For all the claims I make about us being minimalists, we actually spend a lot. A few months back I decided to buy (yet) another TV. As if we already did not have enough in the house. We already have one large TV in the living room and one more old TV in my parents bedroom because my dad likes to watch TV quite a bit. He gets very bored when our parents visit us here in Bangalore. He doesn’t have much social activity like how he has back in my hometown where I grew up. He has a lot of social connections there. After setting up an old 32” TV connected to a Android TV box, he would happily browse youtube videos when he got bored. This was working fine until the ruling party changed in Karnataka and the new party came with Gruha Jyoti scheme. So I thought I should buy one more TV to reduce electricity bill and take advantage of the scheme. Yeah, that statement sounds contradictory, so let me explain.


According to the Gruha Jyoti scheme, we are eligible for zero electricity bill if we keep our monthly bills to less than 196 units. For more information on how we got that number, please read my earlier post Power Bill Is Zero, Thanks To Solar Panel. There is only one catch, if the bill exceeds 196 units in a month, I have to pay the full amount. There is no deduction or offsets. Since I am crazy collector of data, I have recorded my electricity bills since 2012. So I know exactly which months we consume more electricity. In the previous 12 months before the scheme started, there were 4 months when our electricity consumption exceeded 196 units.


Date Units Consumed
08/2022 217
11/2022 212
05/2023 198
06/2023 201


There are a few reasons why the bill exceeded the average. It could be either because

  1. the solar panels were not producing enough power because of cloud cover
  2. summer months where we use multiple fans through out the day
  3. family visits tend to increase bills for obvious reasons :)


Again, going back to my data, I looked at solar panel readings for the above months. Except for the August 2022 billing date, the rest of the dates have had good solar generation. So cloudy days have been ruled out.


The only month from the list with low solar power generation is July 2022. Remember the electricity bill is generated the next month.


Next, I checked if the cause of higher electricity bills could be because of weather. None of these months are summer months in Bangalore. So it is not like we have been using fans all day. Finally, we come to family visits. Again looking back at the data from both my sensors and expenses, I realized that the higher bills were because of family visits.


We were off by only a few units. So if I can figure out a way to shave off 10-20 units, we would be fine. I had one small 10W solar panel and 10 AH battery with solar charge controller. If I can use that to charge phones and tablets when we have family that is one saving. Another saving is to auto shutdown my media center PC in the night and restart in the morning. But the biggest saving would come from upgrading my old TV.


The TV that my dad uses was manufactured in 2006. Obviously, the technology was old based on CCFL backlight technology. As a result, it was consuming some 150W. Also because it was not a smart TV, I was using an old (2012) android box (Nexus Q) for youtube videos etc. That consumes another 25W or so. My dad watches about 2-4 hours of TV in a day. So the TV consumption is about 10-20 units in a month. There could be some savings here.


I went ahead and bought a 32” smart TV that cost me Rs. 10,000 in one of the 2023 Dussehra deals. It is a modern LCD TV with LED backlight and energy efficiency rating of 4 stars. The electronics is also modern. The power consumption rating on the TV was 50 W. In reality, with a lower backlight setting, I got it to consume only 25W. Since it was a smart TV, I did not even have to use the external android TV box. So now, the TV consumes 25W instead of 175W earlier. That is saving 9-18 units of electricity per month.


If I did not have the TV, I would have paid Rs. 2000 for the electricity bill for the 4 months in a year. Which I saved now and is basically little more than how much I spent on the TV. So it will soon repay itself :). That is how I was able to save electricity bill by buying a new TV. I don’t use the old TV anymore but I still keep it around to see if I can repurpose it somehow, someday.