Has your energy usage been higher or lower than last year?
 

Has your utility bill been higher or lower than last year recently? Why?


I'd vote, but I'm still establishing a baseline. I soooo wish I had something to compare to.

Mine's only a slight bit lower overall, but I see that as an accomplishment because my wife is on mat leave for the year and it at home all day. Next year though...oh just you wait.

Our energy usage appears to be slightly lower. Our bill always lists last years usage for the same month under the current usage. We have slowly been replacing incandecents with CFLs. We also recently had a more efficient water heater installed (gas) and we have cut our water usage by about 200 gallons a month which also affects our gas usage. I will probably change more of our lights over to instant on CFLs and we are thinking about upgrading our aluminum clad dual pane windows to more efficient ones.

I already received 2 yearly bills :

• Dec 06-Nov 07 : 10828 kWh
• Dec 07-Nov 08 : 11265 kWh.

The baby arrived during the 1st summer (May 07) and the 2nd winter (07-08) was colder than the 1st one, so the bigger bill.

I'm noting my consumption since 2008-09-26 :

• 20.42 kWh / day from 2008-09-26 to 2008-10-22 (no heating)
• 36.83 kWh / day from 2008-10-22 to 2009-02-09 (heating)

If I extrapolate each period to 6 months each, I should consume 10455.35 kWh which is -7.19% compared to the last yearly bill.

The biggest forecast was mid-January, since it lowers slooowly :)

EDF (French Electricity company) sent us end of January a forecast of 11340 kWh for next year (Dec 08-Nov 09). We are both betting for the best bill next year, but while they say it will be the more expensive, I say it will be the cheapest ;)

Denis.

Cute little faces, :)

I set a goal for myself three months ago to reduce my electricity usage from a guestimated 300KWH per month to 250KWH per month. I succeeded but I failed too. I managed to reduce my family's electrical consumption to 292KWH per month averaged over the last three months (my meter is read every three months). I was successful however because my actual usage for the same period last year was 356KWH per month.

Natural gas usage has remained unchanged at ~2400 cubic meters per year since I upgraded the insulation on my house four years ago. Prior to that, I used ~3600 cubic meters per year.

Woo hoo! I just got last year's electricity bills for the apartment, so I can definitively say I'm using less power! (I haven't compared the temperature though - and being 100% electric heat, that's the biggest portion of winter power usage.)

month	previous tenant ('07/'08)	me ('08/'09)	% difference	$ difference **
Nov/Dec	785 kWh	477 kWh	-39%	$ 27.72
Dec/Jan	829 kWh	539 kWh	-35%	$ 26.10
Jan/Feb	908 kWh	738 kWh*	-19%	$ 15.30

(* My reading - meter reader may not have gone by yet this month; ** price @ $0.09 kWh)

Well, I don't know about my current place, as I can't get numbers other than a 12 month $ average, but my temp summer apartment (2bedroom) showed the previous tenants used 500-700kWh during the winter, and 300-400 during the summer. While I was there my roomie and I never broke 150kWh. We were never there anyways, always outside playing or working.

At my current apartment, the previous 12 month average was $50. So far for 4 months I'm at $59 for the winter months. I've got gas and electric, so slightly more difficult to make a nice graph, but I'll be at this residence for several years (till school is over) so I should make a nice baseline. The Kill-a-Watt (KAW) should help that.

Our usage has been higher - we had our first child last summer. House has been at more comfortable temps since about may of last year.
We will probably not use the a/c as much this summer - kiddo will be 1yr old and ok with the fan unless it's super hot, and wifey won't be prego.

omg you pay alot for electricity in america. I have sold electricity door to door in ontario and people are sketchy about paying a flat rate garenteed for 5 years of about 9 cents (on renewable energy! 8.5 if it comes from coal/nuke)