Wow! That certainly is an achievement! How big is your house BTW? how many occupants?

Mine is approx 2100sqft with 4 occupants. cooking range is electrical and so are laundary washer + dryer..(1 to 2 loads a week, low heat tumble dry for 30mins until about 1/2 to 2/3 dry before hanging out (indoor hanging, under a bathroom ventilating fan that runs 24/7/365 to dry).

Won't get the bill until sometime in mid-November (ours are billed every 2 mnths).

Q.

I have been tracking my consumption since last year and have been implementing energy savings as well as looking at solar. Here are the results to date.

Bill Date Days Charge KWH %KWH %Change $change
Oct-11 31 $93.52 668 -11.76% -13.72% -$14.87
Sep-11 30 $153.50 855 -8.95% -6.93% -$11.43
Aug-11 29 $100.50 668 -37.16% -51.91% -$108.50
Jul-11 32 $143.68 855 -19.64% -26.30% -$51.28
Jun-11 30 $51.87 423 -38.43% -43.31% -$39.62
May-11 30 $50.04 406 -30.24% -38.74% -$31.65
Apr-11 31 $58.77 469 -33.48% -49.05% -$56.58
Mar-11 30 $61.49 487 -32.83% -50.82% -$63.53
Feb-11 30 $72.09 529 -27.73% -40.45% -$48.96
Jan-11 31 $113.23 685 -15.43% -17.95% -$24.77
Dec-10 31 $82.36 579 -18.34% -26.77% -$30.10
Nov-10 29 $56.55 471 9.53% 13.37% $6.67
Oct-10 31 $108.39 757 -3.57% -7.00% -$8.16
Sep-10 30 $164.93 939 -12.41% -16.63% -$32.91
Aug-10 30 $209.00 1063 -15.10% -19.33% -$50.09
Jul-10 32 $194.96 1064 10.72% 22.44% $35.73
Jun-10 30 $91.49 687 -29.18% -$37.69
May-10 29 $81.69 582 13.77% $9.89
Apr-10 32 $115.35 705
Mar-10 30 $125.02 725
Feb-10 32 $121.05 732
Jan-10 32 $138.00 810
Dec-09 31 $112.46 709
Nov-09 29 $49.88 430
Oct-09 29 $116.55 785
Sep-09 30 $197.84 1072
Aug-09 31 $259.09 1252
Jul-09 30 $159.23 961
Jun-09 31 $129.18
May-09 31 $71.80

Total Savings -$557.85

For its size - 650 sq ft - my house is a hog. Yearly average is 16.8 Kwh/day. Base load is about 12 Kwh/day and in the months where we use AC the average is about 22 Kwh/day.

The killer for me is electric hot water and the steady drain from a fish pump, router, and other "always on" appliances. Also, someone is home almost all of the time, so AC and light use is higher than it would be otherwise. I'll need to run the Kwh conversion on my natural gas, but I'll wait for more accurate heating season numbers.

My goals for electricity use are to have a base load less than 10 Kwh and a cooling season average of less than 18 Kwh. I could probably get there just by unplugging the hot water heater, but I don't think that is going to fly with the wife. ;)

-Ben

Is it possible to turn the router off at night, when everyone is sleeping?
If your hot water usage is more or less predictable then a timer would help. Start with turning it off for only 2-4 hours at night and then see if that could be lengthened.

Just so you have some numbers. My 40 gallon hot water heater turned down to 106F, family of 4 (2 kids under 4) and I average 9.026 kwh/day just for the hot water tank. So yeah getting rid of your water heater can probably get you there.

There are a few necessary evils that I simply cannot remove(power off) within my house:

-the built-in WiFi router that came along with the TV+internet deal: it also does TV channel/signal converstion (always on)

-2ndary router (I have 2 discrete lines/routers for our house: both mommy and daddy occasionally telecommute from home and requires dedicated VPN tunneling)

-2 Scientific Atlanta channel box (1 is a PVR, the other one is a "slave").

-3 coffeetable A/C clocks.

-an asbsentminded mommy who occasionally left some lights on during the day, and an idling AMD PC (typically hovering between 28~32Watts/hr).

No hot water heater(natural gas, separate billing), electric cooking range, 1 standard 21ft fridge and a freezer chest (in the garage), motion sensor light for the back alley, etc.

-5 out of every 8 days: I have to have the staircase light on (kids afraid of the dark and those lil 7W nightlight isn't good enough. I have them retrofitted with 2x9Watts CFL already.

That's it.

Since we moved into this house not too long ago, the best record kept( with living within) was around 11kW/day. Typically averages around 12kW/day.

Q.

There are only two of us living in the house the first floor is 721sq ft the basement is the same size and half finished the second floor is 411sq ft so total space inside is about 1853sq ft.

Almost everything is gas except for the AC, Fridge (atleast 15yr old), Lights and only 5 are not CFL of those 5 we only normally use two of them. We do not use the TV just the computer that is a laptop that has a max of 60w with that ran to an LCD screen and powered speakers.

we have 26 pot lights (6", recently retrofitted with the reflector housing type to take advantage of the high efficiency CFLs), typically, we have 1/2 of them on for 60% of the time (family related activities, etc.). our 32" TeeVee is a hand-me-down Sony WEGA CRT (free, why-not?), that is known to be somewhat of an energy hog. we also have a 27" sony CRT (master bedroom, seldom watched) and a 20" JVC-Victor multi-region in kid's room. All PCs including mine are already on LCD monitors already.

typically 2 loads of laundry washing per week (sometimes one), with typically 30~45mins of low heat tumble dry before they get hang underneath the running ventilating fan (bathroom) to dry.

Can't think of anything to improve right now...will wait till LED price comes down substantially before I make my next move.

Q.

One adult and 2 kids (at 43% occupancy). We use about 3KWh per day, 90KWh per month. Heat, hot water and stove are all gas. I just order a line voltage thermostat for my freezer to turn it into a refrigerator. Hopefully I can knock another 20KWh per month off the total.

24 Hours of Heating!
 

Temperature today: High=51.3 °F Low=25.0 °F Average=36.7 °F
We used 15kWh today for heating! :eek:

I cranked it up high (22C) because our daughter came over to spend some time in a warm house.
Her power has been out since the storm a few days ago.
Today, I had a dental problem and my dental care office is in the same town.. No power! eek:

Anyways 15kWh in 24 hours comes out to .625 per hour on average.
$3.24 a day. That's going to add up to some serious moola..
$97.20 a month (just for heating) if we keep this up..