Understanding Your Electric Costs (part 1)
February 9th, 2010 | By Managing Director in Members | Comments Off
Funniest joke about electricity
Question: How much does it cost to operate a light bulb?
Answer: That depends on how many teenagers live in the house!
What is a kilowatt hour?
Basically electricity is billed in 1,000 watt-hour increments, or kilowatt-hours, or KWH. For example, a 1-watt light bulb burning for 1 hour equals 1 watt-hour or 1WH (1 watt times 1 hour).
A common 100-watt light bulb (typical “A” type lamp) burning for 10 hours = 1,000 watt-hours or 1KWH (100 watts X 10 hours).
Therefore, a 100-watt light bulb burning for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year = 873,600 WH or 873.6KWH
The cost for electricity, at my house anyway, for metering, distribution, environmental, transmission, instrument funding and about a half dozen other line items listed on my bill that I don’t understand (but I’m sure I need) is about 12¢ for every kilowatt hour.
At 12¢/KWH x 873.6KWH of usage, that light bulb costs about $104.84 per year to operate.
Subscribe to our RSS Feed