If you have 2’ of 4” flex watt that is rated for 8 Watts per foot that means at most it can use 16 W per hour (Yes, Watts as far as power consumption are measured in Watt/Hours)
At 100% capacity all the time 16 W X 24 Hours = 384 Watt hours per day
Lets say that average month is 30 days. 384 Watt hours per day X 30 Days = 11520 Watt hours per month.
You pay by the Kilowatt hours on your electric bill so we have to dive the watt hours by 1000 to determine the number of kW hours this heating element is using. 11520 / 1000 = 11.52 kW hours per month.
High end charges for electricity is $0.12 per kW so we multiply 11.52 kW Hours by the $0.12 and arrive with a monthly cost to run this heating element of $1.39. We rounded up just to say the power company is really greedy.
Now my Herpstat Pro actually shows the amount of full power it is putting out in a percentage form from 0% to 100%. The highest I ever see mine get while powering (10) 1 foot sections of 11” flex watt that uses 12 Watts per foot is 30%. Lets use this as a rough guess of where yours will run. 30% changed to a numeric number for calculation is 0.3. For a short cut here lets just multiply the final cost by the actual percent it is actually using, so $1.39 X 0.3 = $0.42 per month.
In a year you will pay that times 12 for a whopping total of $5.04 for heating your snake for the whole year.
Now the big question is the power savings between the rheostat and a proportional T-stat. Can’t say without knowing what proportional T-stat we are comparing with what rheostat and having the specs from each, but I can say a proportional T-stat is a lot safer for your herp than a rheostat.
In general this is not an area you are going to save money on power use. You are better off making sure the computer is off when not in use, lights are off when not needed, swapping from incandescent bulbs to the spiral types on lights that get turned on and stay on for 10 minutes or more at a time, (Start up power on those spiral bulbs are huge, but they don’t advertise that.), Turning your AC up 1 degree in the summer and your heat down 1 degree in the winter even if you use gas heat as the blower motors in forced air systems use lots of power...
I think you get the point.
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