Need to save money on Electicity, what to do?

[ReefTankSupply]

Ok, I am at the point where $300 per month for electric bill is just not going to cut it, I need to trim this by half.

My options:

Switch to a cube again, with just a single 250w pendant. Reduce sump down so I only need to use one or 2 250w heaters.

Keep current system, but somehow make one 250w Pendant work , maybe get a light mover?? I realize it might not be ideal, but I can live without growing SPS if I had to. I just cant afford this electric bill right now.

Last option, get out of the hobby LOL.

I think by eliminating my return pump to the frag tank, maybe doing away with the closed loop pump and just stick to tunzes, maybe going to one or two 250w lights on a mover, doing away with the frag tank, etc should be able to get me back into a somewhat decent shape as far as electic bill goes.
I am also considering getting an ATI bubblemaster and sticking it inside the sump. Those 2 pumps will draw less energry than the beast skimmer i am using now.

I guess I am going to go about this in a stepwise manner and see how much I can lower my bill. But I really need to lower it fast. I have knocked $100 off it so far, but still need another 120-150 before I am happy.

G

 

[Bebo77]

cut your lighting cycle, get a light mover.. run the skimmer during the day only...

 

[nahtanoj]

well as far as the tank is concerned can't help a lot, but the rest of the house perhaps. if you havent already switch all your light bulbs in the house to compact flourescent, they use 1/4 the power and produce the same light as a standard light. it did indeed cut my electric bill in half.

 

[reefer714]

Gal, you have too many pumps running in your system.

 

[smooth]

Wait, why would you run your skimmer during that day?
That's peak power cost...

My friend has a little shop in his garage, he finally switched all of his lighting over to night to morning. Somewhere around 8-9ish to 6am?
That will reduce your costs...I think you'd need to run that ATI for about 20 months before you break even as far as expenditures, so that doesn't really help.

If you own your own home, it's probably time to start looking at solar panels?
Or if you can install them where you rent/lease, maybe it's still an option depending on how permanent they are after installation.

 

[ReefTankSupply]

changing house bulbs yes, but think about how much time they are on, its hardly anything and usually during non peak hours. Biggest probs are pumps running 24/7 like the return pumps and skimmer pumps and closed loop pump.

I am in the process of switching some things around. I did away with my DART CL pump, so gonna save 180w/hr/24hr/day = 4.32kwh per day = about 120kwh per month and I am doing away with one of my frag tanks which will save on another return pump of about 80kwh per month, so now I am saving 200kwh per month.

That alone should get me into a cheaper bracket. I might then look to reduce my return pump on my fish system. Eventually I wont have that fish hold system as I have sold the business , but for now I am still selling the fish for the business.

Lights are already reduced to 6hr cycles from 6pm to 12am which is off peak hrs. I might also go to only 2x 250w on the lumenarc pendants to save a little more but thats only 45kwh per month. For some reason I think might have an energy leak somewhere. Dont know where, but I need to check. Going to add everything up on a spreadsheet and see if my consumption makes sense.

 

[euphoricgear]

you can get 150 mh to lower some costs. just bring the higher light corals higher in you tank. how deep is your tank? i have 60GAL 16" high with 3" of sand. so only 13" water. with a sunpod 48" with 2 150w mh and things are going great. have zoa's mushooms, hammer and frogspawn.

i also have a #1 koralia running all day. consume 3.5w, and a small pump for a hob fuge runniing 6w (man! that;s more than the koralia) and i stopped my skimmer cause its not really skimming anything cause i only have 2 small fish that i dont feed everyday.

im thinking of making and in the tank fuge so i can get rid of my fuge to save more so my main filtration would be live rock, live sand and chaeto in the tank. im doing 15-20 gal water change every 2-3 weeks and everything seems to be doing fine. with that im gonna be moving my 10gal frag tank in the 60gal so that i'll just be running 1 tank.

hope that helps.

 

[OCReefMadness]

cut your lighting cycle, get a light mover.. run the skimmer during the day only...

Buy a BK skimmer as reefer714 you will save more energy.

 

[Bergovoy]

hey gal,

I think you are good to think in percentages...

Put your lights on individual timers if possible, if not already, and cycle them so that all of them are only on for about an hour or two, (mid day / noon), so it more closely emulates real life.

Also, schedule a couple days, (three days is ten percent), when the lights do not come on, (cloud cover over the tropics, who would have thought)

Put your closed loop on a timer, along with your skimmer.

Buy more fans, similar to what steve714 has, (home depot sells some smaller versions of them). They are very effecient in sheeting air over the water surfgace and evaping water to chil, toavoid a chiller, (that is if you run one)

But dont even think of getting out of the hobby...

 

[L.A.-Lawman]

what i do is have dark days set aside. i will run at least 3 days a month with no lights. try running other things in the house at night. radios, tvs, washing machine,