In Arizona we have two major electric service providers, Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project.

We have APS and are on the Time Advantage Rate (this plan is no longer available for APS customers unless you are already using it).

On the Time Advantage Rate our “on-peak” hours are between 9am and 9pm.   There’s no way we can shut down everything for the entire day, so the main thing we avoid using during these hours is the dryer.  Mr. A and I wash clothing before 9am, or on weekends. On occasion our son AJ washes and dries a load during the on-peak hours.

We have to run the air conditioning unit during the day, which is a huge energy hog.

In spite of this, we still end up saving money on the Time Advantage Rate.

This is what we pay for kilowatt hours during the summer months:

• OFF-PEAK [M-F 9pm-9am and all day Sat. and Sun] usage $0.05774 per kilowatt hour

• ON-PEAK [M-F 9am-9pm] usage $0.17866 per kilowatt hour

On our most recent bill we used 4003 kilowatt hours between July 21 and June 18th.

2280 of those were OFF-PEAK.  The remaining 1723 were ON-PEAK.

Compared to last year, with the same number of days (33), we used a 111 less kilowatt hours, and $0.42 less per day.

As you can see by the graph below, we have consistently used less electricity for the entire year of 2010.

Our electricity charges for July 2010 was $497.92.

By contrast, if we were on the standard plan with APS, we would have paid $625.92.

By my calculations, we saved $128.00 using the Time Advantage Plan.

I would love to see these amounts go down, but there are four adults living in our home, and someone is home at all times.  I mean, if we were all four leaving the house every day to go to a job outside the home we could turn the temperature down.   We keep the thermostat at 81°F at all times and that is the lowest we can keep it.  I have tried going lower but one major problem arises and that is our oldest son Big A getting heat rash under his arms.  It is painful and takes several days to heal so I am not putting him through that to lower our electricity bill.

We are also on the budget plan where they take the amount we used in the last year and break out 12 equal payments $296.00 for the next year. This helps considerably. And we make an auto-payment so this saves an additional forty-eight cents. Hey, every penny counts!

While researching this, and trying to talk my mom into trying it out, I learned that Salt River Project actually has a guarantee that if your bill isn’t lower then they will reimburse your account and put you back on the plan you were on before.

I am excited to see how much money my mom will save.

I also tried to talk another friend into signing up with one of the savings plans. I know she would save money but she absolutely refused to even look into it. Oh well. Maybe I put a bug in her ear to check it out someday.

Do you use a savings plan through your electricity company? If you don’t know, you should make a point to check. Maybe your electricity company guarantees that you’ll save money so it could be a simple and painless way to put a bit more of your hard earned money into your pocket.

Are You Paying Too Much For Your Electricity? is a post from: http://www.outofdebtagain.com. If you are reading it from any other website address than one beginning with http://www.outofdebtagain.com, the content has been stolen.

Related posts:

1. Tracking Electricity Usage
2. Electricity Update June’s Usage
3. Breakdown of our Electricity Bill