Join me everyday in February as I share ways to save money on just about anything you need, want, use!
How to save on your electric bill
- Run ceiling fans 24/7/365. In the winter, flip that little switch on your fan. It reverses the blades (speaking from experience, dust the blades first!). Heat rises and the reversed blades push the warm air down from the ceiling keeping it where you are are and not on the ceiling. This helps you keep your thermostat lower. (Honestly, I used to keep my thermostat on 70-72 degrees in the winter and couldn’t figure out why it was still so cold! Since reversing the blades on our fans, our thermostat stays between 66 and 68 degrees in the winter!
Running your fans the right way in the summer can make your room feel up to 3 degrees cooler, meaning you have to use less AC! - Time when you use your heat producing appliances. In the winter, cooking helps heat up the house. When I’m finished with the oven, I leave the door cracked slightly to let the heat escape into the room. Same with the dishwasher!
In the summer, obviously, you want to use your oven as little as possible (try the slowcooker!) and wait late at night (when it’s cooler – and everyone is going to bed) to run the dishwasher. No one will mind the extra heat! Same is true if your washer and dryer is in an occupied portion of the house (thankfully ours is in the basement so I don’t have to worry about it heating up the house in the summer!) - See more ways to Stay Warm For Less tips
- Obviously, the best way to use less electricity is to turn things off when you are not using them! Turn lights out when you leave the room. Use less lights (a lamp over your shoulder versus brighter overhead lights). Don’t let the TV or radio run all the time just for the background noise. Change out lightbulbs to a lesser wattage. I’ve found that 75 watt bulbs are just fine in fixtures that I used to keep 100 watt bulbs in.
- Switch to CFL bulbs.
- Find out if you power company has budget billing and enroll. This protects you from the sharp spikes in your bill like say, when you’ve had two weeks of brutal winter and your bill is over $200. You still pay for what you use, but it’s averaged out over 12 months and you pay the same amount each month.
Watch out on the budget billing for the electric. Com Ed will average out your bill for 12 months, but at the end of the 12 months you can be hit with a large bill to make up the difference between what they billed you and what you used. I'm speaking from experience. I now prefer to pay for what electricity I actually use.
Hmmm….I guess everywhere is different. I'm on Alabama Power and they keep up with how much over or under you are (it's printed on your bill). If you reach a certain amount one way or the other, they will re-average your bill. If you've been way under then your bill will go down some, if you've been over it'll go up. But not drastically. Ours went up $12 this month because we've had a ridiculously cold winter. But I look for us to use way under our new average as it starts to warm up. So hopefully by summer, it'll re-average again and go down.