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by kylehotchkiss 3 hours ago
As 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.
5 comments
SoftTalker 3 hours ago
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.

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IAmGraydon 15 minutes ago
No air conditioning? In San Diego? Most people find that climate control makes up the vast majority of their power bill.
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quickthrowman 31 minutes ago
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?

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zaat 2 hours ago
How much do you pay for kWh?
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mh- 1 hour ago
(I'm not the person you're replying to, but I live in San Diego too.)

We have the most expensive electricity rates in the country - both summer and winter are over $0.50/kWh.

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zaat 1 hour ago
I just checked my plan yesterday, I pay 0.13 Eur, summer and winter. I can commit to my provider for a year and lower it to 0.11, but with slightly higher fixed monthly cost (which is about 50 eur, regardless of consumption). With this prices you less likely to think about the efficiency of fans - it will probably will years to return the cost of fan replacement.

I pay 0.45 Euro for public car charging, returning the cost of installing a charger at my (rented) house will probably take 2 years.

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pstuart 2 hours ago
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?

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