Put up some solar panels, get a wind generator, bank of batteries, grid tie inverter.... if you can stomach the upfront cost. If you have a creek in your back yard, get a micro hydro generator. Then, with your newly installed smart meter, you can sell the excess power back to the Hydro company. If you don't have excess with all your tank goodies, you'll at least cut down your hydro bill.

EDIT... and you'll have back up power if there's an outage with the big guys.

Ok besides debating whether LEDs save money or not let's maybe focus on some real ways of cutting back that power bill. I'll suggest a few things that don't have huge upfront costs.

• Reduce light schedule, simply cut back lighting duty cycle to a minimum.
• Use DC controllable power-heads or alternate AC power-heads provided they can handle the cycling. Alternating pumps can essentially result in half the power compared to always on.
• Reduce flow at night, common practice for many to reduce tank flow at night. Whether it's actually simulating natural effects or not it does reduce power tremendously. For example closed loop pumps or power-heads could shut it off completely at night, DC power-heads could be dialed down.
• Those of us who do use a fair bit of power heating our tanks could use acrylic sumps for better insulation or work on insulating our tanks/sumps to hold heat better.

The light schedule would work, but the powerhead idea would make an almost immeasurable difference. In not sure about vortechs but the koralia powerheads use somewhere around 6-10w each. The effects would be miniscule

its the little things that count , same as saying me throwing one coffee cup out my car window isnt gonna make a difference to such a large world, i think were passed the point in this world where we assume the little things dont make a diifference. the little things arnt so little when you multiply it by the number of people who honor them;)

Well it obviously depends what you use but for example I basically run four Tunze 6105s. If I just ran these full power all the time it would be 35W x 4 x 24 = 3.36 kWh per day. If I alternated flow it would cut it down by half and then if I also just reduced flow to 20% or so at night the savings would be even better at approximately 35W x 0.5 x 4 x 12 + 35W x 0.2 x 4 x 12 = 1.176 kWh per day. Savings of 2.184 kWh per day. This will add up to power savings and while yes not substantial if combined with a few other "miniscule" ideas it could add all add up to something substantial.

Wah ;)

I understand that the little things count. But the op is asking about what changes can be made to save money on his power bill. At 10w it would take 4 days to use 1kwh. 16 days roughly to cost 1$. Heaters, return pump, and lighting are the worst aquarium related. If he wants to make an impact on his power bill, the rest of the house needs to be looked at. A 3 bulb light fixture with incandescent bulbs draws as much as a return pump. I have 4 in my 860sq foot house. How long are lights like that run in a day?changing to cfl bulbs (twistys) draw less than 1/4 the power. Electric range and oven? Probably draw 10+ amps when running. That's 1200w. Electric dryer, same story. These aren't ran continuously mind you, but these add up. Natural gas is far cheaper to run these things.

Those are the changes that are going to make an impact. If your talking about environmental impact, then again, how effective is cutting 8w out of daily power usage when there are so many things worse. I used to work on a drilling rig that used diesel generators. In the winter with the boiler running that rig would burn 2800 liters PER DAY in diesel fuel. This is a larger rig mind you, but there are over 700 running in Alberta last time I heard. These are thtw kinds of things that need to change. Alternative renewable fuel sources. I'd hate to see what kind of pollution 2800l of fuel burn would produce.

I'm not saying that its not worth looking into the little things, but my point is the big things need to be looked at first. 250w down to 100w has me now saving for a new return pump now. I've already switched to leds which for me went from 260w of power compact lighting to 160w of leds.

The next big question is heating. 400w of heaters running is worth looking into.

The only real effective way to reduce energy consumption is to move to a smaller tank... or goldfish :mrgreen:

The bain of keeping little critters outside their environment, the power needs. But SW is sooo interesting!

Agreed. This hobby/obsession/lifestyle is definitely worth it.