How Much of Your Electric Bill is for Lighting?

Diavolicchio · Oct 14, 2010

I've heard many people say that the single biggest user of electricity in a home is the refrigerator. I'm about to build a new place here in Maine this coming year and have been pretty meticulous about calculating everything that will require electricity and approximately how much I should expect each item to consume every month based upon anticipated usage in kWh. I was curious to see if indeed the refrigerator would be the biggest culprit. What I discovered was a bit of an eye opener.

My anticipated monthly electric bill will likely be around 785 kWh, or just shy of $110/month. Of this $110, the biggest user by far will be lighting at around 233 kWh/month. This comes out to about 30% of my bill, or roughly $33/month, and this is using mostly CFLs. Another surprise was the well pump at around 11.5% (I won't be on town water.) The fridge? It'll likely only constitute around 5.7%, and it's not even an Energy Star appliance.

I'm curious if anyone else on here has figured out just how much money they're spending on lighting in a given month, and if so, what percentage that is of your electric bill.

Anyone willing to run the numbers?

John

nate379 · Oct 14, 2010

Maybe $10-15 of my bill is lights. My bill is usually around $60-65 a month. Electric costs $0.19 per killowatt.

What do you do to use that much electricity? That is about 2.5x what I use per month.

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

Nate:

I'll have a lot of lights, especially in the garage/workshop. In addition to the well pump I mentioned, I'll have 3 large chest freezers for storing things from the farm.

Lighting, well pump and chest freezers will constitute nearly 60% of my electric bill. I've also got a little bit of electric radiant heat beneath the bathroom floor as well as below the front sidewalk/steps to melt the ice/snow before I'm up in the morning. These are purely an indulgence.

By the way, my bill should run around 1.8x of yours. But it IS more than I was expecting.

John

nate379 · Oct 15, 2010

Your math is wrong. I use about 300 kw a month.

Your post said 785KW.

2.5 times 300 is 750.

I have plenty of lights as well, but have no need to have them all on. Normally at night the only lights that are on is the front porch light and the kitchen light. If I am in the garage, well it's just 4 lights in there, ~250 watts in total.

Main electric users in my house is the fridge for sure and then a couple fans to move heat around from the stove.

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

Nate:

I was going by cost instead of kWh: $110 vs $62.50. I should've clarified. Sorry about that.

I also work from a home office and am likely home a bit more than you are.

Everyone lives a bit differently. I'm just intrigued with what the breakdown is for other folks. I appreciate you sharing your numbers.

John

dankicksass · Oct 15, 2010

My garage has its own meter, about $6/mo for total energy use. Lights, battery chargers, bug zappers, pumps, saws, doors, yada yada yada.

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

That's pretty damn efficient, Dan.

John

MattT · Oct 15, 2010

Diavolicchio said:
the biggest user by far will be lighting at around 233 kWh/month.

Either your math is way off or you're fixing to light that place up like the 4th. That consumption figure is 1kw of lighting burning 7.76 hours/day :shocking:

If I burned every light in my shack and my "shop" 24/7 I wouldn't use that much electricity. My lighting is mostly CFL with a couple T8 fixtures.

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

Matt:

I'm probably going a bit overboard on the lighting in the garage/workshop. There will be 36 - 4' fluorescent tubes in all, each producing around 3,300 lumens. So yes, they'll probably be able to see the place from the Space Station. But I'll only have the parts of the garage lit up that I'm actually using at any one time. It'll be zoned into 4 sections.

John

MattT · Oct 15, 2010

John,

Figuring in the shop lighting maybe your math isn't that far off. With them all burning you've got well over a kw burning just in the shop. The way you say you'll use the lighting I still think your estimate is a little high though.

When estimating your total consumption don't forget to include computers and tvs and such. They can easily use a couple hundred watts each which adds up. And if you're heating water with electricity figure that in too.

dankicksass · Oct 15, 2010

Diavolicchio said:
That's pretty damn efficient, Dan.

John

I don't like paying bills where I don't have to. It's a working garage, pretty sizable (3Wx2D) half T8's and half "100W" CFLs from the good people at the NJ energy commission, I think they're 15 or 17W consumption. All my work lights and area lighting is fluorescent, up til today anyway, just bought a new halogen 1000W. No refrigerator, only run the air compressor when I need it, heat isn't turned on cause it doesn't work right now; if it keeps not working the whole place will get a whole lot less efficient with a readyheater. Immediate projects: get the SS out of the garage, finish fixing the heat, gut and rewire the garage. I hate BX, can't find a ground in half the fixtures thanks to the last owner, he thought he was an electrician.

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

MattT said:
When estimating your total consumption don't forget to include computers and tvs and such. They can easily use a couple hundred watts each which adds up. And if you're heating water with electricity figure that in too.

Matt:

I'm pretty sure I've got everything factored in, from the occasional use of an iron, toaster, vacuum cleaner and disposal to the cell phone charger, garage door opener and UPS for the computer.

Hot water and space heating will be handled with propane.

John

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

MattT said:
John,

Figuring in the shop lighting maybe your math isn't that far off. With them all burning you've got well over a kw burning just in the shop. The way you say you'll use the lighting I still think your estimate is a little high though.

MattT:

If it is a little high, I'd like to catch this now rather than later. How are you concluding this? Let me know, would ya? Thanks.

John

MattT · Oct 15, 2010

John,

You've certainly got the potential to burn that much electricity for lighting but I don't think you'll use that much month to month based on what you've said thus far. It all depends on how you'll be using the place. Burning one or two bays of workshop lights 8 hours 5 days a week and occasional use of the upstairs guest suite is unlikely to use the amount of electricity you've estimated. Then again if you're a workaholic and the upstairs will be used regularly....

BTW I took a look at your website. You're spending a lot up front to give low running costs for the place. I'm impressed :thumbup:

Diavolicchio · Oct 15, 2010

Matt:

Thanks for the additional input. Much appreciated.

I guess I never clarified how this guest apartment/garage/workshop would be used. I'm actually going to be living there myself until I get around to building the adjacent cottage, which will be about 80 feet away. It could be a year or two. I want to be living on site though so it'll be painless to be the GC for the cottage when the time comes.

I do most of my work from a home office, so I did my calculations with the assumption that I would be living and working out of this first structure until the cottage is built. Once the cottage is completed, the apartment will become a place for friends to stay when they visit so they can stay as long as they like and not feel as if they're underfoot.

Thanks for your thumbs up on the systems I'm putting in place to make this a really energy efficient space. I am going a bit overboard, which is my nature, but the resulting BTUs necessary to keep the apartment at 70F in the dead of winter are estimated to not exceed 4,500 BTUs/hour, which has me pretty happy. It's not all that prudent to be building a place these days that's still reliant on fossil fuels for space heating and hot water, but the propane necessary will be used so judiciously that the costs will be minimal. That I can live with.

In contrast, the cottage will rely on a super-efficient wood pellet boiler for both space heating and hot water, and be further supplemented by a solar PV system. It should be a sweet system once in place.

Thanks again,

John

dankicksass · Oct 15, 2010

I just had a look at your plan and I'm surprised by the cozy size, don't see a lot of 1BR homes being built in the past few years. I didn't expect to see a new home without FHA and A/C, pellets and split ductless aren't popular down in Jersey. I figured with a well you'd have planned to dig for geothermal too, given the trend. I hope you enjoy your new home, it does look very nice and the plan shows it will last for generations.

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

Dan:

Thanks for the great note.

The little house itself is really a 2BR, but I'll be using one of the bedrooms as a home office. Guests will eventually have the guest apartment all to themselves.

I gave a bit of thought to going the geothermal route, but really liked what I learned about the super-efficient wood pellet boilers that are being used all throughout Europe. Plus, I hate doing what everyone else seems to be doing. I guess I'm just not much of a conformist.

How do you heat your place in NJ?

John

dankicksass · Oct 16, 2010

Now, oil; in ground tank for the house, above ground tank for the garage; garage heat doesn't work right now as noted. The home is 60-70 years old, garage is 40-50, lack of documentation makes it tough to know the exact age of structure. House tank has to go, it's not leaking now that I know of but it's past its estimated end of life. The home uses baseboard rad heat, not particularly comfortable, too many hot zones. Future heat will likely be piped natural gas for convenience and some electric radiant in the bathrooms. It's eco friendly and there's a lot of it in the good ole American soil still. I'd love to do geothermal but I don't want to absorb the initial cost without building a new home. Unless I go FHA, I'll probably go with split ductless A/C like you did; I've been looking at one for the garage's future heating and cooling needs. I really don't know if I want to do all the plumbing for FHA yet. Home HVAC isn't today's project for me though.

fflintstone · Oct 16, 2010

Boy when you first posted for garage lights and talked about being a little **** about figuring out stuff in advance, you were not kidding. I had thought I was insane submitting about 40 pages of plans for my 1,326 SF “cottage”. WOW you picked out the paint and everything!
Your over all usage seams high to me. For me (in the past) the biggest influence on my electric bill is how much welding I do (it could raise the bill $10-$20) :shocking:

. While having TWO places my total kw’s used was less than your total. Now (not by choice) I only have one place, and I have yet to accurately check my electric usage (maybe higher due to electric HW). I am cringing at the nearly 3,000 watts of lighting my shop will take.

DzNuts · Oct 16, 2010

Any idea what a TV costs to run for an hour?

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

DzNuts:

It totally depends on the TV and cost of electricity where you live. Those numbers could be all over the map.

I've got a 46-inch plasma screen that is estimated to use 281 watts/hour, or 0.281 kW. Electricity where I live is 14.83 cents/kW, so it costs me:

0.281 x 14.83 = 4.17 cents/hour

CNET estimates that the cost to run my particular TV is roughly $65/year, which assumes I've got the TV on about 4 1/4 hours/day. For me it's maybe an hour or two a day, so I'm paying between $25 and $30/year for the electricity needed for the TV, which includes the tiny amount of electricity the TV continues to draw even when it's not on.

Hope this helps.

John

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

fflintstone said:
Boy when you first posted for garage lights and talked about being a little **** about figuring out stuff in advance, you were not kidding.

FFlintstone:

I won't deny that I'm a little OCD when it comes to this stuff, but I plan on building just one house (and garage) with the intentions of living there until I'm old and feeble. Given the rise in the cost of fuel over the past few years and the uncertainty of how much more out of hand it's going to get, I wanted to design this place to be no larger than I need and to make it as energy efficient as possible without sacrificing a few indulgences (like a decent gas range and a 6-head shower.)

I figure the less I leave to chance in the design process, the faster things will go up, and the less likely I'll have to incur any charges for revising things midstream. Make sense?

John

fflintstone · Oct 16, 2010

Diavolicchio said:
FFlintstone:

I won't deny that I'm a little OCD when it comes to this stuff, but I plan on building just one house (and garage) with the intentions of living there until I'm old and feeble. Given the rise in the cost of fuel over the past few years and the uncertainty of how much more out of hand it's going to get, I wanted to design this place to be no larger than I need and to make it as energy efficient as possible without sacrificing a few indulgences (like a decent gas range and a 6-head shower.)

I figure the less I leave to chance in the design process, the faster things will go up, and the less likely I'll have to incur any charges for revising things midstream. Make sense?

John

Of course it makes sense, and for the most part I was along the very same line when building my home 10 years ago. Albeit with one Major difference. I had to design my house first and foremost to be as cheap as possible to construct. I also had to work within the limits of my abilities and resources, as I built the house almost entirely MYSELF. While I have friends to thank for A LOT, I can honestly say that at least 85% of every nail, screw, piece of insulation, drywall ETC was done buy me.
Now I find myself making a lot more concessions to money, being unemployed for 16 months has changed my perspective. I am really hoping to pour a concrete floor in my shop within the next week. The concrete will cost around $2,100 just for the transit mix. There is no money for insulation & pex for infloor heat. 4” slab not 5 or 6. ETC.
I joined this board in hopes of finding a guide (printed resource or online info) to where to put each piece of shop equipment in relationship to the other. To date I have not found what I am looking for. I found plenty about how to set up a woodworking shop, but nothing about metalworking and shop tools. I also need an explanation as to why to put this next to that. I have gained a lot of insight but not found what I want.
I too like to plan things out before hand. I like to do things logically (this has recently been a problem area for my wife and I). Having a plan helps me to be frugal, and being able to change things according to what materials come up cheaply is a plus as well. We tend to think the same in general, but we come at it from different perspective due to our resources.

Although this was before I finished the deck, this is the house I came up with, working within my means.

MattT · Oct 16, 2010

John,

For full time occupancy your number is probably good.

I wouldn't worry too much about propane. You can reduce the cost considerably buying it in the summer. Also as fossil fuels become more expensive there will be a knock on effect driving up the price of nat gas and electricity.

Also have you considered solar hot water?

DzNuts said:
Any idea what a TV costs to run for an hour?

Mostly depends on size and technology when the set is on. Bigger draws more power and tube tvs draw more power than lcds.

Standby draw is the other variable. Best I'm aware of use about 0.5w but some use much more than that.

If you want to know for sure how much your TV is using buy a Kill a Watt to find out the power usage then muliply that figure by the rate on your light bill.

kbs2244 · Oct 16, 2010

What kind of water heater?

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

Matt:

I considered solar hot water, but decided to go a different route for more efficient hot water. I'll be using something called a GFX, which is a shower drain heat recovery system. It's basically a long copper coil wrapped around the shower drain that preheats the cold water about to be fed into the water heater with the hot shower going down the drain. It should preheat the water coming into the house by somewhere between 16 and 18 degree before the water heater brings it up to 110F. Cost is about $3,500, relative to the $10,000 for the evacuated tube hot water system. It seemed to be the way to go for me given that I like taking long, hot showers.

Here's a photo of a much more elaborate GFX (used in a laundry to help recoup the energy from water going down a drain,) but you'll get the general idea. Cold water travels up the coils from below and the hot water preheats the coils as it empties down the drain.

The GFX I'll be going with will just be two sections of pipe, each 80" long:

John

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

kbs2244 said:
What kind of water heater?

KBS:

I'll be going with a Triangle Tube Smart 120 indirect-fired water heater that will be heated by a Triangle Tube Prestige Solo 250 condensing high-efficiency LP gas boiler. The Smart 120 will receive preheated water from the GFX as mentioned in the previous post.

John

Diavolicchio · Oct 16, 2010

fflintstone said:
Although this was before I finished the deck, this is the house I came up with, working within my means.

FFlintstone:

I'm impressed. That's a great accomplishment. I can't imagine actually building a place myself. You should post some more pics of the place. I'd love to see them.

John

How Much of Your Electric Bill is for Lighting?

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