How are kilowats figured on electric bills?
Thursday, March 11th, 2010 at
5:12 am
I’m trying to figure out how much kilowats my home uses in order to price a solar system. My electric company-SLECA- gives a number like this (2661) under the KWH Used column. I also have (98) KWH Used for 2 security lightings I have. This is 2759 KWH Used for one month. One site said 8000 was what most in one area used in a year!
Filed under: Wind Power
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
When I was pricing out my system I contacted my utility and they gave me monthly usage for the last 2 years. If you keep your bills it is easy to see what your yearly usage is, it will vary by season. Basically on your bill you should see a meter reading, what your meter was last month when they read it and what it is this month when they read it, you subtract last month from this month and you get the number of kwh you used, you can divide it by number of days to get a daily average. I looked at my old usage and I varied from 785 kwh in March up to 1930 kwh in Aug.
The system I had installed is a 3.75 kwh 20 panel system. I wasn’t trying to zero out my bill, I wanted to get the maximum rebate and reduce my bill. I produce about 75% of my electricity, I have also made some changes that have made my home more energy efficient. My highest bill this past year was Jan. I paid $33.66 and used 206 kwh more than my system produced same month previous year my usage was 898 kwh. My summer bills are down from over $200 to around $20.
Hope this helps
Don’t worry about that, solar panels and windmills can power your home way better than the fossil fuels power companies do, many information say that they’re inefficient and will never power your home, but people don’t realize that TV or internet are NOT the truth, get this manual "EARTH FOR ENERGY" on internet, Ive used it to power my home with panels and mills, and Ive actually sell the energy i don’t use and i win a lot, im actually thinking to open my own power company with a friend, this stuff its quite effective for empowering buildings, but fossil fuels companies don’t want people to realize this
Kilowatt hours of energy use.
Hi, A KWh is 1000 watts consumed over 1 hour. If you divide the wattage of the bulbs in your security lights into the 98 KWh figure you could calculate the number of hours they have been on.
For example: 2 by 500 watt bulbs = 1000 watts divide 98000 watts (98 KWh x 1000) by 1000 watts (2 x 500 watt bulb rating) = 98 hours
If you then divide 98 hours by the number of days in the month you get the average hours of operation for the lights.
98 divided by 31 days = 3.162 hours a day.
Assuming that the lights come on only when the sensors detect movement and this would be about right. If the bulbs were of a higher wattage then they would have been on for less time and on for more hours if they were of lower wattage.
As to your total usage and the comparison with ‘averages’ presented on other sites then I would refer you to this easy to use USA site run by Michael Bluejay.
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html
Ah, simples to calculate.
A Watt is the multiplcation ov voltage and amperes drawn fron the supply, at what is called unity power factor
So if you have a factory, say. with loads of neon lighting, it will slow the meter down by around 20%, so you pay 20% more in penalty.
Generally, for household use, a power company will say it is all resistive load, so you pay for a kWh
That being the amount of juice that you use in an hour.