Electricity Monitors - Learning to Conserve with Knowledge

Most consumers cringe at the sight of their electric bill sitting in the mailbox - and with good reason. The price of electricity when it comes to simple daily living can be daunting, and it is something that we feel that we can not live without. Or can't we? The real question is how much electricity we can live without.

Progress Energy in Raleigh, North Carolina, is trying an experiment to show us that while we 'can not live without' electricity, perhaps we can learn to live with using less electricity. The theory behind this project is that people do not realize how much electricity they are wasting on a daily basis - and therefore, how much money it is costing them. Progress Energy has put electricity usage monitors into more than 800 homes to see whether or not an awareness of how much energy is being used will actually be useful in conservation, and therefore delay or perhaps even offset the need to build more power plants.

What this monitor does is to display the cost of the energy that is currently being used. For instance, when a customer sees that the cost of electricity being used is only five cents per hour when there are no major appliances being used - and then skyrockets to a dollar an hour when the air conditioner kicks on - they are much apt to be more careful of how much they are using the air conditioner. They might also take into consideration when they mix using electrical appliances. For instance, using the oven in the heat of the day during the summer is only going to make that air conditioner run longer. If baking is saved until the cooler hours of the day - in the evening - the act of baking is not going to be quite as hard on the electric bill.