I picked up a Kill-A-Watt electricity reader recently because our energy bill is pretty high. Found out my one tank is responsible for almost 40% of our total energy bill each month. My tank is costing me $35.34 a month right now (in June). It's got to be higher when the house is colder in the winter. Our total bill this last month was $96.xx, and that's with an electric stove, electric water heater, electric washer and dryer, electric air conditioning etc. Absurd. I pay less than most in the USA for electricity as well, .10129 per KWH.
The vast majority of the cost is heating the tank. Tank has a volume of ~250 gallons, and is heated by (3) 300 watt heaters. My LED lights draw 45 watts for 6 hours a day (.82 a month) and my pump draws 130 watts 24 hours a day (9.48 a month). That means I'm paying $25.04 a month just to heat my tank. I'm heating my tank to ~77 degrees while the house is consistently 68-73.
Anyone else actually track the cost per month to run a tank? I'm wondering if the heaters I bought are not very efficient. I've run Eheim Jager in the past, but the 19" length is too long to fit them into my 16" wide sump so now I'm running Hydor and I don't recall having such a high energy cost before (though I didn't track it). My next experiment will be to pull them out and run my Eheim Jager in the tank and see if there's a difference. After that I'll be insulating the entire sump and the bottom and back of the tank.
I'd be interested in hearing how other peoples power consumption compares to mine.
Oh yeah, if you'd like to calculate your power usage you take the watts per hour x the hours used per day / 1000 (to get KWH usage per day) x how much you're charged per KWH by your electricity company (I pay an Energy Use Charge of 6.77800¢, Transmission Charge of 0.23500¢, and a Distribution Charge of 3.11600¢ per KWH for a total of 10.129 cents per KWH).
The vast majority of the cost is heating the tank. Tank has a volume of ~250 gallons, and is heated by (3) 300 watt heaters. My LED lights draw 45 watts for 6 hours a day (.82 a month) and my pump draws 130 watts 24 hours a day (9.48 a month). That means I'm paying $25.04 a month just to heat my tank. I'm heating my tank to ~77 degrees while the house is consistently 68-73.
Anyone else actually track the cost per month to run a tank? I'm wondering if the heaters I bought are not very efficient. I've run Eheim Jager in the past, but the 19" length is too long to fit them into my 16" wide sump so now I'm running Hydor and I don't recall having such a high energy cost before (though I didn't track it). My next experiment will be to pull them out and run my Eheim Jager in the tank and see if there's a difference. After that I'll be insulating the entire sump and the bottom and back of the tank.
I'd be interested in hearing how other peoples power consumption compares to mine.
Oh yeah, if you'd like to calculate your power usage you take the watts per hour x the hours used per day / 1000 (to get KWH usage per day) x how much you're charged per KWH by your electricity company (I pay an Energy Use Charge of 6.77800¢, Transmission Charge of 0.23500¢, and a Distribution Charge of 3.11600¢ per KWH for a total of 10.129 cents per KWH).
