Calculating The Cost Of Electricity
©2000 Melissa Kaplan
It isn't only herp keepers who need extra electricity - and sometimes natural or propane gas - to keep their pets warm. Birds, while warm-blooded, are closer to herps in that they will get sick if their environments are not kept within the species optimum temperature range. Smaller animals lose heat faster than large animals, putting even small mammals such as hamsters at risk when their room air temperatures fall below their optimum range. People themselves often have special needs when it comes to their own health. They may require more electricity than an otherwise healthy, abled person due to equipment and other needs. Some may require more gas for their central heating, water heaters, and stoves due to special health and dietary needs. Thus it is that there are many people who may find the following information useful and helpful in identifying and managing their energy costs in this time of increasing demand and cost.
Since I myself am ill, and it is taking a lot of energy and other resources (no pun intended) to write this article and get it online, I am writing only one single article rather than one for my herp site and one for my Chronic Neuroimmune Diseases site.
Hidden Cost of Keeping Herps (and Birds and Plants)
The significant hidden cost, especially in these days of escalating electricity, natural gas and propane prices, is the cost of keeping your herps at their required temperatures.
A Refresher Of The
Importance Of Temperature and Gradients
Keeping a herp too warm is just as dangerous for its overall health and wellbeing as keeping it too cold. Keeping a herp at one single temperature across its entire accessible environment is also just as dangerous. Herps must be provided with their thermal gradient that they can move around in throughout the course of the day and night to be able to maintain their needed core body temperature. Only in this way can they digest their food properly and keep their systems functioning.
Herps have to be able to access the thermal gradient, too. For example, if your thermal gradient is vertical (warmer at the top, cooler on the bottom), it is useless if the herp cannot move up towards the top to get warmer. A gradient is a three-dimensional thing: vertical (top to bottom or bottom to top, including within the substrate layer for burrowing herps); horizontal (side to side); and across (front to back). One of the reasons why most of the commercially sold enclosures are worthless for most reptiles is because they are too small to be able to provide the necessary horizontal gradients for most species, and the vertical gradients required by climbing and arboreal species.
Many popular herps are from the tropics, neotropics, or deserts: green iguanas, red-tail boas, ball pythons, bearded dragons, various skinks and swifts, Uromastyx, water dragons, etc. For these herps, you have to provide their tropical, neotropical, or desert temperature ranges all year round. Sometimes that means you have to actually cool their enclosure down when it gets too hot outside and inside your home. Most of the time, however, it means you have to keep a steady supply of heat to keep their enclosures at their required daytime thermal gradient, and at their night time thermal gradient.
This is not an option: you have to do it. You cannot expect a herp to adapt to your environment. A major part of the responsibility of keeping herps is maintaining the temperatures they require. If there is any reason why you cannot do that - whether due to the cost of the energy required to provide the needed heating, the cost of the properly-sized enclosure, or the inability to provide sufficient humidity (which goes along with temperature as a key environmental requirement), then you should not have that herp. Better to stick with an appropriately sized mammal as they do generate their own body heat and so are easier to keep warm during seasonally cold periods and to cool down during hot ones.
Are Important For Native Species, Too
By the same token, if the area they end up hibernating in ends up being even a little too warm than the species optimal hibernation temperatures, they end up staying in hibernation but the faster metabolic rate means that they exhaust their store of fat and fluids much faster. The end result of this is that they may die of starvation or dehydration before spring or shortly after emerging from hibernation. (Why would they choose a bad place to hibernate? Because their habitat was disturbed or destroyed by humans who gave no thought to the long term effects of their moving rocks, clearing the ground, or paving "unused" land for parking lots or roadways, etc.)
So, even if you collected a kingsnake or box turtle (legally, of course, according to the laws of your state) from your backyard, you will still have to provide heat and a controlled captive environment for them that mimics the thermal terrestrial and aquatic environment the species would have lived in the wild. The same, obviously, is true of any captive-bred native species you buy or are given.
In California, I found two of the four power suppliers I checked had online electricity calculators:
Check your bills for your power company's website address, and then search their site for similar calculators. If they do not have one, you can build your own calculator in a spread sheet program. Using the basic information from one of the above online calculators, plugging in the electricity KWH and gas therms cost from your own bill or that you obtain by telephoning or emailing your own gas and electric supplier.
The above calculators are great for figuring out how much the various things in your house cost to run. For some reason, however, the power companies failed to include things we know to be critical necessities: ceramic heating elements, people heating pads, nocturnal reptile lights, misting systems, timers, etc. For people who keep fish and other marine life, there is also the cost of pumps, filters, submersible heaters, and lights. For plant people and gardeners, there is the cost of plant lights and germination mats. While each piece of the heating and lighting equipment we have seems to be a small thing, once you add them all up across the population of herps you are currently keeping, the total may be staggering.
In the past decade, many states have deregulated power companies which has fostered competition from new power companies and alternative energy providers. That means consumers in the deregulated states, and in pockets of communities in other states, can now choose between two or more power providers. ElectricChoice.com provides a tool so you can search for power companies serving your area, and has some great information on how to read power contracts, the importance of contracts, and more.
So, What's The Big Deal*
I now have no birds, and only nine reptiles (one each ball python, blue-tongue skink, G. spengleri, Cyclura, green iguana, and two each desert tortoises and chaco tortoises) who winter inside. Two hibernate, and two brumate. All but the python and spengleri are free roamers who spend most of their winter in the iguana room, the only room in the house kept warm throughout the year. My PG&E bill for gas and electricity during November 11 - December 10, 2000 was, thanks to the failure of deregulation and Enron's machinations, $164.71. When I used PG&E's online calculator, I found out that the 1500 watt free-standing closed-system radiant oil heater I keep running in the iguana room (a.k.a., the breakfast room) is costing $118 a month. Even so, it is less expensive than using my central HVAC that uses natural gas.
Back in the days of $50 monthly energy bills at home, the landlord of the building in which I had a store decided I would be much easier to push around than my male partner who left the country for several months. The way he did so was to inform me that, in as much as his cost for electricity was increased by the power company and I paid a pro-rated share in my monthly rent payment, that he would have to increase my rent. Uh-huh. So I sat down and figured out how much energy each of my lights and other electrical equipment (some of which had to be left on 24/7/365) cost to run on a daily/monthly basis. I then presented him with a spreadsheet of the final figures that showed how he actually owed me a rent decrease based on our electrical usage. Needless to say, he didn't try to hit me or my partner up for another rent increase the rest of the time I was there.
Every electrical appliance or object that takes electricity to operate will be marked - on the item itself, on its packaging, or in its instruction booklet/information sheet - with either the watts it uses or with amps and volts.
To Find Watts:
· Look for the watts on the item, package, or information sheet/booklet that came with it.
· If there is no watts figure, but there is amps and volts (often appearing as VAC), simply multiply the amps by the volts to get the number of watts.
On large items, like transformers, power strips, timers, etc., you will find the information molded (embossed) on the object or appearing on a plate or sticker on the object. The power strip I just checked, for example, says
To find the watts in this type of situation, I simply multiply 15 (amps) x 125 (volts) to get 1875 watts. In the case of the strip, this is the total load it can carry. (As a couple of engineering folks pointed out to me, empty power strips consume a negligible amount.)
Sometimes the information is printed on the item in such a way that it wears off after the item has been used for a while. My older heating pads don't have any embossed information on the back of the switch, nor on the pad, and I've long ago thrown out the packaging and accompanying information. But the new pad I just bought has printed on it something that I can use in most of my "inexpensive human heating pad - regular size" calculations:
Light bulbs are similarly easy: the watts is printed right on them. So, your 100 watt light bulb uses 100 watts. Your 15 watt UVB-fluorescent uses 15 watts. If you are using "energy miser" types of incandescent bulbs, you may need the packaging to remind you what it is. (For example, the 60 watt incandescent bulbs I used to use in my "security lamp" in my living room used only 55 watts. I replaced it several months ago with a screw-in fluorescent that only uses 12 watts.) So, you may need a trip to the store to make some notes if you don't remember or no longer have the information you need at hand.
Your Power Company's Cost Per Kilowatt Hour
To find the cost to run one item:
If you want to find the cost of all items:
Example: 1 inexpensive regular-sized human heating pad = 50 watts, calculated at PG&Es standard rate, averaged:
Pretty cool...and maybe pretty scary. In the PG&E region of California, the average cost per Kwh is $0.12. In actuality, if you are on the regular rate schedule, you are paying $0.115 for your Basic Kwh allowance and $0.133 for every Kwh in excess of your Basic allowance.
I did about six years ago and changed to what PG&E calls the E8 Rate Schedule. Instead of paying 11.5 cents per basic Kwh and 13.3 cents for every Kwh over that, I pay 7.308 cents for Kwh during the winter, and 12.017 during the summer. This works for me since I use more electricity during the winter than I do during the summer. There is also something called by various names, but amounting to a time-of-use rate, wherein you pay more for energy resources used during peak hours, less during off hours. This is an unlikely one for pet keepers who have to keep their pets warm or during the peak hours, and for people whose illness or disability forces them to be home all day and whose energy demands for special equipment cannot be altered, but it something to look into alone with other possible rate schedule options.
Fortunately, for some of these people, there are some assistance programs available. At this time of year, your power company sends monthly inserts with your bills about these programs. You can also call the company's customer service number, or go to their website, to find out more about what programs are available and what the eligibility requirements are. The most commonly available programs are discussed briefly below. FEPG is the federally established poverty guidelines.
The Federally Established Poverty Guideline (FEPG) for 2000 follows. The amount is increased every February; thus far, I have not been able to find out what the 2001 rate will be. Whatever it is, it won't be significantly higher than the 2000 guideline. For more information on the FEPG, see the DHHS Poverty Guidelines, Research & Measurement site.
for Medical Baseline and Life Support Customers
(California Alternate Rates for Energy) (Formerly LIRA)
(Home Energy Assistance Program)
For Energy Assistance Through Community Help)
You can also contact your local social service organizations, such as the United Way, to see what other programs you may be eligible for.
and Renters Assistance Program
Other Money and Energy
Read the stuff that comes with your power bills! The trees they decimate to print those inserts on won't be such a waste if you read them and put some of the information to use. You can also find energy saving tips on your own power company's website. If your power company doesn't have a very extensive site, feel free to check out the information available on the PG&E, SCE or other power companies in your own region.
If you have a separate freezer or refrigerator for prey or human food, don't forget to calculate their cost in addition to your refrigerator. The more filled-to-capacity a freezer is (both those that are part of your refrigerator and stand-alone units), the more energy efficient it is. If your freezer is running low on items, fill up some milk cartons or other jugs with water and stick them in the freezer until the next time you get your bulk order of prey or human food (er, that is, food for humans).
Where possible, switch to screw-in fluorescent lighting for the people light fixtures in your home. They can be used in ceiling fixtures, outdoor lights, and many standard lamps.
I personally am bothered by the subtle flickering and brightness of light produced by fluorescents, so I use energy miser incandescents in the lamps I read by. I also have them plugged into lamp dimmer switches so I can ramp them down even further.
If you keep the ducts to the central heating unit shut off so little used rooms aren't needlessly heated, but family members tend to forget to close the door when they do go in there, consider installing an automatic door closure on that door.
Rethink that cell phone - it takes up far more energy than a regular phone.
Christmas lights decorating your tree and house are about 50 watts. Do you really need them on from dusk to dawn?
Dusty coils and dirty seals make your refrigerator use more energy trying to keep everything cold.
Water heaters are often turned up too high. Turn them down a notch and wrap an approved water heater insulation blanket around it if you haven't already done so...especially if it sits in a cold, unheated garage (which, by the way, is not where your reptiles should be kept).
Get retro. In the days before central heating and air conditioning, people used their curtains or shutters to help keep the inside of their home comfortable. Open them on sunny days to let the sun warm up the room, and keep them closed on hot days to keep the inside cooler.
Think plants. If you have a southern exterior wall that helps keep your home nice and warm during the winter, but too hot in the summer, plant some fast growing plants to cover the wall (better: a trellis placed a couple of inches away from the wall) and grow some seasonal shade. Hops grow tall and fast and so can be used for single story and two story homes,
You may need to wash the family laundry in separate loads, but you can probably mix loads together in the dryer, reducing dryer time (and gas and electricity). Set the dryer to lower temps and less time, letting close finish drying by hanging them up on a temporary clothes rack or line. During nice weather, hang sheets and towels outside and let the sun and breezes do it for free.
Install photosensors in outside light fixtures (and use fluorescents in the fixtures). That way, if you forget to turn the outside lights off, they will go off automatically at dawn, and not come on till dusk. That gives you 12 hours to remember you forgot.
Leaving your computer and peripherals on all the time? Think again.
There is no door between my iguana room (breakfast room) and kitchen, so I installed a closet clothing-rod-sized dowel just under the ceiling, using holders made for this purpose I bought at the hardware store. I then draped over this rod a thick plastic drop cloth that is wider than the width of the opening. I cut a slit up the middle of the double-thickness "curtain" thus formed so that humans can easily walk through it. It falls to about 4" above the floor, enabling my iguanas, skink, and tortoises to easily move back and forth at will. This effectively keeps my iguana room in the 80s while the rest of the house is in the low 50s during the winter. This type of "curtain" could be installed in other places in the house where there was no existing door. If you wanted to get fancy about it, you could use a suitably sized shower curtain, but they tend be shorter in vertical length and this will leave a bigger gap at the top. Not exactly haute decor, but neither is hypothermia.
Retrofit your fireplace or get a new, energy efficient propane or pellet stove. Wood burning stoves and fireplace are major sources of air pollution and actually inefficient at heating rooms - though they do make your chimney nice and toasty. As people are turning to burning wood as an alternative to using electric and gas heating, air pollution and related health problems are going up. (See Saving Money By Burning Wood Is A Stinky Idea).
PG&E and other power companies have some standard household tips online. And read those inserts in your electricity, gas and water bills: people write them for a reason and you'll never know how much they may save you if you just toss them!
List of Equipment To
Include In Your Costing
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