I've been treating my monk lifestyle, sort of as a game. I might as well have some fun while I'm at it, right?

Here in Southern NV, we have a really attractive TOU (Time Of Use) electric utility program. It's optional, but I can game it to my advantage.

It's pretty simple, really.

• Normal (Non-TOU) plan
  Same $/kWh rate (normal rate) all the time.

• TOU plan
  June, July, August, and September (4 months / year) is "summer."

During summer:
6-9pm (3 hours / day) is on-peak, and the rate is 4x the normal rate.
So for example, if the normal rate is $0.10, then on-peak rate is $0.40.
The rest of the time is off-peak, and the rate is 36.5% lower than normal.

All months other than summer:
All hours of the day is off-peak, and the rate is 25% lower than normal.

The biggest "consumer" of electricity is, without a doubt, the HVAC, especially during summer. I've long since disconnected the whole-house system and have separate ductless mini-split systems, but I only use one of them. I only cool two rooms during the day, and one room at night. The kitchen and the big room get hot, but I don't care.

I cool the bedroom down to ~70F before 6pm hits, then turn off the A/C. Since I sleep from 6pm-(1am, 2am, 3am, whatever), I set the timer to have it turn back on right past 9pm, set to 78F (the unit is a bit aggressive, so it'll make the room 76F or so). During that 3 hours of A/C off, the room will heat up to ~80F or so, depending on weather factors.

And the result from June 1st is (drum roll)...

The minimum I see is about 200Wh in an hour. Refrigerators, freezers, mini-server, air filters, battery tender, parasite draw from UPS's, etc. I can't see it ever dropping below that. With the A/C going, I see it going to about 1000Wh in an hour span. Not bad at all, really. It's a 1.5ton inverter unit, so it rarely runs full tilt. At full tilt, I think it can pull over 2500W by itself.

I'm looking "forward" to the bill at the end of the month.