Good news on the Hawaiian Electric bill

We've watched energy bills climb over the last year due to oil prices, which peaked at $147 per barrel back in July.  Since that time, oil has declined to $51 per barrel today.   It's hard to believe - oil prices have gone down to about 1/3 of what they were four months ago.

Hawaiian Electric recently announced that customers can expect their bills to go down as a result of the price reductions.  This month I noticed the cost per kilowatt hour had gone down, which was a relief.  More importantly, I found that the conservation measures we had been taking around the house put a significant dent in our power use!

In our last electric bill post here: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/mikey/6248/show/ we discussed conservation basics and some addtional measures.

By "additional measures" I mean getting more frugal than the average person.  These measures included:

- Putting the TV, stereo, microwave oven, blender and cell phone chargers on surge protectors.  When the appliances and chargers were not in use, the surge protectors were turned off.

- Unplugging the extra phone chargers for our cordless home phones.  Only the main "base" phone was left plugged in.  We rotate the phone handsets to the base every couple of days to keep all handsets charged.

- Drying clothes on the clothesline more often.  Many people (including my wife) prefer the fluffy feeling of clothes from the dryer.  To compensate, we put the clothes on the line until they were about 75% dry, then popped them in the dryer for 10-20 minutes to get them nice and fluffy.

Our current electric bill shows that our conservation measures reduced our kilowatt hour usage per day to 14.2 a full kilowatt hour less per day than our previous lowest bills in the last year!  That's a near 7% reduction in electricity usage.  Our conservation measures along with the decreased cost of oil accounted for a $31 dollar reduction in this month's electric bill. 

Besides the dollar savings, we also consumed less oil (less money going overseas), polluted less and helped a little bit in preventing global warming.  Even if oil goes down to $25 per barrel, these are still important goals for people that care about our environment and the U.S. economy.

While money savings are a good incentive for cutting energy use, please don't forget about our environment when energy prices ease.

Aloha, Mike Bates

Kailua homes for sale

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