Here's the deal: somehow we managed to almost double our electricity usage last month. It worked out to about an extra $20. I'm not exactly sure what happened, I think it could have been me using the "heated dry" setting on the dishwasher (bad idea), but according to our daily rate we have been back at an average amount since the beginning of February.
On February 25th, our hydro was switched to "Smart Meter" billing, really behind the times there London. I've been getting into the habit of running my dishwasher and laundry during off peak hours for over a year now, but now this is serious business. I read a tip on the hydro company's website that if you use a Smart strip power strip for your TV, you could reduce some of your phantom power usage. Basically, you plug in your TV, and all of your accessories (DVD player, speakers, etc...) and when the TV is turned off, the power gets cut to all of those other things.
I thought this would be a great idea, so for $45, we went and picked one up. What I didn't realize was that it doesn't cut the power to your TV, and since we only have one accessory, we realized it was hardly worth it. This could be worth it if you have a lot of gadgets, but I'll be returning this thing on my next trip to the hardware store, and just putting in a cheap-o power bar, and turning it off manually instead. We'll spend the money on insulting our hot water heater instead.
Any other idea's on ways we could reduce our electricity?
