huge electric bill help

[kmax74]

whats the least amount of hours can you run your lights
and what the hight temp you should set your chiller at right now i am running my lights for 12 hours a day for the halides and my chiller is set at 76 would 80 be ok and 6 hours a day on the halides

[luke33]

I'd go with 82 and 8hrs. But what does my opinion mean. How deap is your tank and what kind of pump's, skimmers are you using.

[Cultivatedcoral]

12 hours for halides? That's a very long time. I run my halides for 6-7 hours max. SPS growth is excellent.

[t5Nitro]

I use 6 hours for halides.

[luke33]

Yes, 12hrs is definately overkill. Thats like 3pm, the hottest part of the day for 12hrs. To much my man.

[CCG]

IMO run your lights for 6 to 7 hrs. Get a couple of clip on fans and put them on your tank pointing at the water. The fans should help keep the water cool.

Colin

[Entropy]

I would up the temp to 80 deg which is very common in nature (80-82) and cut the lights back to about 8 hours. I would add T'5 or VHO actinics for dusk an dawn to keep the light cycle 12 hours. Adding fans will definately help keep the temps lower as will venting the canopy really well at the top.

[Kayak_Guy]

How high was your bill?

[kmax74]

575 was my bill i have two mag 12 returns and a sedra 3500 i think as my protien skimmer

[kmax74]

i called edison and they are going to check it to make shure thiers not a mistake i hope that thier is lol i used 2400 kw in a month

[kmax74]

ANY OTHER IDEAS

[Nick A]

You could try downgrading your lights to just 250DE's. I'm most likely going to so I'll be saving about 400 watts with 2x250DE pendants compared to 2x400SEs, so when I do my bill won't change, and there will be more light in my tank . Is there anything else that is eating up power on your tank or anything in your house?

[gcarroll]

Dang, your bill was more than 2x my last bill. You got problems man! Hopefuly Edison made a mistake. Where are you located?

[humbugy]

well, other than it puts you over 6000 watts @ 12 cents/kwh x 24 hrs a day, not really, do you have a meter that somebody reads manually or an electronic one?

http://reefcentral.com/calc/tank_elec_calc.php

i used 6000w, 24hrs a day, 12 months a year.

[Freed]

My bills are down to $96 a month with everything running that you see in my signature. Let me know if you want info on how you can do it too.

[kmax74]

electronic and it was 2400 kw edison gets pretty expensive after so many kw i have an electric meter they just installed it around the end of may my for april was like 270 and i was running the ac so i dont see how mays bill doubled the only thing that has changed was that the ac was running more the tank was the same my ac is set at 78
i am located in alta loma

[luke33]

Freed, you can't compare IN to Cali. lol, i don't worry about electric in IN, its cheap.

[Paul B]

I have a device clamped on my meter with a remote sensor that tells me exactly how much in cents it is costing me per hour for electricity. The power company charges me about 18 cents per kilowatt hour which means if I run 10- 100 watt lamps for an hour it costs me 18 cents, which doesen't sound like much but if I were to keep those lights on all month it comes to $130.00.
If I turn off a light this thing shows me about a four cent saving an hour which comes out to about $28.00 a month.
Now I go around turning off things and I can tell instantly how much it is saving me. You would be amazed. I like the thing so much I became a distributer.
My reef adds about $50.00 a month to my electric bill.
Have fun.
Paul

[mr.maroonsalty]

Originally posted by Paul B
I have a device clamped on my meter with a remote sensor that tells me exactly how much in cents it is costing me per hour for electricity. The power company charges me about 18 cents per kilowatt hour which means if I run 10- 100 watt lamps for an hour it costs me 18 cents, which doesen't sound like much but if I were to keep those lights on all month it comes to $130.00.
If I turn off a light this thing shows me about a four cent saving an hour which comes out to about $28.00 a month.
Now I go around turning off things and I can tell instantly how much it is saving me. You would be amazed. I like the thing so much I became a distributer.
My reef adds about $50.00 a month to my electric bill.
Have fun.
Paul

We're in a similar market mine's nyseg, I've been curious to know how much electricity my tanks use. Can you give me an idea of your equipment and how much for the meter you mention.

[DarG]

I heard the old magnet trick works for those that still have those non-digital meters

J/K ...

sorta ...

[meschaefer]

I would get a new return pump, two Mag 12s running twenty four hours a day at 110 whatts each. You can get the same flow from a sequence reeflo dart at less than half the wattage (98 watts I think) your currently using. The Mag 12 are turning all that extra wattage to run them into heat, so by getting rid of them your chiller will need to run alot less as well. Granted you need to run the dart external, but it uses alot less electricity overall.

As long as your 150 is no more than 30 inches tall, I would cut the MH back to 250s with good reflectors and you don't need to run them 12 hours a day. As said you can probably cut that in half, but will need some other illumination to compensate. ONce again you will add alot less heat to your system but cutting back the bulb wattage and then running it for alot less. Your chiller will need to run alot less. That will also save you alot of electricity.

I don't run a chiller, (but one is going on the new 180 when construction on my basement is done), but 76 is too low IMO. I plan on running mine at 78, but 80 would probably be fine.

[mwlude]

Originally posted by DarG
I heard the old magnet trick works for those that still have those non-digital meters

J/K ...

sorta ...

I have an old meter. Wanna share?

[trueperc]

Just my 2 cent, I recently went through huge bills. One thing I did was put my heaters on timers to only come on when the halides are off this helped keep the temp more stable My tank is 78-80 temp. I also down graded from 3 400w SE 3-250w SE, best thing I ever did. This is over a 210. The AC runs a lot less, the house is not so hot and my tank temp is more stable.

[klam114]

I run my MH 6 hours daily, Atinics supplements 10 hours. You probably want to have yours on 7-8 hours max without any supplements.

I put these fans over the sump, set to come on when it hits 79.5 degrees, off at 79 degrees and it's worked really well. This set of fans worked better than the 2 clip-on fans I had over the sump earlier and uses 1/3 the electricity, only 11 watts. This will take the stress off your chiller at a much lower energy use.
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...pc=1&N=0&Nty=1

Reset your chiller to 80 degrees. CA electric rates are among the highest in the nation. In nature, reefs are between 80-82 degrees. A lot of reefers seem to like their temps 76-78, but 78-80 is a better setting.

Change out those Mags, they run really hot and use a lot of electricty. The heat causes your chiller to work harder too.

[Icefire]

2400kwh is possible

1100w lights
250w pump

1000kwh

add AC, Chiller, fridge, house...

Change the pump, get 250w with luminarc or T5ho and forget the chiller, set it at 83F, if the ambian is 78F, it won't come on