While the holidays are a fun opportunity to spend quality time with the important people in your life, they can also lead to an increase in energy use which results in a higher bill.
How does a holiday gathering affect my bill?
The amount of your monthly bill is calculated by a fairly simple equation: You pay for the amount of energy used during the course of a certain time period. So it makes sense that if you have more people than normal in your home for the holidays, more energy will be used and your bill will reflect that.
Even if you’re not having overnight guests, hosting Thanksgiving dinner can still impact your bill. Cooking all day for a large group of people means that you’ll be using your appliances more than usual. You might also have multiple TVs on at the same time so people can watch the parade or football games throughout the house.
Similarly, if you have a lot of people in your home for the day, you might need to adjust your thermostat settings so the temperature in your home is comfortable for everyone. Alone, these seem like small factors, but you might be surprised by how much they can all add up together.
How can I reduce the impact?
If you’d like to better manage your energy use during the holidays, Piedmont Electric can help!
Use our appliance calculator to see a breakdown of how much it costs to use the appliances in your home. Then you can use the results to make informed decisions about how you use energy during the holidays.
For example, if you see that using your oven for one hour uses 2.4 kWh but your slow cooker only uses 0.2 kWh for the same amount of time, you might plan to make your Thanksgiving stuffing in the slow cooker instead of the oven to save energy.
*Calculations based on a 2400 watt oven and a 200 watt slow cooker. 1000 watts equals 1 kW.
If you’d like to learn more about managing energy over the holidays, read our article: “Is your home ready for cold Carolina temperatures?”