alt Hacker NewsAs I glance at my (checks notes) $200 power bill in San Diego apartment used entirely to run 3 ceiling fans and a box fan, I’m getting curious about all the ways power consumption can be reduced. No AC, LED lights, all gas appliances.
I am going to switch over to a bunch of DC tower fans which claim to cut energy usage substantially. I wish more appliances would just switch to DC motors.
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Look into balcony solar, if you have a balcony with sun exposure.
California energy prices are among the highest anywhere, so anything you can do to cut usage will have a bigger payoff there, and justify some investment to achieve it.
You may want to do a basic audit of your electrical usage -- it's not unheard of for apartments to have messed up circuits where one pays for usage by another.
If you turn off all of your AC consuming devices is your meter still registering usage?
Were you running all those fans on high 24/7? Three 150W ceiling fans and a 50W box fan?
$200 / $0.50 = 400kWh / 720 hours = 556 watts of load on average, which is more power than I use to run a 1-ton AC unit on auto.
BLDC motors are fairly common these days in HVAC equipment, speed control is much easier and they’re more efficient.
> I am going to switch over to a bunch of DC tower fans which claim to cut energy usage substantially.
I’m guessing they’re made by Vornado?