Get Smart With Your Smart Meter!
Get Smart With Your Smart Meter!
By: Canadian Budget Binder
Everybody’s got ’em, some have ’em working already, others will be starting in May 2012 and most already hate ’em. You guessed it, I’m talking about the new TOU (Time Of Use) Smart Meters. Although not a new concept in the grand scheme of things, they’re here whether you like it or not.
There are other countries that have had a variety of “time of use” schemes for years. I can remember as a child in England me mum always had the hot water on a timer coz of “Economy7“.
Having cheaper electricity at certain times of the day has been natural for me, but for the Canadians I know it’s quite the sore point. What’s the problem? Well the Canadian climate for starters isn’t exactly stable, where swings of 70 degrees Celsius between summer and winter exist. Heating and Cooling the house is a major player in the bills department.
What did I do?
For starters I got rid of my old Mercury switch thermostat and replaced it with a 7 day programmable. I can set the thermostat warmer for when the fans kick in on cheap rate, then have it lower during expensive rate. The idea being that the residual heat from cheap rate inside the house gets us through to the next cheap rate time slot. I’m not entirely sure there’s any scientific merit in this strategy, but I’m always open to theories.
During the Weekend and Stat Holidays (Bank Holidays to us Brits) it’s different, it’s cheap all day, so if you leave the clothes washing til either the evening (after 7pm) or the weekend you’ll be on cheap rate.
Timers are another great idea if you want to run electrical equipment, set them up to only come on at cheap rate. Some electrical items may need to be left on all the time so you may have to research what you want on a timer.
In the summer when we need the air conditioning (A/C) on we try to wait it out for the cheap rate to kick in. Using the dehumidifier with the A/C dries out the house faster and aids in making it feel cooler and uses less electricity as you’re running the A/C for shorter periods of time. On cool nights I open all the windows and run a single fan…..one fan can actually get the house down to 16 degrees on a cool night.
Some people have suggested using the ceiling fans in conjunction with both the heating and the A/C……haven’t seen a great deal of difference to be honest. We always have the blinds shut in the summer months to reflect the sun’s energy just so it’s not heating up the house. We keep the blinds open during winter days to let warmth in but closed during the night.
The hot water is gas heated (same price all day) but you might want to think about yours and how you use it if it’s an electric water heater. Lime scale build up on the element won’t do it much good either. We have hot water cylinder jackets in the Uk but haven’t really seen them here. They’re basically a duvet for your tank to keep the water you just paid to heat up warmer for longer.
We have electric washers and dryers, they only do their required job on cheap rate.(yes we have 2 of each, long story) The clothes dryer however is rarely used as 99% of the time the clothes are hung especially in the summer months, coz sunshine and a warm breeze is free. A badly furred up exhaust line will cause your drier to work harder (not to mention it’s a fire hazard) and you’ll get to the point where it’s struggling to dry your clothes.
TIP– Do yourself a favour and clean it out.
I also upgraded the bathroom extractor fans to 150 cfm super quiet (energy star) instead of the builder grade 50 cfm noise polluters and fitted a timer with each. I know I have to run the bathroom fan, but I don’t wanna run back 2 hours later and turn it off coz I forgot about it !!!
All light bulbs in the house are of the Compact Fluorescent type, except those on the exterior of the house, just because they don’t do cold very well. If LED bulbs came down in price we’ll be swapping to those.
Even the TV’s in the house use less electricity, they are either LCD or LED rather than CRT (cathode ray tube) and unplugged from the wall when not in use.
Don’t use anything more than you have to, if it can wait until cheap rate then wait and do something else instead. I even plug the cell phone in on cheap rate and the rechargeable camera battery goes on cheap rate too.
I tape/sealed all ducting with metal tape (not duct tape) including the return air side, this increased the efficiency of the furnace by actually pulling cold air from the entire house (you can actually feel the suction on the return air registers). The 3 months following the tape job I changed the furnace filter 3 times due to the amount of crap it sucked out of the ductwork. It now heats/cools the house faster saving me money coz it’s on less.
Don’t boil more water than you need in the kettle. I even measured out cups/mugs and marked the amounts on the side of the kettle. This way I’m only boiling enough for 1 or 2 cups/mugs at a time instead of boiling twice the amount and leaving the rest to go cold again.
Think about when you’re boiling the kettle, are you up in the morning at 7am? Wouldn’t it be cheaper for you to get up 10 minutes earlier and run the kettle or the coffee maker before 7am, or use a timer or maybe the coffee maker has a built-in timer.
Running the oven on a standard sized range (30″ wide) is expensive especially if your only cooking something small purely because your paying to heat up a larger space than you need to……there’s a small convection toaster oven on the kitchen worktop in our house and is great at cooking small amounts of food. We watch what we cook and when we cook, in-fact, a lot of the time it’s cheaper for us to run the barbeque at 5pm and cook than run the full size stove.
Take advantage of the great Canadian summer and send your man into the garden and cook caveman style and get him saving money in the Budget !!
Old appliances can wallop your electricity bill due to being inefficient, if your unsure how much your appliances are using try using “Kill a Watt” usage meter, there available from most local Libraries (normal cost approx $60). The meter will tell you how much electricity you used with whatever was plugged in to it.
You’ll have to do the conversion to cost yourself, as an example here’s the washing machine on a cold load……..
- 0.24 kw/h used according to the usage meter
now add-on the adjustment factor (found on your electricity bill) and we get
- 0.249696 kw/h
now times that by the amount you pay per kw/h
- 0.249696 kw/h x 6.2 cents = 1.5481152 or 1.55 cents per load
compare that to expensive rate
- 0.249696 kw/h x 10.8 cents = 2.6967168 or 2.7 cents per load
That doesn’t sound a lot but it all adds up, remember 1.55 cents is based on 1 wash on cold and we have a gas-fired water heater running on cheap rate. If you want a warm wash at 5pm (expensive rate) and you have an electric-powered water heater you’ll be paying at least $0.54 cents (that’s almost 35 times the cost). Note that the water usage/cost hasn’t been added in which is another world of ludicrously expensive bills.
Environmentally unsound as it may seem I have a Petrol (Gas) driven lawn mower that doesn’t really use much fuel, probably fill the little tank 3-4 times over the growing season (small lawn). Imagine what it would cost me if I had an electric mower?
The days of endless cheap energy in North America are gone. The long and short of it……it’s gonna cost ya, just depends on whether you want to adapt to the way we use Smart Meters or not.
What do you do to save money with the Smart Meter?
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i really need to remember to turn things off that i don’t need at the time. it would save us a small fortune!
Turning off lights in the house in rooms that are not used is what we do. Thanks for posting chickypoodles… Mr.CBB
I dont have a smart meter but I shared this post with people I know because I want your coupons LOL
One day you might have a Smart Meter so the post is just as informative now as it will be when the time comes… I hope you get a chance to give it a read. Cheers Mr.CBB
I dont have a smart meter but my Mother does. She does laundry at night as well as any watering of the lawn or garden.
We also installed a rain barrel and hope to see some change in the water bill this summer, provided it rains. Thanks for your post Carmen and maybe you can pass along what you learned here to your mum. Mr.CBB
Great tips!!
My kids love running around to shut the lights off..
We have all the energy lights!
Good For , and getting the kids involved is great. Thanks for sharing Amie! Mr.CBB
I run my dishwasher after 11pm, hang dry clothes in the summer and have changed my light bulbs
We hang dry our clothes all year long.. some things we have to dry but not often at all… Thanks for your post Barbara! Mr.CBB
We do everything off peak hours…laundry before bed, run the dishwasher, etc
Hi Kelly, Thanks for your post … keep up the good work saving. Mr.CBB
Great post. Although I don’t actually think the smart meters are saving us money. If anything my electricity bill has gone up since the new meters have been in. I don’t know if anyone else is finding this as well?
We use the flourescent lights as well, to try and save energy.
We haven’t noticed a change per say but we haven’t noticed that it hasn’t went up. Our appliances are not energy efficient. We tested them all with the Kill a Watt tester and they are costing us some money… but then the old stuff is made better than the new stuff, so what do we do.. although we know we are getting rid of the big freezer. Cheers Mr.CBB
I am in Alberta, how do you find when the rates are higher or lower here?
Hi Theresa, You should contact your Hydro company for this information or source it online. Hope that helps. Mr.CBB
i do laundry at 7;00 pm at night at the cheap time so i save money with the smart meter also did the change off energy efficent light bulbs and appiances too
we unplug things not being used (chargers, game systems kettle, microwave, washer etc) laundry is done at 7 only or preferably on weekends, we don’t own a dishwasher so that’s one thing we don’t worry about here. I keep lighting minimal too if I can lol
We do the same, unplug anything we are not using.We don’t have a dishwasher either.. Mr.CBB is the dishwasher lol… Cheers Candice! Mr.CBB
Thank you for the tips! I haven’t done too much apparently, although we have converted all our lights bulbs to the energy saver ones a few years ago 🙂
Well at least you have taken one step to make a change. Good for you. Thanks for your post Amanda. Mr.CBB
Thanks for the tips. We’ve been on the smart meter for a couple of years now and have gotten use to doing things on off-peak hours. Our off-peak time used to be from 9:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m., was glad when it changed to the 7:00 p.m. start time. It’s also helpful that I have a day job and am not home weekdays.
Adjusting to the changes can be difficult for some but after a while it becomes the norm. Yes people who are home during the day suffer… they are at a disadvantage. Cheers Mr.CBB
I have already implemented some of these strategies since our meters have been active for a while now. Going to look into the light bulbs. I always thought they were so expensive so how could they save you money in the end. I guess I was wrong. One more way to try to outsmart the TOU meter.The biggest thing I do is use the items that require a lot of energy on the weekends. I do my laundry then and hang it out, I cook my husband’s lunches to freeze, I cook a nice meal in the oven and plan leftovers for a couple of days (during the week I don’t use the oven), I bake items for lunches on the weekend basically I try to avoid everything I can during the peak hours. I also charge batteries and laptops after 11 pm when it is the cheapest. Even with doing all I can to cut it stil seems like my bills are about the same as they were before the TOU. I guess it is better than having them go up if I wasn’t watchingn so closely.
I have a quick question. You said about unplugging things when they are not being used. What types of things do you unplug. I did not know that things used power unless you had them on. Any ideas would be great.
Wow this loooks very confusing for me…………glad your have done all the research……will be easier for me when we ever switch over!!!!……….lol,,,,,,,,,,Thanks Mr. CBB
It’s not that bad but research and planning are important to make the most of it. Some people see savings others don’t. Thanks for your post Linda. Mr.CBB
(aka ShelleyChenier)
This is great (and exactly what I’ve been asking for)!!! I’m going to print out the information (before the Smart meter kicks in so I won’t pay as much to use the printer) and put it on the fridge. I’ll also have the hubby do some work to get things more energy efficient. Unfortunately we don’t have a clothesline. My neighbour lets me borrow hers but she doesn’t have a scheduled laundry day so i don’t want to infringe, I usually borrow it when I’m washing the bedding. What I’m thinking of doing is small loads throughout the week (I’m up at 530am, might as well take advantage and get a couple of loads washed) and use my little drying rack and put it in the yard for the clothes to dry! Not excited about the Smart Meter, but glad to be better informed!! Thank you so much MrCBB!!!
Glad you like it Shelley…..It’s important to be informed and to plan ahead. I hope my tips help you! Thanks for your post! Mr.CBB
If I were in a home and not an apt it would definately be the way to go…timing is key …”cheaper times”
Great article! Lots of great tips! I really want to try sealing up my duct work! I find my house doesn’t heat properly and its only 5 years old so maybe that will help! I do a lot of stuff to save energy. We keep the chart of peak times on our fridge and only run appliances on off peak times, we have a programmable thermostat and we don’t put many lights on in the evening. We keep the curtains drawn in the summer and sleep with a fan on us. Lots of little things make a big difference!
Good for you.. great point you raise Jen.. keep the chart on your refrigerator so you always have those times right where you need them. Thanks for your post. Mr.CBB
We upgraded our appliances, TV, unplug appliances when not in use, both use laptops so aren’t always plugged in…cordless phones have an energy saving mode…thermostat is set low bless we are home…outside lights are on timers (landscape and Xmas lighting) – don’t use reg outdoor lighting), use cfl bulbs, BBQ all summer… Whatever possible to save power!!!!
Hydro noted about 3 months ago that the Smart Metres are not working as expected and they are not tracking the times of when you are doing anything…..EPIC FAIL at our expense once again!
This would not be a surprise to me… I would like to read about this. Is there somewhere online? Mr.CBB
I use the ‘delay’ option if I can so the appliances run in the middle of the night. (laundry and dishes) Any big hydro sucking jobs I generally save for the weekends when the rates are lower.
Good for you.. whatever it takes to save $$$ Thanks for your post Rhiannon! Mr.CBB
Very good…a few new ideas for me to follow