Living off the grid, people contact me to ask how they can cut the cost of their electric bill, without changing over to alternative energy sources. For anyone who is trying to cut energy costs, here are some ideas to get you started.

Main Energy Users

You can apply some of the same principles an off the grid home uses, but use it to drastically cut your electrical power usage. Of course, the main energy hogs are the ones that use heat, such as electric heat, electric hot water, electric stove and oven and the electric clothes dryer. Air conditioning, as well. These appliances use huge amounts of your electric power, eating up your watts as soon as they are turned on.

 Used to be switching to propane or natural gas for water heating, home heat, cooking and clothes drying, along with more efficient refrigerators and freezers would offer much savings. Now it is questionable with the price of fuels. Research before you buy or change over to another system. For an air conditioning alternative, there is evaporative cooling systems. Changing to energy efficient appliances can instantly cut off more than three quarters of what you usually pay for electricity.

 Lighting

So the very first thing I tell these people to do, is to change all their light bulbs to the newer compact fluoroscents. Screw in light bulbs should be mostly compact fluorescent lights, using about one quarter the power of regular bulbs while giving the same brightness and color. Timers are great for children's rooms and rooms that the lights get left on.

Computers

 And especially for anyone who is thinking of replacing a computer. Replace your big desk top computers with laptops. They use much less power. We run 2 laptops over 12 hours a day on very little power. A desk top (actually it is the monitor) uses as much in a few hours, as our's do in a week. The monitors are what you have to watch. There are newer more efficient ones added to the market every day. So really look at what kind of power they will be using and costing you to run. If you must use one of those old big ones, turn it off when you are not using it.

Cooking Ranges

Newer gas cooking ranges have what is called a "glow bar" in the oven. It uses electricity, so even if your power is out, you can't use the oven. This is an electric red-hot glow-bar pilot in the oven that consumes 400 watts all the time the oven is used! Instead, look for one of two types of pilot light ovens. An oven with regular gas flame pilot light is the simplest. Better is an oven pilot that lights by electric spark when the oven is started and goes off when the oven is finished. Propane or natural gas stoves with gas pilot lights need no power connection at all.

Another option would be no options! Yes, that's what I did when purchasing my brand new Premier propane range, It has no timer, no oven light, no light on top and no clock. You can purchase a separate timer for a few dollars just about anywhere. And most people already have a clock in their kitchen anyway. Same with lighting. Remember you do pay for all those little options. Plus they are electric users.

 Refrigeration

Ordinary AC refrigerators and freezers run on over 200 watts AC, and run many hours a day. Most have less than 2 inch insulation. Fortunately, special refrigerators and freezers are available which use less than 30% as much energy. Sunfrost refrigerator products have 4- to 6-inch insulation, and a quality compressor on top where it can’t put heat back into the box. The RF-12 model runs 50 watts for 12 hours a day, totaling 600 watt hours a day. Compare that to the standard models which use around 3000 watt hours each day. Just think how that would cut that electric bill down!

Laundry

 It goes without saying that another big saving for any household is to hang your laundry outside. I do that, and even in the snowy cold winter of New York state. It is no big deal to me, and I admit to liking the way my home looks with my laundry hanging on the line. You could use a gas dryer and that would give you some savings, but of course there is the price of the fuel, and it still uses some electricity. The Staber washing machine is also built with the off the grid family in mind. But what a savings for the family on the grid as well! It is a simply designed machine with under 200 watts running power, with only a larger surge at the start of the spin cycle. Which means that 165 watts per load is way less than any other regular washing machine uses. It's a double plus, as it uses less than half as much water per load as other machines as well. Spins faster than others, saving more energy in faster drying on the clothes line or in your dryer. So if you do alot of wash each week, this is a good way to save on the electric bill every month.

Ghost Loads

There are some appliances that consume your power twenty-four hours a day, even when you think they are turned off. Televisions, stereos, office equipment, garage door openers and many, many others. These appliances, really need to turned off when you are not using them. By turned off, I mean the plug is pulled out, or on a outlet strip that is turned off. Remember little things count when you are trying to cut your usage back. So you see, you can drastically reduce your bill, but you have to work at it. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Once you start living this way on a regular basis, you should see your power bill drop to about 100-300 kilowatt hours a month. That would be a welcome change, I am sure.

If you are interested in setting up your own small homestead and small solar system, I have detailed the way I did it in my eBook, My Homesteading Journey. It is 66 pages with photographs as well. Comes as a PDF file and you can download it onto your computer. Copywritten by me and you will not be able to purchase it anywhere else for a penny.  It is listed for sale in the eBooks category. I think you'll like it.