We’ve been in our house for about 3 years now. My wife and I are eco-conscience and want to have the lowest impact on the environment as well as our wallets, so when our electric bill was consistently $125+ in the summer, I began to question what was going on. All of our appliances are energy star. Our refrigerator costs us a total of $32 a year to run. Lights that are on longest, such as in the kitchen, have CFL’s. We have the most efficient hot water heater you can buy, according to the electric company here, and we hang dry 90% of our laundry. I have had an electrician go through the house to check for any wiring issues and we just had our well and pressure tank serviced. No problems visible anywhere.

Last winter we had an energy audit done by our electrical coop. They said we’re ahead of the majority, doing everything you can. So what is the culprit?! Maybe I am just being unrealistic with how much it costs to electrically power a small home, but I don’t ever remember paying more than $100 a month in the winter living in a cold canyon in Truckee. Our energy costs were around $.09kWH there if I remember right, and they are $.11kWH here.

I began looking for a way to measure our electrical uses. Kill A Watt is real popular, but I cannot plug in all of my appliances really easy. I came across the Blue Line PowerCost Monitor and Energy Meter and thought, this is what I need. It get’s good reviews on NorthernEquipment.com, only 2 reviews at Amazon and none anywhere else I could find. It’s a good buy in my book. I haven’t had it in the rain and snow, so I cannot say about the durability. The display is real nice and the features are simple to use and setup is a snap. The only thing I can gripe about is the lack of a USB port or any sort of connectedness to a computer. I want to be able to download and graph my usage. I cannot do that with this model. Blue Line has come out with the Blue Line WiFi pack, but I am not about to shell out another $100+ for it’s features.

My favorite function on this device is the Appliance button. You can push the button, turn on the culprit appliance and wait a couple minutes to see the usage in $ and/or kWH. Nothing in our home uses much electricity. The only time we get a spike is after a shower. We had been thinking about getting Hot Water on Demand to cut costs, but were not convinced the “efficient” hot water heater was really the problem. After 2 showers my wife said she saw $.60/hr on the meter for over 2 hours. I take a show every day. That’s $18 right there. If we have guests?! Meh…

To wrap it up real quick. We have an efficient house. Our electric bill was more than I thought it should be and I wanted to find out what was costing us. The Blue Line PowerCost Monitor and Energy Meter works great helping you narrow down your problem. We need to either take cold showers, get a smaller hot water tank or go with hot water on demand to fix it traditionally. Our solution is to work towards energy independence by saving for a Photovoltaic Solar Electric System in the near future.

What are you or have you been doing to cut your electric use? Start a conversation by leaving a comment below!

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