If you want to make any actual, substantive effect on those sort of bills, then you'll have to get you and a few hundred of your closest friends to start cutting back their consumption to effect your bills by a fistful of dollars. It's a lot like voting.
Or I can change the power settings on all the computers who come through the repair station, swap out lightbulbs to flourescent rather than conventional bulbs, put timer switches on all the bathrooms, tell people to do that themselfes, etc.
It's not really a handful of dollars when the fee increase is more than 5% as it is going to be from this year to the next at this dorm complex.
Here is the current rate: $4,254
Here is the new rate, 5% in this case: $4467.70
I don't owe anything... I get "free housing" by doing an on-campus jorb.
Everyone else will be paying more than $200 more per tear to live in a malarkeyty double room with some one they might end up hating by the ned of the first week of school. I think that is bullmalarkey.
Wouldn't you rather pay less to live anyway? I would.
I get free housing by working for the repair station, so I am not saving myself any money. This is about saving everyone money, accross the board, in the dorms or not.
If nobody watched TV during peak hours in the summer, there would never be brown-outs and scores of people would not become heat exhausted.
People as a whole might be ignorant, but that is not going to stop me from trying to maintain an informed and informing individual as I was when I was growing up.
An other power saving technique:
Put power strips on everything.
One switch on a score of stereo devices can cut your "Phantom Power" usage to nothing. "Phantom Power" is the power consumed by devices plugged in despite having their power off. Many newer stereos draw anywhere from 5W to 20W of power when turned off (dependingon features, rediculous light shows, keeping the speaker pre-amped, etc.) Using rate of 7 cents/kWh, that is anywhere from $0.25 to $1 per equipment piece per month. In a year, one stereo system could cost you $3-$12.
That's a lot of money if you multiply it by the number of devices using this power. (4 devices could be 12-48 dollars a year with the old rate. That's 1-4 new music CD's, or 3-8 used ones.)
This is not about me saving money. This is about you saving money.
The more plentiful power is, the lower the economic pull.
The lower the economic pull, the less it will cost for electricity (unless of course the pull becomes completely rare, as for the pull for a hearse is very rare, it will cost a lot. This is unlikely)
So... the moral is... if we ALL lower power consumption, power rates should stay the same or even lower (maybe, but unlikely) and thus our bills will lower, allowing us to spend our money on other things with more value to us, like games, music, soda, food, etc.
I don't think it is worth "convenience" to spend an additional few hundred dollars a year on power, do you?
