If you are trying to save electricity, start with measurement. That’s my first tip for how to save electricity. Once you know what you’re using for each light, appliance, or other device in your home, you’ll easily find ways to cut waste.

I ought to know. Our family of four went from using a mere third as much as comparable families in our area, down to one sixth as much. We measured our electricity use, and from there it was easy to find and eliminate waste. Most of our friends are amazed when we tell them how low our electricity bills are.

We had a solar engineer do a site assessment back in 2006, when we were thinking about installing solar panels to generate our own power. The engineer told us we should really cut our energy use by 50% first, since it is usually cheaper to conserve energy than to generate more of it from solar panels. But we only used 11 kilowatt hours (kwh) per day, I told him. Well, then, he said, you should cut it to 6 kwh.

This amazed us - we already used much less electricity than our neighbors. Could we cut another 50%?

The engineer assured us we would find a way, if we measured our usage diligently. He sold us a Kill A Watt meter, which measures the power consumption of electrical devices, such as watts used for a light, toaster, or fan, or kilowatt hours over time, for a chest freezer or electric clothes dryer.

We measured or estimated the energy use of every light, appliance, or other electrical device in our home. The furnace fan, the central AC, window fans, kitchen and bathroom fans. Computer and peripherals. Television, DVD and VCR. To measure lights, you can just read the light wattage shown on the bulb, and estimate how much the light is on each day. For electronics, fans and the like, measure the wattage with the Kill A Watt meter and do a similar calculation. For the fridge and freezer, we used the kilowatt hours measurement of the meter over a three-day interval, then calculated kwh per day. For the washer and dryer, we measured kwh per load, and estimated number of loads per year.

Once we had our numbers and could calculate estimated electricity use per year, we went to our past year’s bills. Surprisingly, our guess was bang on.

Our next step was to deal with the major energy users, and the many small devices that are constantly running but don’t do you much good.

The top energy users in terms of kwh per year were a wine cellar, chest freezer, refrigerator, and lighting, using a combined total of over 1,600 kwh/year. Energy users that provided little or no benefit were things such as computer peripherals (cable modem, router, a printer used twice a month or less); and a coffee maker, bread maker, and other appliances with LED or LCD clocks, that stayed connected when not in use. All told, these phantom loads used over 300 kwh/year.

Our first cut was the wine cellar. We decided it wasn’t ecologically justifiable to use as much energy as is found in 500 pounds of coal, to keep a wine cellar running, so we just kept the wines at the basement’s natural temperature. The second tip I learned about saving electricity is that you need to challenge yourself to redefine necessities as luxuries, and give them up. Other so-called necessities you might decide to treat as luxuries might be air conditioning, basement beer fridges, and any appliance our grandparents got by perfectly well without.

A simple temperature check of our ENERGY STAR fridge revealed that someone had accidentally turned the freezer thermostat down, so the motor ran continuously and kept the freezer temperature way too low. We now check our fridge and freezer temperatures monthly, to avoid accidentally wasting electricity on refrigeration.

Next we turned off our chest freezer, which we were no longer making much use of. It was only half full, and much of its contents had been in there for a year or more. Once upon a time we preserved a lot of our own food, but had stopped a few years before, but we had somehow not kicked the freezer habit. By eating, composting, or moving food to the fridge freezer, we added 360 kwh per year to our electricity savings, which brings me to the third lesson I learned: Challenge your own ideas about what you consider necessary.

Lighting offers many opportunities to cut energy consumption. Here are two important points on how to save electricity on lighting: use lights less (turn them off, use fewer lights in a fixture, use dimmer switches, use natural daylight), and install more energy efficient lights such as compact fluorescents and LED lights. We probably cut 40 kwh/year off our lighting by taking such actions.

The items that used a few watts while doing no useful work were straightforward to deal with. We put the computer and peripherals on a power supply bar, which was turned off when the computer wasn’t being used. Ten watts may sound like pocket change, but multiply it by a half dozen devices and by 24 hours by 365 days a year, and it adds up to a bundle. We were using 180 kwh/year on peripherals, and reduced that to 15 kwh/year. The VCR, DVD player, TV, coffee maker, and other devices with electronic clocks were using another 120 kwh/year. So here’s the fourth thing I learned about saving electricity: unplug anything that isn’t immediately needed. Any appliance that has an AC adapter, or that can be turned on by remote control, should be completely unplugged when you don’t need it. Anything with a digital clock must be drawing a small amount of electricity to keep the clock showing. This might only add up to half a watt but typically it’s in the 1-3 watt range (9-27 kwh/year). This category includes furnaces and AC systems when you’re not in the heating or cooling season - switch them off at the circuit breaker.

As we tackled items big and small, our electricity consumption dropped from 11 kwh/day to 8 kwh/day, a quarter of the typical usage for our area. And as we cut out big energy wasters, tackling smaller energy wasters suddenly made a bigger difference.

For example, our stove only made up 5% of original electricity use, but after our first energy saving measures, it used 7.5% of the new total. So we changed our cooking habits. We began to use our crock pot more, and the oven less. We became more diligent about measuring water before boiling it for tea. No more opening the oven door every three minutes to check on baking. This brings me to my fifth electricity saving tip:

Keep raising the bar. You can always find more ways to cut.

Keep setting more ambitious savings goals. You’d be surprised at how little energy it takes to live a happy, pleasurable life. Do daily meter readings to confirm that your use is falling as expected, or staying level, or beginning to climb.

I can assure you, once you start measuring, and cutting, and seeing how low your electricity bills go, you’ll be hooked, just like I was. Who said saving energy couldn’t be fun?