paradise ali

Back in the beginning part of February, I bitched about wrote about our humongous January electric bill that increased by more than $100 since December.   Apparently I wasn’t the only one who complained.  Both newspapers ran an article by Jason Armstrong with different headlines, “Electric Bills Stun Isle Residents” in Hawai`i Tribune Herald and “HELCO Charges Customers Fuel Surcharge” in West Hawaii Today.  Our skyrocketing costs are, of course, related to the price of oil.   The image below from West Hawaii Today is an “average” user’s bill (we have a bigger family and a bigger bill) and an explanation of the itemized charges.  Note that, “Energy cost adjustment: Reflects oil prices”

 If we only knew two years ago that we could have easily rolled the costs of installing a photovoltaic system into our refinance, we would have jumped at the chance.  Unfortunately, we didn’t.  So faced with the rising costs of everything in our isolated, oil dependent paradise, here’s what we did:

· Switch out the light bulbs for CFLs.  They burn way less energy and last longer than traditional bulbs.  They may seem more expensive out of the box but they actually come out as a much better value.

· Reduce the temperature on the electric water heater.  Some people also put it on a timer with good results.  We’d like to eventually change over to a tankless heater or solar. 

· Take shorter showers and use a low flow shower head.  Conserves electricity (assuming the use of an electric water heater) and water, too.

· Turn off the lights whenever you leave the room.   Easy enough.  I have a friend who uses a motion detector to turn lights off and on.  He’s an electrical engineer and likes to tinker with things. 

· Use less lights.  We have two light fixtures in our living room and, most of the time; we only need to use one.  Same thing with using lamps and the overhead lighting at the same time.  We don’t really need to use the hallway light either. 

· Cut down the use of halogen lights.  These are usually the lights in the range hood and over the vanity.  It’s overkill unless you are doing detailed work. 

· Use Energy Star rated products.  When we moved, we needed to buy appliances.  Our old, small size, stand alone freezer used more electricity than our present full size, freezer on the bottom, refrigerator.  We don’t run the freezer anymore.  Our front loading washing machine not only uses less electricity but also less water and less detergent.

· Use the oven less and the toaster oven more.  If you do use the conventional oven, try to bake something along with the meal to do double duty.  Take advantage of the heat and bake up another meal or batch of cookies or other baked goodness immediately after.

· Use the stove-top less and the crock pot/grill more.   Instead of simmering in a stew or soup on the stove for hours, it can easily be done in a crock pot.  We have an electric grill/griddle thing and it’s faster than using a frying pan on the stove because it has more surface area–two batches of pancakes instead of four on the stove. 

· Keep the freezer full.  Buy in bulk, make your meals ahead of time and freeze them or even make ice cubes.  The freezer doesn’t work so hard and suck as much electricity if it’s full.

· Vacuum the coils in the back of the fridge. Don’t forget to unplug it first!  You may also want to use a dust mask if you are sensitive.  We had to remove a panel to get in there.  Eww!  It was disgusting in there! 

· Stop opening the refrigerator door.  It’s not like anything changed since I peeked an hour ago!  It’s a bad habit of mine that I’m changing.

· Put on layers of clothes and socks instead of running the heater/wear less clothes if it’s hot.  It gets pretty cold here (for us, anyway) and the heater felt so nice on those cold mornings.  Yep, until we figured out how much it costs to run the darned thing!  Ouch!

· Do full loads of laundry and use cold water.  Our kids would sometimes throw in three pairs of jeans and a shirt or something.  Wastage! 

· Use the clothesline when possible.  My hanai mom used to dry things on the line and when they were just about dry, she’d stick them in the dryer to “make ‘em soft.”  It rains fairly often here and I admit that I don’t use the line as often as I should but the method is sound and it does work.  I usually dry at least the rugs and delicates on the line. 

· Probably the biggest thing?  Unplug (or turn off at the surge protector) items you are not using.  It’s not enough to turn the TV or toaster or blow dryer off.  As long as they are plugged in, they are sucking electricity. 

Pretty simple, huh?  In March 2007, we used 41.8 kwh/day.  In January 2008, we used and average of 40.2 kwh/day.  In March 2008, we used 25.1 kwh/day.  This is the lowest bill we’ve gotten in years!