Just got my first electrical bill! Help!

[Paul Torrigino]

Okay you all... how does this sound.... my last electrical bill was $54. Since then I had the new laser installed and I've been using it in my home shop. I just opened the latest bill and it was $267! I'm still swooning. I can't imagine what it will be in the summer with the air conditioning use on top of it... Does this sound right?? Anybody else have a surge in electrical costs with a new laser?
Epilog 12x24 45w

[Frank Corker]

Not to me it doesn't! The only increase I had in mine came from having the extractor fan on and the air assist, but no where near what you have there. Are you sure your neighbour isn't plugged into your mains?

[Gary Hair]

Are you sure it's only a 45 watt machine? Maybe it's a 45kw instead?

Based on electricity prices here in Oregon, my laser only costs me about $0.14 per hour to operate. The difference in your bill would be 1,521 hours of laser time. That doesn't take into consideration the air assist, dust collector, etc, but even if they doubled the hourly cost you would still have had to run for over 750 hours last month. You must have something else drawing that much electricity.

[James Stokes]

I did not notice any increase in my electrical costs from my lasers. I do notice a differance in the winter because of the electric heaters I have but that is all. Does your exaust cause your heater to run a lot?

[Aaron Koehl]

Sounds like a lot more than 45 watts. How about your dust collection or air compressor motors?

[Joe Pelonio]

Unless you are running an old gas floor or wall furnace, there is normally some electricity used to heat a house, even a gas forced air has a fan.
Was it a really cold month there? Running my laser all day every day I
had an electric bill of $110 here in my house where we have an electric clothes dryer and forced air gas furnace.

There are other things to look for too, besides a neighbor plugging in to steal your power for lights to grow marijuana. The most common is a refrigerator or freezer running all the time due to a problem like bad door seals or dusty cooling coils.

At my old location I used the laser 8-10 hours a day, most of the time with the compressor as well as the exhaust fan on, and had a heat pump for heat/air conditioning and never went over $75/month in over 2 years.

[Wil Lambert]

Sounds very high to me. My whole bill for our place including all the woodworking machines/ CNC/ laser are never over $120 a month. Keep in mind our 10HP central dust collector for the wood shop draw 35 amps. I think there might have been a mistake or something else comsumed your power.

Wil

[Mitchell Andrus]

Sounds to me like meter averaging caught up to you. Have your last few bills been guesstimates, or actual readings?

No way your laser used this much juice, It'd be glowing red hot.

[Lee DeRaud]

Also, check the reading on the meter against the bill: if the meter is read manaully, the reader might have transposed a couple of digits or misread one.

[Dana Florian]

Instead of wondering why your bill is so high, do this: There is a product called kill a watt (you can buy them on e-bay). Plug your laser into this and it will tell you exactly how many kw you use. Simple... Problem Solved!!!

[Craig Hogarth]

I haven't gotten my laser yet, but I'll be working out of the garage. I wanted to keep in in the home, but my rep told me that it will suck all the heat out of the room, therefore raising heating costs drastically.

[Dave Jones]

If the garage is heated, you'll have the same problem with the heat there. If the garage is not heated then I hope you live somewhere tropical. A laser isn't like a table saw. It won't work in an unheated garage in the winter. It's a precision machine with a miniature computer inside.

[Joe Pelonio]

I haven't gotten my laser yet, but I'll be working out of the garage. I wanted to keep in in the home, but my rep told me that it will suck all the heat out of the room, therefore raising heating costs drastically.

Just to clarify it's the exhaust fan not the laser that sucks the air out. Yes, when the fan's on it's blowing lots of nice warm room air outside,
but not enough fo that kind of bill. In really cold weather there's not much you can do, but on days like today (low 50's) I keep a window near the laser open so it can suck some of the fresh air rather than just the heated room air.

Also, again unless it's like 15 degrees out, just put on a sweatshirt and keep the door of the room closed, as long as the thermostat is not in the same room it won't cause the furnace to run more.

[Craig Hogarth]

Yes, when the fan's on it's blowing lots of nice warm room air outside, but not enough fo that kind of bill. In really cold weather there's not much you can do, but on days like today (low 50's) I keep a window near the laser open so it can suck some of the fresh air rather than just the heated room air.

Also, again unless it's like 15 degrees out, just put on a sweatshirt and keep the door of the room closed, as long as the thermostat is not in the same room it won't cause the furnace to run more.

Good to know. I may reconsider moving it into the house down the road.

[Mark Koenig]

If the garage is heated, you'll have the same problem with the heat there. If the garage is not heated then I hope you live somewhere tropical. A laser isn't like a table saw. It won't work in an unheated garage in the winter. It's a precision machine with a miniature computer inside.

What is the operating range on a typical laser application??? My Epilog 75 Watt EXT is going into the basement at the end of the month... It's going into a sectioned off area in the basement that was initially intended to house a 500 gallon water (wood burning) stove to heat the house... They put the stove in it's own building outside to avoid the mess inside... It has ducts that would work great for the laser exhaust but do I need to heat the room???

Thanks Mark...

[Dave Jones]

You might want to call Epilog and ask them the recomended operating temperature range. In the EXT manual it only mentions a maximum ambient temperature of 90 degrees (above that voids the warranty). It doesn't mention a minimum or recommended operating range.

[Craig Hogarth]

If the garage is heated, you'll have the same problem with the heat there. If the garage is not heated then I hope you live somewhere tropical. A laser isn't like a table saw. It won't work in an unheated garage in the winter. It's a precision machine with a miniature computer inside.

crap, I didn't think about that. :eek: We were planning on just getting a garage heater, but it's a large space to not only heat, but have to keep heated during use.

Thanks to everyone for the help here. There's a lot of little things like this that most newbies wouldn't know to take into consideration.

[Joe Pelonio]

It can handle the cold when off, but you'll have to heat the room to warm it up prior to turning it on. I was told that like most computerized equipment it should be in the range of 60-80F.

Spring will be here soon, my daffodils are blooming and it's 61 today.

[Dave Jones]

You'll not only need to bring the room up to temperature, but it will have to be at a reasonable temperature for a while for the engraver to reach a stable temperature. Also, be aware that when a machine goes from warm to cold that moisture condenses on it.

[Paul Torrigino]

Okay, turns out it was the power company's error:eek: .... so here's the deal. According to them, my last few meter 'readings' were lower than they should have been - maybe they didn't read it at all, or they were just estimates, and I didn't really notice the lower bills the last few months - figuring it is winter. So they said that everything they missed previously was added to my bill for this month! So that put more than half of the power I used into 'tier 3' pricing, which is more than twice as expensive as the usual rate.... that's why it was so high!!
So they are going to rebill me, splitting up the extra amounts they missed earlier, so I won't have as high a bill.
According to the new estimates we just made at the meter while I had the guy on the phone, it looks like the last two weeks of my power usage is running pretty normal, so my normal monthly bill should run a little over $100 - even with running the laser. So I can live with that!!
Whew! Hope I didn't scare anyone! I feel much better!

[James Stokes]

I have an epilog legend, It is in my unheated garage. I have run it at 40 degrees and it worked fine. I have also ran it when the temp was around 105 degrees. I also have a Vytek machine with a universal tube, If that tube hits 59 degrees it will not fire.

[Joe Pelonio]

I have an epilog legend, It is in my unheated garage. I have run it at 40 degrees and it worked fine. I have also ran it when the temp was around 105 degrees. I also have a Vytek machine with a universal tube, If that tube hits 59 degrees it will not fire.
I'd think that 40 would not be too much of a problem. We used to run A/C directly into some electronic equipment to keep it cool and the air in the ducts was at 40.

On the 105, I hope your warranty is up because you just fessed up to a violation of the 90 degree maximum as shown in the manual.:eek:

[Patrick OBrien]

For what it is worth, I threw a ceiling mounted propane heater in my shop to house the laser. It is a poured pad, pole barn 24 x 32' with half partitioned for the laser area. It maintains 50F constant, and up to 55F (more comfortable) when I work there, for about 350.00 a year. I'm in Upstate NY 14080, it's currently 3F - and it gets colder. If you insulate a sound structure, heating shouldn't be an issue. Cheaper to keep the equipment warm, than to repair motors, belts and tubes that fail.

Electricity - My house AND my shop never exceed 180.00 a month. My exhaust fan costs way more to run than the laser. I would check for a reading error.

[Bill Cunningham]

My shop is tied electrically to my house, and this last month was pretty cold.. Hydro for both was about 1260 kwh our average cost here is $0.12 per kwh including taxes and all the other add-on ripoffs.. I did not notice any difference at all when I installed the laser, but that could be because since, I have cut back a lot of use of the polymer platemaker, and hotstamping machine. Also the rotary pantograph hasn't been started in over a year.. (any one looking for one?)
I guess it all adds up..

[Ed Parkyn]

We recently saw our electric bill jacked up to over $300 (almost $400) when it had been averaging around $100 - $120.00. After fighting with Edison, they finally backed off upon discovering their "reader" had not read the meter correctly. It wasn't even a transposition. Just a sloppy number entry. What irked us was Edison's initial comment of "We don't do anything wrong! You're not reading the meter correctly."

Ed :mad:

[Frank Corker]

We used to have a company like that over here, changed company and no more problems, I used to find myself constantly in credit with them and not with my bank!

Glad it's sorted for you and probably a big relief too

[brian gallagher]

my commercial electric here in New York City is 23+ cents KWH!
back in ohio it was 6.5 cents.

Just a note to all you folks living on this cheap midwestern electricity: WATCH OUT! things are changing. we cant get electricity from China! oh. wait maybe we can.

In europe (ie clean power, not subsidized, coal etc) it runs 35 cents KWH. thats why they have those small appliances.

I had to get rid of an old refridgerator that was costing me 25$ a month to run, back in ohio most people have a freezer in the basement and the old fridge in the garage for beer.

I have the KILL a WATT meter and it is very interesting to see what power things are drawing.

just something to think about before you build that 7000sf house

brian

[Lee DeRaud]

just something to think about before you build that 7000sf houseI flinch every time I see a remodeling show and they install "modern" lighting: there seems to be a trend toward lighting up houses like movie sets, especially in kitchens. Even with high-efficiency fixtures, the wattage per square foot seems a bit...excessive.

[Neal Schlee]

Paul,

What ru using for an exhaust fan? Many times in a house laser install situation the exhaust fan creates a negative pressure and sucks much of the heat from the house, causing your heating system to work much harder than normal thus increasing the utility costs.

Neal

[Joe Pelonio]

We used to have a company like that over here, changed company and no more problems, I used to find myself constantly in credit with them and not with my bank!

Glad it's sorted for you and probably a big relief too

How did you manage that? I've never seen a place that has a choice of electrical suppliers, it's always a geographic monopoly.

By the way, these days there's not much excuse for a meter reading error.

I remember the days when they had to mark a bubble on an IBM card with pencil that was machine read and went to the mainframe. In a past life I was an analyst for a water company in the SF bay area, and one thing I worked on was handheld electronic meter reading, and that was in the 80s.

The device was preloaded with the last year of consumption and readings so that if the reading entered failed a high/low test it would beep and make them check and override it. Then it would kick out as a service order for someone else to go re-check it before the bill went out.

[Paul Torrigino]

Hi Neal,
It's a little exhaust blower that they gave me with the laser. But my house heater is gas... The workshop is connected to the house by way of a 10 foot pantry-way. There's no heat in the workshop or the pantry. I'm actually more concerned about what's going to happen in the summer. I had a little window air conditioner in the workshop but it broke down last year so I need a new one this year. But the workshop gets like an oven in the summer. It's a flat roof. Most summers we have a stretch of 100 degree weather that lasts about a month. Last summer I think it went up to 115! It's always something isn't it?!