Mama’s Electricity Hack

If you are here probably you are worried. And about what, that’s what I am going to tell you in this post. Literary you just clicked without even thinking about the quality of the post right? Yes, you didn’t, the same way your kilowatt-hour meter do not think about your way of life and how do you use the appliance, when I was starting this blog the only motive behind it was mama’s hack about the electricity bill. Before diving into its logic I will let you know an interesting story.

It was back in the summer when I come across this gossip on the dinner table. Mama was talking about the bills; she said that our neighbors are worried about their bills. Unfortunately, I asked my mom why not us, why aren’t we worried about the bills. And the same international problem of our moms, she replied actually you guys have a maid which they don’t have. I asked my siblings do we have any maid in our house and they laughed at me.

I asked why are you guys laughing, and the story was that mom was referring to herself. The story starts from here, well said, my mama is one hack about the electricity bills and it’s the load process she thinks that the Killo – Watt Metter works on the logic of load and we were like mama how it could be, even you are not literate and you are talking like an Electric Engineer. But, the plot twist is that she was always consistent she never broke her consistency.

Her Routine life was all about loads, she never went for two big appliances simultaneously. And it was an all about that load logic. One day I went off that rule in our home, created by USA, though we call moms USA in our area, that’s funny nahh! Yes it is. When it happens, she always comes across to notice that I am running Air Conditioner and Iron at once. Because I always press along, she of course blames me for the upcoming bill, and unluckily the next bill for the month was high.

The next day, my sister, she was running both the Iron and Water Pump simultaneously, and she wasn’t blamed for the bill for the next month, by the way. She warned her and explained the process because she had logic. So far I never believed in her logic and then when she was explaining this to my sister I overheard the whole process next in the room to them. By any chance, when I understood her beside my ego, I searched for it, and I come across that she was right.

Then I started this blog for her, behind her words there was a; logic but not this side of the words. The only thing which compelled this difference was the education. Of course we don’t understand the institutional life created by some educational factors of the biased literacy. So far she was right, and always.

Look into the theme of this post, this was the post when I asked the same question in a community of an electric engineers, I was there because I was part of the content team, when I asked the question, “Is it true that we should run two big appliances simultaneously. Literary the response was unbelievable,

“Yes, when two large appliances are used at the same time, it does not mean that your electricity bill will suddenly double. Each appliance consumes the amount of electricity needed to do its job, whether you use them one after the other or together. For example, boiling one liter of water with a single kettle twice, or boiling it with two kettles at the same time, requires almost the same total electricity.

The important detail lies in how the circuit behaves. When two appliances share the same circuit, a small extra amount of electricity is wasted. This happens because as current flows through the wires, some energy is lost as heat. The loss becomes larger when appliances are used together, as the current in the wires increases.

The wasted power in the wiring can be described by the formula:

P – I^2 Cross R

III is the current (in amps) and RRR is the resistance of the circuit (in ohms). Because the waste is proportional to the square of the current, doubling the current does not just double the waste, it makes it four times greater.”

Yes, it does. The electricity used by each appliance simply adds up. Think of it this way: if you are watching TV, then you switch on the kettle, and at the same time your air-conditioner is running, the total electricity consumed is the sum of all three appliances.

Electricity is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). One kilowatt-hour means 1000 watts used for one hour. This is the unit your utility company charges you for.

For example:

• If your air-conditioner, cooker, and other appliances together use 3000 watts, and they all run for one hour, that equals:

3000 watts= 3 kWh

You will be billed according to whatever your utility charges per kWh.

It is also important to understand how appliances actually work. Many large appliances do not run at full power the entire time. For example, the heating element in a cooker may be set to “simmer.” The thermostat will turn the element on and off to maintain the set temperature. This means you are only charged for the minutes the element is actually heating.

Similarly, many devices consume small amounts of standby power even when you are not actively using them. Televisions, microwave ovens, and DVD players often draw a trickle of electricity just by being plugged in, which adds to your bill over time.

In simple terms:

• The total power adds up when appliances are run together.
• The bill depends on both the power used (watts) and the time they are on.
• Some appliances cycle on and off, and others use standby power, so the actual cost may be less obvious than it first appears.
  
  

But I have two assumptions on this:

First, you won’t consume more energy if you use 5 electrical appliances at the same time for one hour, or if you use each of them for one hour, one at a time, until you used them all. Second, when you use them all at the same time, you will need more robust electrical installations in your home, depending on the power each of them consume: 5 led lamps won’t pull on to much energy, but 5 electrical showers or 5 microwave ovens turned on at the same time might not be recommend without verifying the wiring and accessories capacity.

Why shouldn’t we use multiple appliances simultaneously?

Short answer:
Because when many appliances are switched on together, they draw a very large current. This high current can blow the fuse in your main supply and sometimes even damage the wires.

Explanation:
Imagine your home’s wiring as a road, and electricity as cars moving on it. Each appliance you turn on (like a kettle, fridge, or TV) is like adding more cars to the road. The more cars you add, the more crowded the road becomes.

In electricity, this “crowd” is called current. If one appliance is on, it draws a small current. Two appliances add their currents together, and three add even more. So, the total current is:

I= I1 + I2 + I3
I = I1 + I2 + I3
I= I1 + I2 + I3​

Now, here’s the problem:

• The fuse in your mains supply is like a guard. It allows only a safe amount of current to pass.
• If you switch on too many appliances at once, the current goes beyond the safe limit.
• The fuse then “sacrifices” itself by burning out, which saves your wires and stops a fire.

Without the fuse, things can get dangerous. Wires carrying too much current heat up because of what we call I²R loss (current squared times resistance). In very simple words: more current = more heat. If this heat is too much, wires can melt or even catch fire.

So what does this mean for you?

• Using one or two appliances at the same time is usually fine.
• But switching on many heavy appliances (like air-conditioners, heaters, or microwaves) all together can overload the system.
• The fuse will blow, or worse, the wires could overheat.

More current means more load. And if that load crosses the safe limit, your fuse will blow. That little fuse is not your enemy; it is your bodyguard. It burns itself so your wires don’t burn. Without it, wires heat up (because of I²R losses) and, in the worst case, can even catch fire.

So yes, using a TV and a lamp together is fine, but an air-conditioner, an iron, and water pump all at once? That’s like putting a whole traffic jam on one narrow road. Something will give way maybe the fuse, maybe the wires.

And that brings me back to mama. She didn’t know the formula, but she lived it. She taught us that electricity has its own rhythm, its own load logic. Call it superstition, call it wisdom, but when science finally confirmed it for me, I smiled. Sometimes our parents are engineers of life without ever stepping into an engineering classroom.

So it’s very simple: don’t rush your appliances. Use them with patience. Your bill won’t suddenly double if you use two at once, but your system might stress. And trust me, when the fuse blows in the middle of a hot night with the AC off, you’ll remember this lesson better than any formula.

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