Just looked at my electric bill and noticed that we have almost doubled our electricity usagage every month since January. What changed in January? Well, that is the month that we received and plugged in our beloved refrigerated wine cabinet.
Doing some rough calculations I figure that our little 35 bottle wine storage unit is drawing about 138 kWh per month which at almost $.12 per kWh, is about $16.58 a month. Kinda makes you go hmmm...
If we lived near Kingston, NY for example, I could store the same amount of wine, roughly 3 cases, for $3.30 per month (dig this snazzy theme music)! If we had a nice cool basement like Wannabe Wino, we could just throw up a few shelves for wine for next to nothing and we'd be in business. Unfortunately, neither option is available to us.
As it stands, we will be paying about $200 per year (roughly what we paid for the unit) to baby 3 cases worth of wine. I guess at ~$5.50 per bottle per year, it is still more economical than waiting to purchase a particular vintage until it is ready to drink--I guess...
Thanks Taster A for helping with the physics calculations.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Cost of Wine Storage
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7 comments:
Eek! That's a pricey proposition.
Even before the basement, we really saved on electricity because we simply froze in the winter for the sake of the wine! We had the house before that first summer rolled around, but I imagine we would have cranked the ac and then the winter vs. summer bills would have evened out.
Wow, that's scary! I just "retired" a 75 bottle unit and I'll be curious to take a look at our energy bills. I really hadn't thought the consequences would be noticeable, but maybe I just freed up a few bucks to put towards some nicely aged bottles.
Mmm...I will have to look more closely at my electricity bill. I don't believe I had such a drastic change even with my 260 bottle Vinotemp.
Yowza! I knew the cost of my electric bill had gone up, but haven't looked at the usage stats since my beloved 52-bottle unit went into my office. I suppose now I should check.
Sorry to freak everyone out. I guess we are all taking a closer look at our energy consumption these days at any rate.
Debs, Jill, and Richard let me know what you discover with your cellars...maybe my unit sucks more juice than the average.
I was definitely surprised to see the jump since we have an air purifier on 24/7 and the effect on our electricity bill is negligible.
The cost of energy in general is amazing - how did we take this for granted for so long? Choose your wine storage wisely! :)
Yeah! I need to slap up some solar panels!
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