The holidays are just around the corner and that means shopping money. I think we can all agree we’ll need shopping money, so who wouldn’t want a bit more of it?
The promotions of the OG&E SmartHours intrigued me to dig further into some energy savings programs that could save us some money every month. I haven’t enrolled in that program yet, but in the meantime, I did go and explore more and went to the OG&E website for customers to manage and see the use of electricity in their homes and business, MyOG&Epower. THIS my friends, is the coolest thing to see!
There’s no better way for you get see how cool the site is than for you to see for yourself.
First let me begin by telling you, it took me no time at all to register onto the site to create my account to monitor my home’s usage. All I needed was my account number, approximate year the home was built and square footage. Simple. Then voila! I get to see ALL kinds of REALLY cool details on how we use electricity, when we use the most, and I can consider tweaking a few things to save some money and energy.
It says that I’m a bit over the average use of my neighbors…. (doesn’t surprise me with The Mister’s heating and air habits we need to work on, AND my kids turning off the lights!).
The picture above shows my electricity use hour by hour… which really lets me know (especially if I’m not in the house) that there are some things I can be doing to reduce my costs, like turning off lights, unplugging things I don’t use (because I’m always leaving my chargers plugged in with nothing on them!)
Here’s another breakdown in chunks of time. Again, super user friendly and easy to see where we spend the most and how much we spend on baseload. Now.. “baseload”.. that is the electricity used by those “larger” and “more important” things that are always plugged but not always in use. For example, your refrigerator is always working, your microwave, your oven, your printer, your entertainment center… But if there are certain things we CAN unplug while we’re not using them, then those are the small changes I know I need to make. Like my phone charger or laptop charger.
If you’re an OG&E customer, you’ll be doing yourself a huge favor by getting yourself over to MyOG&Epower and creating your account to see how efficient (or INefficient) you are. You’ll be thankful you did.
Because you do know what’s around the corner…. HOLIDAYS! And who wouldn’t want a few extra dollars saved to use for spending money! {wink!}
*Compensation for this post was provided by OG&E. Opinions expressed here are my own.
I’m often shocked by my water bill in the Summer — so I let my grass be a little dryer and less green this year. I feel guilty!
I know! I wonder how many little things I can tweak to make changes myself!
I’m always amazed at how much electricity we use, but ever since we enrolled in the OG&E SmartHours program we have seen a tremendous change in our usage… thanks for posting this!!!
Dora, I plan on posting about SmartHours, too! 🙂 Thanks for sharing as well! It’s very interesting! I’ve started unplugging things that aren’t in use… let’s see if it helps us!
Really cool. Thanks for the info!