kwh per month logging.
 

I want to see a carry over of the mpg tracking on the gas mileage sites in the form of kwh per month tracking and cubic feet per month of natural gas tracking so we can make it competitive to use less, maybe something in there for number of people per house too?, kwh per person per month? but really, per house would be fine and easy.

Its definitely on the list of things to do. Darin (MetroMPG) has conveniently been finding other things to do before it though! :p He knows I really want this too. :)

Also, we haven't really nailed down how we want to present numbers. Do we just do a total kWh (convert for gas etc)? Or, do we want to do kWh per person? Or, do we want to do kWh per sq/ft? Do we want to incorperate heating and cooling degree days into it? There are many factors and possibilities. Let us know how you'd like to see it done.

I know that my electric bills include the average temperature for the billing period.

I don't know if looking at kWh per person would work. When there are multiple people in a house, I bet at least one of them is using more than their fair share of power.

Not to mention if there are children in the house, and it also depends how old those kids are. I think per sqft is easier, and on a side we could put how many people live in the house.

I think it should be simple a per house kwh amount, in the notes you can put size and number of people, sqaure footage gets tricky, on that front I think I would win, but really, just having a way to chart kwh used seems like it would be fun, better then straw polls, if nothing else it allows you to better see your own progress.

Having a degree days of heat/cool or average temp for the month would make a really easy way to see the correlation. Also, there could be slots for water, gas, and electric. My electric goes up in the summer due to AC and the gas goes up in the winter due to heating. Water would go up for people doing watering (garden, lawn) in the summer, too. Not sure if we would want cost of each or amount of each or both... I guess like Daox said, lots of variables.

why not include per house, per person, and per ft2 numbers? it wouldn't be that messy, and would allow people to get a more competitive basis going on numbers relevant to themselves.

I'm sure my house would fare pretty well on per-house numbers, but I'd get killed on per-person or per-ft2 levels compared to someone living with several responsible adults in one home or a couple living in a small loft in the city.

I'm tending to lean towards that suggestion Sandcruiser. Multiple numbers will definitely tell a more accurate story versus a single number.

getting a reading on each figure is pretty simple math... more seems better in this case (at least to me). I don't have natural gas, but think that would be of interest to many posters in cold climates.... I think an awesome addition would be adding in some sort of "tons of CO2" produced, but would require that people know what sort of energy mix their utility uses.... and would add complication on the server side -but would ultimately be the best level upon which people could "compete" as a kwhr made from wind just isn't the same as a kwhr made from coal.

As I see it, it should be kept simple or nothing will happen.
Yes make a space for notes on the number of people, size of house, if you have PV or wind and maybe another line for natural gas or LP as well, but any other figures we need to figure out we can figure out on our own, or at a later date, but my main idea is that if we can look at "joe bob" over there and see that their bill is super low, check out the number of people i his house and his notes on what he is running and how it got that way, then everyone can get more ideas on how to do better.

That is probably the way we'll end up going just to get something up on the site initially. This reminds me I have to bug Darin about this.

always better to start simple and get it done. "Better" isn't better at all unless something already exists.

I've been tracking the power meter readings at my mum's house for the last 10 months or so, while my house is being built. So I can have a baseline to work against when we move in.

Looking at the spreadsheet now, it looks like an average of 0.92kWh per hour, or 22.15kWh per day. I can attach the spreadsheet if people want to use it - it tells me the cost and a bunch of averages and stuff. There was a gap of 3 months in there, though, so I lost the daily trend I was trying to get. But recently I've been a bit better.
Of course my house will be much smaller than mum's, so hopefully it'll be easier to keep the usage down.

Last week I tried an experiment where I turned almost everything off (the fridges, my laptop, and a radio were left on) and left the house for a couple of hours. That cost $0.05 per hour, and used 0.337kWh per hour. Then I came home and turned everything on. That cost $0.30 per hour and used 1.959kWh per hour! (I suspect most of that was the airconditioning.)


Anyway, it is a bit of a pain to have to go outside to take a photo of the meter (I use the timestamp to get the exact time between readings), so I'm looking into something like a kill-a-watt for my house. Perhaps something like the MPGuino? It would be useful for electric cars, too.

peak hours and off peak hours should be easy, as the addition of unit cost for each and subscription part.

For the CO2, at least an average should be known, but to be more precise, the averages for :

• seasons : renewable energies are more used in summer (*)
• and use of the electricity : the constant consumption is feeded by hydro (:)) and nuclear (:() which generate less CO2, while heating is feeded by coal which generate more CO2.

(*) my provider broadcasts their monthly CO2 generation per kWh regularly.
All that to say that CO2 support may be complicated.

On my spreadsheet I record for each month :

• Average off Peak kWh per day
• Average peak kWh per day
• Average cost per day (without subscription)
• Average cost per kWh (without subscription)
• and % of in/de-crease for these 4 with last month.

Denis.

Very good idea. I recorded the states of the electric, water and gas meters every day between 2000-2006, when still living in my Grandma's house. Unfortunately, after moving out she didn't continue.

After moving in with my Wife, I started recording the electric meter, now I have one year of data. The gas meter is in box out in the street, and only recently have I found a way to open it. One day I'd like to ask Dad-in-law where the bi-monthly gas bills from the previous years are stowed, this should give me an idea as to how much gas is needed for winter and summer. The water meter is in the basement, not too easy to get to, so I only check it every 10-15 days for the last half year.

When still at Grandma's, with 5 years of data, I entered everything into a spreadsheet, for every month I had total, average per day, max day and min day values. Those 4 were input into a month by month spreadsheet, calculated the multiyear average for each month, comparing each month's total to the multiyear average, etc.

Bumping this thread.
When reading about passive buildings I noticed that the units used to measure heating needs are kWh/m2/year. Of course, the same house will need less/more in a different location, but I think it's a good unit to add to this discussion.

I think degree days for your location are about the only way to get an accurate comparison of houses in different locations. Then with some discussion we can compare the differences between super insulated heavily shaded homes vs little insulation south facing full sun homes in winter. I'm sure some number can be created like kwh/degree day for comparison.

There should be 1 overall usage number probably in kwh where all categories are converted to 1 unit and added. This would allow my all electric house to compare to a gas/electric, oil/electric, whale oil/peddle power...

I personally track the following in separate spreadsheets
Water usage - meter read and billed quarterly
- billing date
- number of days on bill
- consumption in cubic meters
- cost of the water
I calculate
- consumption in gallons
- gallons/day
- cost per gallon
- decrease from last bill
- a seasonal chart to compare multiple years (we get billed 4 times a year)
Electric usage meter read and billed bi-monthly
- billing date
- number of days on bill
- kwh used
- total cost
- fees/taxes/surcharges/...
- usage charge
I calculate
- kwh/h
- kwh/day
- cost/kwh (total cost/kwh)

I don't have gas/oil/propane or anything like it.

Both my water and electric are tiered systems and they keep adjusting the tiers. I just track total cost and cost/gallon cost/kwh to keep a rough eye of how I'm doing.

I've been wanting to get degree days going in the calculations since my winter electric usage is far higher then my summer and this last bill was my worst ever (first winter in the new house which is 4 times the size of the old one). Having said that I haven't tracked down a good location that will let me get the information to calculate this. I can find some local stations that display the degree days for the month or today but it's not in a nice easy to grab chart.

I'll have to look around for degree day data in my area, and think about how to use it. I once stumbled across a chart with avg degree days, but I haven't found anything more detailed yet. I wonder if I can find a local meteo station, or will I have to do with data for the whole city. I live 20km from the city center, next to a forest, so it's always a few degrees colder here than in the "city" (even though I'm still within city limits).

I don't note prices. Maybe because they are misleading? I invested in insulating my Grandma's attic, claiming it will reduce heating costs. I could feel the difference, as since then the upstairs temperature never falls below 18°C, before it would be 16°C. But when the gas bill for the winter came, it was higher than in the previous years, so Grandma claimed it didn't work. I explained that

• The winter was longer and colder than in previous years,
• Gas prices went up 30% in the last year.

Even though we used less, we still paid more. Without insulation the bill would have been even higher. She still said it didn't work since the bill was higher.
Prices are tricky, as even if you record them to be able to see how they change over time, you should also record yearly inflation, etc.

Maybe use the "baseline" numbers on the bill? I think that's based on regional climate, though it doesn't seem to take into account household size or square feet.

I use the prices $/kwh to track inflation in the bill, total cost is just for my records.

We don't get baseline measurements on our bills. Also I'm well above average for the province since 100% electric is fairly rare. Most are gas or oil for heat. I have an air source heat pump with a 30 kw backup. THe other common thing is wood and I have an airtight insert that I use on cold cold nights rather then let the backup kick in.

I've thought about asking the electric company if they have local usage averages for comparison but due to different companies providing gas and oil it's not going to be very useful. I could ask if they'll share the previous owners usage records but I know we use far less simply because of how much we turned down the hot water tank and the thermostat both heating and cooling. I'll never understand why someone wants it to be 23 in the winter but only 18 in the summer.