Saving on your Electric bill : Solutions by Donald DCruz

Saving on your Electric bill
Two months ago, I got a bill which was twice that of my average bills. I got down to work on reducing the daily consumption especially as there were three members working from home.
My analysis after measuring the energy consumption of these connected loads helped in planning the alternative as families were spending more hours for the first times within homes due to the lockdown.
What was planned in many of our houses a decade ago when the choices were limited to lighting & appliances is not the case today.
The availability of newer range of appliances & products today with a reasonable pricing eased the updation.
The first item was definitely the fans specially the one's in the three main bedrooms.
These were the old generation ones and typically would be consuming over 70 watts.
I decided to replace these fans with BLDC one's which consumes 28 watts at the highest speed.
This change gave a flat reduction of 150 watts operating for about 8 to 10 hours & features of timer gave benefits to reduce speed in time which save energy.
Fortunately Air-conditioners were used only at times, room ventilation was generally good. Hence did not require a change to newer inverter types unless with higher usage period,not feasible on the cost ratio.
The next was to Convert all fluorescent tubelight to LED tubes, CFL's to better lux LED bulbs, use of new gen lights, auto sensing & control.
Auto sensing of outdoor lights , auto twilight switching of outdoor lights , movement detection lights on corridors, passages & rooms saves wasting of energy.
The next item was our storage heater of which the hot water line was connected to one additional bathroom & kitchen. Since it was switched on for morning hours, it needed a curb & so I decided to switch this heater only when needed from the secondary bathroom using a power contactor mounted at the heater point & that could be switched at either bathrooms as required, remotely. This would limit the 1500/3000 wattage heater from being powered for many hours, it can also be timed as required by connecting a timer to the contactor.
The next item was to manage our water pump which was always overflowing, so I put put in an auto pump controller which solved the issue of topping the tank without wastage of water & power.
Another tip for any household is to switch off the fridge during peak hours from 6 pm to 9:30 pm everyday & installation of a 24 hour timer could solved this requirement.
Fans that don't find much use as with less than one hour of use can be retained after checking the capacitors, bearings & rusting on leaf.
A fresh coat of paint can improve the efficiency.
Also deciding to wait until a newer generation of smart servo fans or using BLDC technology will emerge definitely with a lower cost.
One of the other important benefit in lowering the connected wattage was in the increase of the back up support time of the inverter. Second was that it made life easier specially in these times with these simple automation.
On an average, the total amount that was spend on these changes was less than INR 25000/- & totally DIY.
Another tip is to enhance lighting within a room with combination of tubes, led bulbs,smart lights etc which can be combined as required.
With these changes, my monthly consumption dropped by over 25% of my average.
Many of these add ons are available and can be implemented easily which I am sure will reduce the circuit load & make remarkable benefits to your electricity bill.
For new homes the advantage today is that it can be easily planned & wired for a total automation which involves control of almost all electrical requirements at your fingertips.
However there is also a need to have an overriding feature for the master/slave control/outputs in event of a failure.
But the future for home automation is only improving by the day.
Donald DCruz

[@lopezmaryteresa8132]

Very useful information,imparted in a simple way so that even ordinary people can understand!Thank you dear and God bless!👍👍🙏🏾

[@jacobjohn4558]

👍👍

[@chiaradcruz3210]

Very informative video. Addresses the pressing issue of high electricity bills in an Indian household.

[@jacobjohn4558]

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👌🏻👏🏻👏🏻Very much informative ..as to how and also what has to be done to reduce the Electricity consumption which in turn will reflect in the Electricity bill to be paid as well .