Knowledge is Power:

Find out what's behind your CL&P monthly bill

Looking for a New Year's Resolution that could save you money? Consider taking the pledge to become more energy efficient in your electric usage at home. You'll help yourself dollar wise. You'll also do something good for the planet Earth, because our electricity is largely generated by coal- and oil-fired power plants whose carbon-based fuels inevitably contribute to air pollution and global climate change. 

CL&P offers a program that can help lower your energy costs with just one in-home visit.  For more information call 1-877-WISE-USE (1-877-947-3873) or visit the following link to the CL&P website:

http://www.cl-p.com/Home/SaveEnergy/Rebates/HomeEnergySolutions.aspx

First some background: Connecticut has the dubious distinction of having the second highest electrical rates in the nation, second only to the state of Hawaii, which pays a huge premium for being off-Continent. For Connecticut customers who purchase Rate #1 electric power, which is the most common standard residential rate, the new CL&P rate as of January 1, 2009 is 20.35 cents ($.2035) per kilowatt hour (KwH). (Consumers who heat their houses by electricity pay Rate #5, which is fractionally less because of their greater overall consumption.) Current rates are, incidentally, about 20% higher than they were back in 2006.

What's a kilowatt hour?
As in buying gasoline by the gallon, electricity is also sold by a standard unit of energy, the watt. Your monthly bill is a compilation of the number of watts each electrical device draws when operating times the number of hours it is used. As the numbers run into the many thousands, electrical usage is expressed as kilowatts. This figure is then multiplied by your current residential rate (say, $.2035) to produce your monthly bill.

For a typical family, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates average usage of 920 kWh per month, but of course, these numbers vary enormously from household to household depending on the size of the family, the square footage of the house, the impact of outdoor temperatures, how many and what kind of electrical devices the family uses, and how intensively. A hand-held hair dryer, for example, uses 1500 watts but is used infrequently for short periods, so that it may add up to as little as three KwH per month, at a total cost of only about 60 cents. A clothes dryer, on the other hand, uses 5,000 watts when operating and if a household's loads add up to 40 hours a month, the dryer can cost more than 200 kWh or $40 at CT's 2009 rates. Generally speaking, devices that generate large amounts of heat or cooling and run fairly constantly, such as a low efficiency hot water heater or refrigerator, are going to be the highest energy users, with costs as high in the instance of the hot water heater as high as $100 per month. By contrast, a simple radio turned on four hours a day takes relatively low wattage and costs perhaps $2 per month to operate.

How Many kWh's do you spend?
To help increase everyone's awareness of energy efficiency, the Kent Conservation Commission and the Kent Memorial Library are partnering to provide, on loan, an easy-to-use tool called the Kill-A-Watt. Sign out one of the two hand-held devices available and you can measure the power consumption of dozens of household appliances you currently use and calculate their cost in kilowatt hours on an hourly, daily, monthly or yearly basis. We also provide a brochure by which you can compare your results with typical wattage, typical hours of use per month, typical monthly kilowatt hours (kWh), and the costs Connecticut rate payers typically pay for their use. Click here for more information.

If you want to improve your score, we also provide some excellent suggestions for saving energy, reducing waste and managing cost. The list of good ideas is long but it includes changing to more energy-efficient CLF light bulbs, improving home weatherization to lower heating and cooling demands, replacing older appliances with more efficient Energy Star-rated devices that will often repay themselves within two or three years, and cutting down on "vampire" loss. That's the term used for energy squandered when computers, TVs, microwaves, rechargeable bases and the like are left on stand-by mode 24/7.

The Kent Conservation Commission hopes you will join your neighbors in supporting this and the many other Green Initiatives that lie in our future.