It seems that electricity costs are ever on the rise. This is made worse when electricity is wasted. There are many ways to save money on your electric bills. Some are more significant than others.The following will show you calculate the cost of running any electric appliance, from a night lamp to your clothes dryer. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Find on the appliance its power usage. This will be a number followed by a "W" which stands for watts, or by "kW" which stands for kilowatts (thousands of watts). If the units are W, divide by 1000 to get the power usage in kW. For a typical lamp with three 60W bulbs this would be 0.180 kW.
2. If the appliance is one that runs for a set time, use your watch to measure how long it takes to run. If it is on as long as you keep it switched on, estimate how many hours per day on average you leave the appliance (e.g. lamp) on. For example, if you are at work for 10 hours a day, and sleep 8 hours a day, your lamp may be on for about 6 hours per day on average.
3. Multiply the average time per day the appliance is on by its power usage in kW. This is the energy used by the appliance, measured in kilowatt hours or kWh. In the above example this would be 1.08 kWh.
4. Find on your electricity bill your cost per kWh. This should be the sum of the distribution charge and the generation charge. Typically this may be close to $0.11/kWh.
5. Multiply the power usage of the appliance by the cost of electricity, obtaining the average cost of running the appliance in dollars per day. For our lamp example this would be about $0.12/day or about $3.56/month.
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