Saving Energy, Saving Big Bucks

A year ago, we started the BC Hydro Team Power Smart Challenge, with a goal of reducing our energy use by 10%. We did and our $75 reward cheque just arrived in the mail. We don’t consume a lot of energy to begin with, so we weren’t sure how we’d save 10% of our electricity bill. Our apartment is missing a lot of the big energy consumers – no laundry machine, dishwasher, hot water tank, or air conditioning. And yet, somehow we managed to reduce our use by 15% year-over-year.

How’d we do it? We only changed one thing – we cancelled our Shaw digital cable subscription and got rid of the PVR. That’s it. We still watch a lot of tv with Netflix and streaming tv shows, but we got rid of the PVR that was on 24-hours a day recording shows and sucking up electricity.

One year without cable tv and we saved $780 off our Shaw bill, another $20 of our electricity bill, and we got a $75 rebate cheque from BC Hydro. Easiest $875 ever.