time because of the BTU's the frozen goods are absorbing.

Now take that house that was 70 degrees and lower it to 60 degrees, it cools off everything in the house, when you flip the stat back up to 70 degrees it now has to heat up the whole house again, it has to run harder and longer to catch up, the harder and longer it's running to catch up exceeds the energy it originally took to keep the load at a consistent temp.

A better example would be a hot water tank, that hot water tank will run an average of 3 hours per day, that's how they get there estimated yearly cost of operation.

So normally that tank runs for 3 hours a day to keep 40 gallons of water at 120 degrees. Let's drop that temp down a few degrees for 15 hours a day and now it runs for 2 hours and 50 mins a day but you still have the 120 degree water when you need it. Shutting your furnace off for 8 hours a day is like opening the hot side faucet for 20 mins, that tank is now gonna be on for over an hour to get that temp back up to 120 so now it runs for 4 hours total that day. If that makes sense.

Lowering the temp of a house or appliance for 8-10 hours a day will save energy, but swing too much and you burnt more energy up than you net to save.