jaw dropping electric bill

[hashbaz]

How much do our aquariums actually cost us in electricity?

hypothetical situation:
200 watt lights = 0.2 kilowatts
12 hours per day
30 days per month
$.08 per kilowatt-hour

0.2*12*30*.08 = $5.76 per month

6 bucks a month is not bad. heat from our aquarium will make the AC work harder - so say $12 per month for 200 watt lights. Am I forgetting anything?

Malkore, I don't think shutting down the $29 gallon tank will make a noticeable difference in the electric bill. And besides, no one here wants aquariums shut down

 

[Zezmo]

Heh... .08 per watt would be nice.... out here in California I pay between $.24 and $.32 per KWH ;(
That is when rolling blackouts and brownouts even let me have power. I realized during a blackout a couple days ago that I probably need to get a UPS for my filters.

 

[malkore]

well the 29 has just been a grow out tank. the fry are ready to be traded for credit. maybe come winter, I'll set it back up, but yesterday it officially hit 90 degrees in that tank. my poor fishes. running 40watts now instead.

Don't you wish everything would just fall into place sometimes?

 

[greenmaji]

200 watts is 2 KWH's an hour hashbaz..
think of it like this.. 1-100 watt bulb running for 1 hour is 1 KWH.. in malkore's case that would be $.08 plus school taxes and state taxes and there is a federal fee...
so just move the the decimal point over one place.. ($57.60+ the taxes and fees)~$62.00
But the central air.. that can really get expensive (my core is a little oversized, so it doesnt have to run too long to cool down the trailer; that and I have the next zone in insulation.. the AC only runs for maybe 3 to 4 min at a time and takes about a hour break on a hot day)

 

[Quake2player]

Wow, so sorry to hear Malkore... especially from such helpful plant pro like youself.

My A/C went down for about a week and half... room temps went to about 85 deg F.... and the bananas of my banana plant "melted" away... was this because of the heat?

 

[greenmaji]

200 watts is 2 KWH's an hour hashbaz..
think of it like this.. 1-100 watt bulb running for 1 hour is 1 KWH.. in malkore's case that would be $.08 plus school taxes and state taxes and there is a federal fee...
so just move the the decimal point over one place.. ($57.60+ the taxes and fees)~$62.00

Am I off on this, is it one 100 watt bulb or ten.. I sundenly cant remember. ACK! 8O

 

[Bhunsucker]

Here in NC we pay about 0.8 per KWH.

 

[czcz]

KWH stands for kilowatt hour. Hashbaz is right and didnt need correction

 

[greenmaji]

right right its like $6 bucks a month.. it must be the air conditioner..

 

[jrp1588]

Wouldn't a 100 watt bulb for 1 hour be .1kwh? I thought you just converted the wattage to kilowatts and multiplied it by the ammount of hours. So it would be .1kw X 1h. I did this in my physics class, but that was months ago, so I could be wrong.

 

[hashbaz]

jrp1588, that is correct!

 

[jrp1588]

Yeah! Go physics class! lol. that proves I learned something

 

[Elmware]

That's why you rent one of those house where the utilities are included in the rent.

j/k

 

[madasafish]

It's ok GreenMagi, you were thinking of centawatts, not kilowatts.

I have no idea what the KWH cost is in NYC, but I seem to be paying about an extra $40 a month for my ectotherms. It's gotten so costly that I'm not A/Cing my house to keep down the bill. I guess I'm getting used to it... We suffer for our passion.

Travis: my tanks are getting well into the 85-87 range, and I'm not noticing any effect on my plants. Actually, they're (Ludwigia repens, Alternanthera reineckii)climbing 8" out of the top of the tank. Last time I trimmed them back, one stem had managed to wriggle through the gap between the plexiglass and housing in my lights and had extended its stem 5 inches into the fixture. Kind of surprised my house didn't burn down. But I suppose the 125 gallons of water beneath might have stopped a fire.

 

[msmonih]

Have you tried Budget Billing ? I would see if your electric company offers it. We use it with ours. And our bill is the same thing every month for a year then its refigured based upon how much we used in the last year. And we have 10 aquariums.