Monthly Archives: April 2015

My First Electricity Calculator

Electricity, Software,

I have built my first online electricity calculator. It’s very simple and there are lots of similar calculators out there but it’s a start.

Behold: Electricity Calculator

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you are wondering how much it would cost to run a nightlight if you leave it on all the time. This nightlight has 0.2 watt LED, so you enter 0.2 as wattage.

nightlight

Next you enter 24 as the number of hours per day. Here in Australia we pay 30 cents per kilowatt-hour on average. The calculator gives you the result: the running cost would be $0.53 per year.

Electricity Calculator

Another example. We have 6 light bulbs in our kitchen. They are CFLs (of course) and 14 watt each.

light-bulb

So in total they use 6 * 14 = 84 watt. We have them on for about 3 hours per day. We pay 40 cents per kilowatt-hour. According to the calculator the kitchen lighting cost us $3.02 per month or $36.79 per year.

electricity-cost-lighting

Easy Targets for Saving Electricity

Electricity

When it comes to saving electricity there are steps that are very easy to achieve. They don’t require a ton of effort. And best of all, they are free.

For example consider a situation: the light is on but there is nobody in the room. The electricity is essentially being wasted. The solution is easy: turn off the light whenever you leave the room.

It pays off to find where in your home the energy is being wasted. Here are some more examples:

  • Heating or cooling empty rooms.
  • Keeping your computer on all the time. Turn it off when not using. Or, better yet, configure it go to sleep automatically.
  • Filling the kettle too full. The water that you didn’t use gets cold again. The energy used to boil it is wasted.
  • A second fridge that is almost empty.

The nice thing about these changes is they would not make any noticeable negative impact on you or others.