A big part of living largely on the cheap is making good use of your electricity. Those watts are expensive; there must be a way to power the big-screen you picked up from the Salvation Army without breaking the bank! One way to do this is to use what you got; you, yourself, are a great source of energy to supplant your use of electricity, or other forms of energy.
This isn’t the Matrix, you can’t just lay down all day and expect to get your money’s worth. You have to work for it! Operating your own hand-powered devices is a great way to start, and I’m not just talking about a hand-powered suction device with a mucus trap and suction catheter for tracheostomy tubes . I’m talking about making use of your muscles to save your electricity usage!
There are literally hundreds of products out there that use hand-cranking power to power flashlights and radios, but I think we can aspire to greater things than that. Like, for example, the human-powered washing machine. This will surely save on your electric bill, and if you don’t have a washer, then you’ll save all those quarters. Besides, what is a more nobler feat than pedaling your way through Dharma & Greg while stuffing your face with Powerbars? You may scoff, but you are thinly disguising your thrift with eco-friendliness.
Oh, you didn’t know? Yes, when your friends or neighbors come over and see a gigantic bicycle/washing machine device taking up most of your living room, you can explain that it is going to save the planet. From the men, this will result in high fives, grunts, and questions about ‘how fast it’ll go’. From the ladies, it will result in much swooning, eyelash fluttering, and questions about ‘if you have a brother’. You will become the toast of the town, save some money, be eco-friendly, and explore your inner Rube Goldberg.
What’s to lose? First of all, your paunch. Besides that, not much. Of course, this depends on how crazy you want to get with the human-powered devices. For example, instead of waiting in rush hour, why not go to work in your own human-powered helicopter? Sure, it may have only got off the ground a few inches for a few seconds, but the potential is there. The average human can create 80 watts continuously if pedaling with their feet. This means, you can power the average T.V., or a few halogen lights. The average family home in New York used 535 kWh a month in 2002, which was low for the national average. That means that it is 535,000 watt-hours. When you are pedaling at a constant rate, you create 80 watt-hours. So, if you pedal constantly all of March (invest in Depends, as you can’t stop for food, sleep, or excretion), you would knock 59,520 watt-hours off your bill! That would only leave you with a 476 kWh bill to contend with. At 16.92 cents a kWh in New York, you would be saving a total of about $10.02. Divided between all 744 hours you were pedaling, you would be saving 0.01 cents an hour. That doesn’t round up.
Depending on who you are, a penny an hour might actually be worth it.
If my math is incorrect, please let me know. I almost failed Algebra…twice.