I live in Canada, particularly Ontario where we are going through a Hydro crisis right now. People have to choose between paying their hydro bill and putting food on their tables. It's really sad. I'm thankful to not be a person who has to make that choice but many of my friends are unfortunately in this situation. We just finished building our home and I prepared myself for massive hydro bills. That wasn't the case and I attribute it to the fact that my entire house is brand new. From wiring to new energy efficient appliances. The highest my bill I get is $220 in the summer when the AC is running on the hottest days. Normally my bill sits around $150/month.

I have dimmers in my entire home. My Dad is an electrician so I grew up with them and wanted them in my home. If I'm not in a room, the lights aren't on. If someone isn't arriving at night, my outside lights are NEVER on. They're beautiful but what's the point? My stove is run by propane rather than by electricity. I'm rural so I'm not on the regular time-of-use that Urbanites are and yet still, I only do my laundry at night and on weekends. I got use to TOU in all my apartments so it's just become a habit. I don't pack my fridge to the brim to save it from having to work harder to cool. I only run full loads in my dishwasher. If there's not enough and I need stuff, I wash it by hand. We BBQ through the summer which is cheaper than using electricity, and even in the winter too. The cold doesn't stop us. And pretty much everything can be cooked on a BBQ.

People don't do enough to reduce their energy bills. They say they do and maybe some do but then they leave a microwave light on at night. Our home is pitch black in the evening. Watching TV in the dark isn't good for you haha! But we do it or keep the lights really low. We only run the bathroom fans as long as they need to clear the room. If we go downstairs during the day, there's no point in turning the lights on. And we only have 2 windows down there. (It's currently unfinished which helps. We don't pay to heat down there. It's usually about 8-10° cooler) We don't have fans in any of the rooms.

I should mention that closing vents is not good for your furnace. Particularly when running AC. When it's summer, it's harder for us to cool the house because we get the hottest sun through the side of our home that has the most windows. But in the winter it's beneficial. If it's a certain temp or below, we shut the furnace off (AC) and open the windows. We also have a programmable thermostat so the heat/AC fluctuates during the day according to our work schedules.

I disagree with Mike to an extent. Depending on what type of lights you have, it can make a huge difference. I hate the type of light that LED's give off so you will never find one in my house. (Correction. I have 1 in my ensuite. I'm not a huge fan but I've got use to it) The rest of my home is recessed incandescent lighting.

There is a catch 22 between using less energy and saving money on your electricity. Actually several. I have lowered my use 2157 kwh but only lowered my cost $187.41 for this past year. Unless there is a problem like the hydro crisis each time the usage goes down the utility will ask for a rate increase. Money is nice which is why I lowered my usage but it is not the only thing to look at.

150 CAD works out to about 115 USD, which is right about what the U.S. Department of Energy say the average American home spends on electricity every month. Understand that my response to the original message was correcting the inaccuracy that dimming lights would reduce electrical consumption by 20%. Obviously every home is different but on average that's mathematically impossible because the lighting portion of the average home's electric bill isn't near 20%. In other words, if one lived entirely in the dark, light the bill still wouldn't go down 20%.

Personally, I don't see much of a difference between traditional incandescent, compact fluorescent, and LED bulbs but everyone has their preferences. Certainly if you use a lot of incandescent bulbs, then using dimmers is going to save some money. Let's look at a room with ten recessed cans each with a traditional 65 watt BR30 bulb. Using the standard bulb life number of 3 hours per day and using the American average of cost of 12.9¢ per kWh those cans would cost about 25¢ per day to run. Let's say you dim them by 50%, that drops it to 12.5¢ cents per day (actually slightly more because there's some inefficiency in the dimming). By switching to LED bulbs the cost drops to 3¢ and by dimming the LED bulbs, to 1.5¢ per day. Since LED bulbs cost more to buy everyone should run the numbers using the own cost of electricity, hours used to per day, etc. to calculate a return on investment.

We noticed a reduction in our electric bill when we replaced our old washer & dryer with new energy star appliances. Dryers in particular use a lot of energy.

This all depends, of course, on what all electricity is used for in the home. If the home is heated/cooled with geothermal or gas, it isn't going to have an electrical cost. Same for water heater or clothes dryer. It is perfectly possible the OP did lower their electrical bill. If lighting was their primary electrical expense.

That said, in my area, electricity is so inexpensive, that paying to replace all the switches in the house would cost more than the savings in the electrical billing.

Certainly electricity usage and the makeup of that usage is going to vary from home to home. I was simply pointing out that for the average home in America dimming lights isn't going to save a significant amount of money and certainly no where near the claimed savings of the original poster.

In the case of a home that uses, say, natural gas appliances and maybe no air conditioning, then the percentage of the electric bill that is lighting is going to be much higher than average. In that case, I would suspect that the electric bill itself will be much smaller than average too. I had an apartment where the only electricity I used was lighting, the refrigerator, electronics, and A/C (which I rarely used). In the months I didn't use A/C, the bill was about $32 of which about $15 was the minimum charge for just having electric service. So I was using $17 per month worth of electricity. If I had installed dimmers and using the OP's claimed savings of 20% of the total bill, I would have saved about $3.40 per month.

It's been a couple of months since the original message and we haven't heard back from the OP, plus his message also linked to a product sold on Amazon by a third party. Frankly I have to wonder if it wasn't spam in the first place. Not that it hasn't been good fodder for discussion...

I won't make any claim about percentage of electric bill, but I've now lived in several places with light fixtures with crazy numbers of bulbs - like 10-12 each. In current place, have replaced almost all bulbs with energy efficient ones (both LED and compact fluorescent). The difference in heat being given off is tremendous - 10 bulbs at 40 watts is like a small room heater.

But to be honest, the reason I'm most happy to have changed them out is to spend less time on ladders and furniture - the energy efficient ones last so much longer. It doesn't take many fixtures like that before you start getting tired of constantly replacing bulbs.

I live in a rural area and had Time Of Use meter installed about three years ago. The largest portion of the hours used is in the lowest of the three levels, about 8.7 - 16 cents/Kwh, if I recall well. The two higher of the three rate levels vary related to hours of use, weekdays, from summer to winter: weekends are all at the low rate.

The electric usage is usually less than a third of the total bill, with the delivery charge being well over double that amount, varies substantially month to month, level appears heavily related to usage fee. Low earlier line loss fee included there for the past couple of years or so.

Oil furnace, no A/C, electric water heater, laundry washer, dryer (rarely used), no dishwasher, well water with electric water pump. Electric stove, rather old, fridge, similar vintage but a bit newer, I think, rather old large chest freezer ... not about to recommend that landlord replace them, as the (expensive) newer ones don't last worth a damn.

Portable electric fan heater, and oil-filled heater, seldom used, a couple of table fans and a couple of floor fans, hardly ever used.

Some incandescent bulbs, some fluorescent tubes and compacts, had a couple of halogens, but one blew, I think, no LEDs yet.

Landlord's shop is on the same meter, I charge him about 15%.

Our monthly fee was quite close to $100.00 until about a year ago, and there have been increases ... probably about $125. - 130.00, this year ... will have more accurate figures for this year soon, as we settle at year-end.

There have been major complaints regarding recent increases in power bills in Ontario, including that our high rates discourage industry from locating here.

And the government has been privatizing it, to which many object, feeling that selling off an essential utility that produces long-term income for a boost to current income is very poor management.

Being careful with my use of electricity, it would be very difficult to decrease usage by anything approaching 20%. Some compact fluorescent bulbs (earlier ones?) didn't react well to attempts to dim them.

ole joyful