Power saving tips and ways to save money!?

[Baldy]

Originally Posted by mrhasan

Yap. Technically, LED produce around 10% less heat than a typical fluorescent bulb. Its just that, fluros have a heat-light ratio of 95%-5% while LEDs have 85%-15%. Fluros cannot be fitted with heatsinks :P and hence LEDs get the big advantage along with being DC out-of-the-box.

I didn't want to throw any numbers out as the % I heard could be wrong. I heard incandescent was 90%-10% heat to light but I don't remember where I heard that. In any case artificial lighting is very inefficient by nature.

[kien]

in an effort to cut heating costs I have deployed 3 x 250 watt metal halides over my tank. This approach seems to work well as my 3 x 300 watt heaters only seem to kick in for a few hours during the late night hours.

[jagermaier]

Originally Posted by kien

in an effort to cut heating costs I have deployed 3 x 250 watt metal halides over my tank. This approach seems to work well as my 3 x 300 watt heaters only seem to kick in for a few hours during the late night hours.

That's fine in the winter but how high does your temp get in mid summer without a chiller?

[kien]

Originally Posted by jagermaier

That's fine in the winter but how high does your temp get in mid summer without a chiller?

In the summertime we turn on the most expensive to run appliance that man has ever created.. Our central AC. Thankfully there's not that much "summer" to worry about in Cowtown

[jagermaier]

Haha, you have a point there!

[ckmullin]

Originally Posted by kien

In the summertime we turn on the most expensive to run appliance that man has ever created.. Our central AC. Thankfully there's not that much "summer" to worry about in Cowtown

...all that's needed!

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by kien

in an effort to cut heating costs I have deployed 3 x 250 watt metal halides over my tank. This approach seems to work well as my 3 x 300 watt heaters only seem to kick in for a few hours during the late night hours.

And you don't to connect those halides to the computer to get the "sweet spot". Some minutes of savings in computer's power too

[dustinc]

Originally Posted by Baldy

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.

Yep and that's not being ran through any emissions equipment ether, we have 4 large diesel engines and not a single one has a EGR or even a Catalytic converter, let alone the Diesel Partical Filter and Urea there making me have on my car that gets 65mpg, every little bit helps though, that's why I drive a Jetta (not a huge lifted truck like most riggers) that gets better fuel mileage than a Prius and doesn't have those nasty environment destroying battery, Hybrids are a Joke! Start Stop technology, and small turbo diesels is the way to go!

[marie]

I haven't had heaters in my tank since I first set it up last may. I have glass covers on the top to keep humidity down. The tank drops to 79 degrees at night and with the halides on the tank reaches 82

[dustinc]

as far as saving energy ditching the sump would be the way to go!!, I changed sumps earlier this year so my tank was running for a couple hours sumpless, with only 1 heater ( I have one in the sump) my temp stayed steadier than it has ever been, so thats 480 watts of electricity there... 28 dollars a month to run my sump...