Understanding my electricity bill and using a kill a watt

[LibrarIan]

This is a two parter.

Part 1:

Firstly, my energy utility company here in greater Cincinnati is Duke Energy. I'm trying to better understand the items on my statement. I'm curious about the Explanation of Current Charges section of my bill, specifically what the following are for:

Customer Charge                         $4.60

Energy Chrg                               $88.73
1,122 kWh @ $0.07908500

Elec DSM Rider                            $3.44
1,122 kWh @ $0.00306200

Rider MSR-E                                $0.00
1,122 kWh @ $0.00000000

Rider PSM                                    $0.21
1,122 kWh @ $0.00018700

Elec Fuel Adjustment                   $1.22cr
1,122 kWh @ $0.00108300cr

(I know, that's a lot!) I'd like to know what each of these categories means if someone knows. Hopefully this will help me better understand how this all works.

Part 2:

I just purchased a P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). The instructions that came with it were very sparse and told more of what the thing does rather than how to use it. Since energy consumption is measured in kWh, I thought this device would be handy for determining how many kWh various things I own use.

The trouble is I don't know how to use the kWh aspect of the device (the purple button). If you press it once, it supposedly gives you a kWh reading. If you press it twice, it gives you duration in hours and/or minutes. I left a laptop plugged in last night for probably 2 hours and got 0.0 for kWh and I'm confused as to how the device is supposed to be used for this. Tell this idiot how to work it!

[Agg97]

You have it right...not much to it.  Laptops take very little to charge, so it doesn't surprise me it didn't show up. 

I would start with your most energy-consuming appliances first.  Think refrigerators, etc.  You plug the fridge into the kill-a-watt, then plug the kill-a-watt into the wall.  Walk away for a few hours or a few days.  When you get back, it will have a measure of how many kWH has been consumed and how many hours it has been. 

I'm in the middle of that process myself.  My baseline usage seems to be about 30kwh/day, which seems a lot.  In summer/winter when the air conditioner/furnace is going, it's a lot more.  My first goal is to knock down that 30kwh/day...I'm actually having a hard time finding the culprit. 

Good luck!

Agg97

[NathanP]

Try measuring something that consumes more energy, or leave the laptop plugged in for a day or more.

A typical laptop may consume 25 Watts or less. For 2 hours, you would have consumed 50 W or 0.050 kWh. A kW is 1000 W.

Try measuring a light fixture or something where you 'know' the total power consumption. A light fixture with a 100 W bulb should consume 1 kWh if left on for 10 hours.

[andy85]

This is a two parter.

Part 1:

Firstly, my energy utility company here in greater Cincinnati is Duke Energy. I'm trying to better understand the items on my statement. I'm curious about the Explanation of Current Charges section of my bill, specifically what the following are for:

Customer Charge                         $4.60

Energy Chrg                               $88.73
1,122 kWh @ $0.07908500

Elec DSM Rider                            $3.44
1,122 kWh @ $0.00306200

Rider MSR-E                                $0.00
1,122 kWh @ $0.00000000

Rider PSM                                    $0.21
1,122 kWh @ $0.00018700

Elec Fuel Adjustment                   $1.22cr
1,122 kWh @ $0.00108300cr

(I know, that's a lot!) I'd like to know what each of these categories means if someone knows. Hopefully this will help me better understand how this all works.

Part 2:

I just purchased a P3 P4400 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009MDBU/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1). The instructions that came with it were very sparse and told more of what the thing does rather than how to use it. Since energy consumption is measured in kWh, I thought this device would be handy for determining how many kWh various things I own use.

The trouble is I don't know how to use the kWh aspect of the device (the purple button). If you press it once, it supposedly gives you a kWh reading. If you press it twice, it gives you duration in hours and/or minutes. I left a laptop plugged in last night for probably 2 hours and got 0.0 for kWh and I'm confused as to how the device is supposed to be used for this. Tell this idiot how to work it!

I work for an electric/gas utility company so i know a fair amount

Energy charge: this is fixed dollar/kwh used amount. Your rate is $.079/kwh and used 1122kwh for the month (.079 is a really good rate)

DSM: stands for demand side management (for us anyways). This fee is used to recover costs from implementing various energy efficiency programs.

MSR and PSM...not sure, we dont have those. Ohio has a PLM charge for some cusomters (peak load management) but this is likely for commercial/industrial customers

Fuel adjustment: this fee is used to recover cost for transporting the fuel used to produce electricity (i.e. the mining, shipping, and burning of coal). This rate probably changes from month to month.

In the old days your bill would just be 1 line item. in the last several years utility companies have been forced (i dont mean that negatively) to breakout the various components of the bill for more clarification, but sometimes it confuses the customer even more...lol. Try and find the rates and tariffs for Duke Energy, who i assume serves your area.

as far as that kwh device, i have no clue. Your main appliances that draw the most will be things like your A/C (or furnace if you have electric heat), fridge, multiple space heaters can add up...things of that nature.

[Greg]

The Kill A Watt has a way to store the cost per kwh, for instance my rate is about 12¢/kwh including all taxes and fees.  After you program this in, you then will get a reading for total cost as well, very helpful.  I found that most of the things I thought might be using a lot of energy in fact didn't.  It can take a day or more for some things to use enough for it to register on the device.

I agree the instructions are brief.  A lot of things are like that these days, one is expected to play with it to figure out how to use it (smartphones).

[andy85]

another thing to do is a 'breaker test'...this can be pretty time consuming though and assumes you have a dial meter (not digital)

Basic premise is as follows:
turn every freaking thing ON in your house.
Go out to your meter and note how fast it is spinning
start turning off breakers, noting which appliances are on that breaker
go out to your meter and note how fast it is spinning
turn the previous breaker back on, turn another breaker off
repeat until all breakers have been checked.

then you can see what appliances are on the breaker that is using the most and there ya go...super non-scientific and time consuming, but it should do the trick if you have a dial meter that you can physically see turning.

[LibrarIan]

The Kill A Watt has a way to store the cost per kwh, for instance my rate is about 12¢/kwh including all taxes and fees.  After you program this in, you then will get a reading for total cost as well, very helpful.  I found that most of the things I thought might be using a lot of energy in fact didn't.  It can take a day or more for some things to use enough for it to register on the device.

I don't believe my particular model does this. I think that was the next tier up. In any case, I've found a website that has a calculator on it to assist me there. http://www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/electric.cgi?submit=Entry.

[eil]

I would ask a basic question: Do you know what a watt is? If not head over to YouTube, find some videos, and learn the difference between volts, amps, and watts.

Now to understand what a kilowatt is, imagine you have a (very bright) light bulb that consumes 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) of power when turned on. After being turned on for one hour, it has consumed 1 kilowatt hour. A 500 watt light bulb consumes 1 kilowatt hour when left on for 2 hours, a 2000 watt light bulb consumes 1 kilowatt hour when left on for 30 minutes.

Although the Kill-A-Watt can just be plugged in and left alone for a while to figure out the kWh of an arbitrary circuit or device, an easier way to use it is to just plug it in and press the "watts" button and see how much power that one device uses when turned on. From there you can make an educated guess as to how often it's on and then do the match to figure out how much it costs to run every month.

The kWh function of the Kill-A-Watt is more useful for devices that you have no idea how often they run, or how much power they pull while running through various cycles like a refrigerator or washing machine.

[frugalnacho]

Customer Charge                         $4.60

Energy Chrg                               $88.73
1,122 kWh @ $0.07908500

Elec DSM Rider                            $3.44
1,122 kWh @ $0.00306200

Rider MSR-E                                $0.00
1,122 kWh @ $0.00000000

Rider PSM                                    $0.21
1,122 kWh @ $0.00018700

Elec Fuel Adjustment                   $1.22cr
1,122 kWh @ $0.00108300cr

(I know, that's a lot!) I'd like to know what each of these categories means if someone knows. Hopefully this will help me better understand how this all works.

I think all those categories are probably irrelevant to you.  What matters is the sum total of the charges, as it looks like they get applied to your usage across the board.  So $4.60 is your customer fee, that is what they charge you just to be a customer even if you use no electricity.  You can sum up the rest of the charges (ie $0.07908500 + $0.00306200 + $0.00018700 - $0.00108300) to get $0.081251, meaning for every kwhr of energy you use it costs you 8.13 cents.  As long as you dont have tiered prices, or different pricing during on and off peak times (which is doesn't look like according to the summary you posted) then you can use that cost to figure out how much an appliance is using.

watts/1000 x time (hours) x $0.081251/kwhr = total $ used

Or you can divide out the time to just get a rate:

watts/1000 x $0.081251/kwhr = total $/hr

So a 1000 watt light run for 1 hour would cost you: 1000/1000 x 1 x 0.081251 = $0.081251

A 1000 watt light x $0.081251 = $0.081251/hr

If something is using a constant amount of electricity you can just get a straight up watts reading and then plug it in and do the math to figure out how much it is going to cost you for any amount of time.  Something that is highly variable like a freezer or washing machine would be better to let run on the kwhr cycle and get a cumulative total of the kwhr used during the cycle.  kwhr can be translated directly into dollars.