Posts Tagged ‘Electricity’

I have looked at past questions that were similar to this one, but not exactly the same. I am looking for, quite simply, which uses more electricity between a standard microwave and a small toaster oven to heat the same food. I know that a microwave is on for less time, but I do not know how much electricity per minute each of the devices use.
I am trying to figure out which will use the least amount of electricity to heat my food. For argument’s sake, let’s say the food takes three minutes in the microwave versus ten minutes in a toaster oven, which is about standard for the things I’m looking to heat. Taste is not a factor in this question. If anyone could give me a source for their answer it would be doubly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Which brand is best for microwave and for electric toaster oven for mid-size family?

The power bill. . . ugh. Every month or two you are greeted with this nasty little bugger. If you are like me and your enormous power bills have you overwhelmed, there are some steps you can take that are very effective and quite simple and can reduce or eliminate your monthly costs. This article will give you some simple things that are easy to do, and they’ll reduce your power bill right away. Limited use: Begin with the room you’re in right now. If you headed to the dining room to eat with your family or went to the phone in another room, would you just leave this room without thinking about the electrical appliances there? If so, stop and look around you. Turn off every appliance, even if you’re coming back in a few minutes. Yes, just that small step will help. Every water drop contributes to the ocean. Another thing to pay attention to is what constitutes an electronic appliance. Would you turn off the fan and the TV, but leave the light on? You need light, of course, but not when you leave the room. Taking care of little things like this really makes a difference on your power bill. If you have a forced air HVAC system and a basement you can turn off the air conditioning and turn on the furnace fan (usually a setting on the digital thermostat or a button in the furnace itself). This can cycle the cooler basement air to the upper levels of the house. You can also seal off the cold air returns on the upper levels of the house to force the unit to pull primarily from the cooler basement air and distribute it throughout the house. Smart investments: Replace any incandescent bulbs with CFL, or Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs. These bulbs are a perfect investment to save power. Buy a Power Save unit. This gadget monitors your power supply as it comes into your house, and uses only the minimum required. Home appliance usage: It’s common to complain about sky-high electricity bills due to the amount of electrical appliances we have. But your electricity bill isn’t proportional to how many appliances you have, just how you use them. Let’s look at how to avoid typical power-wasters. Adjust your fridge to be slightly less cool and if you have a deep freezer consider buying less frozen food in bulk and using the fridge freezer only (save about $30/month). Only use your washing machine if you have a full load to wash, and use a clothes line rather than a dryer. Turn you computer monitor off at night. Unplug appliances when not in use as all electrical devices still draw power, even when not in use. Unplug toasters, toaster ovens, rice makers, blenders,un-used tvs, etc. Use the plastic barriers that are taped over windows that are not often used. I did this last winter for the first time and I am still amazed at the amount of air that was coming through the patio doors and a couple of windows. Check the weather stripping around exterior doors. If they leak spend a few dollars and replace them. Here is another one that shocked me. Some windows were very drafty due to dried caulking. So spend a couple of dollars and re-caulk around exterior window frames and inside in the cracks between the window trim and frame. Check all receptacle outlets on exterior walls (and interior walls on older homes as you would be amazed at where a serious draft can be hiding) for drafts with a lighter. There are inexpensive foam insulation kits that can be purchased at any hardware store just for this use. If you have a fireplace make certain that it is closed tight and check for drafts. If it is still sucking heat out of you house then stuff insulation up inside, but make certain to remove it before lighting a fire! Open curtains in the winder to let in the sun’s heat and close them in the summer. Yes, you need to keep doing these strategies to save power, for you and the whole world. If you have an attic it is likely a cooker in the summer. If you have fans, vents, windows, etc. that lets the heat escape you can improve the air flow by opening the attic hatch or ladder and your door to your basement if you have one. Since hot air rises the hot air exiting the attic vents will draw the cooler air up into the house by giving the attic a supply of air to allow movement. Remember, cutting down your electricity bill saves power, and therefore helps the people of the world have power for the future.

We’ve all been hit in the pocket by rising electricity costs, at work and at home. The price of electricity is beyond our control, but it’s within our power to curb the amount of energy we consume. By following our power saving tips, you’ll be helping to reduce the impact on our fragile natural environment and preserve our planet’s resources.

First off, if you’re not using Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), you should be. Compact fluorescent lamps use only about a third as much electricity as standard incandescents. According to some experts, if you substitute compact fluorescent bulbs for a quarter of the incandescents used in high-use areas, you can cut the amount of electricity you use on lighting by half. I have CFLs in every fixture in my house, except for the fridge, oven, microwave and two fluorescent tube fixtures that are built in.

Use task lighting instead of area lighting. If you’re doing something at a fixed location, such as your desk or workbench, you don’t need to have the entire room brightly lit. Use an LED task light, one of the excellent units, or some similar small fixture to put light only where you need it. A 25 or 40 watt CFL can provide ambient light in the room, and you’ll reap the savings.

Use appliances that are efficient and no larger than needed to do the job. For many cooking tasks, a microwave oven will do what you want to do and save a lot of energy doing it. If all you’re doing is heating up some fish sticks, don’t heat the huge oven in your range, just use the toaster oven. Save heating that big space for something that won’t fit in the toaster oven. It saves money to make two and freeze one for later. You can save even more money by not preheating your oven, just let the food bake a little longer.

You’ll use a lot less energy in the winter if you put a programmable thermostat on your heater and let the temperature in the house drop quite a bit at night. In winter, set the thermostat to 21 degrees C when you are awake and 17 degrees C when you are asleep. In summer, set the thermostat to 26 degrees C and use a ceiling fan to cool your place. When the temperature outside falls to at least two degrees lower than the temperature inside, you should “vent” your home – that is, open your windows to let cool air in.

You might give some thought to a “ solar clothes dryer” like Grandma used to do – using indoor or outdoor clotheslines to dry your clothes. It’s low maintenance, no moving parts and the sheets flapping in the breeze give the puppy something to play with. It’s not for everybody, but if you don’t mind going back a few years, the initial cost is lower and the energy use much less than an electric or gas dryer. Doesn’t work well on rainy days though. Not using an electric clothes dryer can save $50 per year.

One last thing you must do to save money on your electric bill is to eliminate phantom loads. What, you ask, is a phantom load? A phantom load is any device that is consuming energy when you think you’ve turned it off. It all started with “instant on” televisions back in the vacuum tube days. When you “turned off” the TV, the tube filaments still had power applied to them, and were costing you money. When you turned the TV “on”, you were only turning on the high voltage and the warm tubes went to work instantly.

It’s even worse today. Anything that has a remote control is a phantom load. Think about it. There has to be a circuit inside there waiting to get the wake-up call from the remote control. The clocks on VCRs, ranges, microwaves and other gadgets are all phantom loads. And they are costing you money.

The way to cure phantom loads is to put the devices on a switched outlet or a power strip. Or simply unplug them. Unplug your toaster, coffee maker, hair dyer, some televisions, and power strips. It is good to note that some appliances have memory stored in the IC chips within the units. If you do unplug these units you may loose stored information. One of the really nice aspects of energy conservation is that you get to choose how much you want to save. It’s up to you which, if any, phantom load devices you leave connected when you’re not using them. Just balance convenience against savings.

You now possess the knowledge to cut your monthly electric bill. It is difficult to say how much you can save by making these ten simple changes, but here is an example: A friend of mine, living in an apartment at the time, followed these same recommendations and saw a 30% reduction in his bill the first full month. It can be done. And you can do it.

There are many reasons to lower your electricity consumption: saving money now, preparing for future rate hikes, helping to improve air quality and limit global warming, or just reducing waste. With increases in the price of electricity and gas bills, these methods help you try and get cheaper bills and save money.

Do you have a question like this: I don’t use electrical appliances very often, why do I have to pay so much for electricity? The answer is that you don’t understand how much power your electrical appliances consume. This is very surprising that a toaster would use 1000watts per hour while a laptop would use only 75 watts for the same period of time. Other appliances that consume a lot of power includes cookers, electric showers and electric kettle (which is more than 2000watts per hour). Although sometimes you have to use these appliances, there is still way to low down the electricity consumption. Heating * Turn the heating thermostat down by just one degree can save up to 10 % of your electricity bill. * Buy heavy curtains to keep the heat inside and close them at night. This can prevent the 25% heat that escaped when not glazed. * Do not boil water hotter than 60 degrees C or 140 degrees F. You will need to blend with cold water to drink it. This is a big waste of energy. * Insulate hot water tanks and pipes. Up to 75 % of heat in tank will lose due to lack of insulation. Cooling * Freezers and fridges account for up to 33% of the electricity bill. Ensure that the metal grids and coils at the back have enough space for air to circulate so as to keep them efficient. Also they should be kept dust-free. * Defrost freezers when the thickness of ice reaches 5mm. * Promptly replace door seals when they are damaged . * In USA, air-conditioning accounts for 14 percent of the electricity bill. You can take off your jacket and raise the degree of air-conditioning. This could save a lot of electricity. Light * Use energy-saving light bulbs. (11 watts an hour) Traditional light bulbs use 80% of the energy making heat, not light. * Do not use up-lighters because they use high wattage bulbs. * Turn off the light when you are out of the area. This does not shorten the life of a light bulb. Strip lighting can also safely be turned off and on. Cooking * Ovens with fan use less electricity. * Slow Cookers use very little energy. * Only boil the amount of water that you need in the kettle. By filling the kettle with 1 cup of white vinegar and 2 cups of water, the kettle would not have lime scale. The lime scale affects the heat conduction when boiling water. This would use more energy if there is lime scale. Leave to stand overnight. Rinse carefully and throw away the first lot of boiled water. Washing * Wash your clothes with the washing machine until you have a full load. * Cold wash anything if it is not marked with grease or heavily soiled. * Clean lime scale in your washing machine regularly if you live in a hard water area. First put 200ml of white vinegar in the detergent tray. Then run the machine on wash cycle. The lime scale will be cleaned up. Do this every two or three months to keep the efficiency of the washing machine. * Do not use tumble dryers too often. This is because 40% of the power is used on stand-by. Turn them down when you are not using them. Another solution – make power at home Instead of worrying about the big number in your electricity bills, you can do something very aggressive. That is making power at home. This is no longer expensive to setup solar power system and wind generators at home because you can do it yourself. This would just cost you $200 to $400. If you are interested, go to the following site to learn more. Click here to see how to make electricity at home