Power consumption bragging

[BT Humble]

Well, my wife and I just got our electricity bill for the (summer) quarter.  We were interested in how much the solar hot water system would reduce our consumption, and we're down from an average of 8kWh/day for the same period last year to 4kWh/day.  The electric booster in the hot water system hasn't been needed yet, solar alone has been adequate.  

This is in an all-electric house, and to go any lower I'd have to replace the refrigerator with a chest freezer conversion.  Last winter we went up to 20kWh/day due to the heating, but this year I'm going to give that "bubble glazing" technique a try and see how we go. (http://mtbest.net/bubble_glazing.html)

At 4kWh/day saved it's going to take about 15 years to pay off the cost of the water heater, but it's well worth it for the feeling of unbearable smugness I get whenever I turn on a tap. ;-)

BTH

[Volvo farmer]

That is indeed impressive. I use about that amount am off-grid. You're probably up against a wall of diminishing returns at this point.

We have a lot of glass in the south wall of this house. We bought a bunch of those honeycomb insulated blinds and lower them every night, it seems to help a lot, yet doesn't interfere with the solar gain we have grown accustomed to. The blinds were certainly pricey, about $1000 to do the whole house, but they seem to work very well to keep the heat in.

[BT Humble]

We have a lot of glass in the south wall of this house. We bought a bunch of those honeycomb insulated blinds and lower them every night, it seems to help a lot, yet doesn't interfere with the solar gain we have grown accustomed to. The blinds were certainly pricey, about $1000 to do the whole house, but they seem to work very well to keep the heat in.



The most unfortunate thing about this house is that it was constructed according to the orientation of the plot of land, rather than the sun.  It has 2 smallish windows on the Northwest side (Southern hemisphere, remember) but they contribute very little to heating in the winter.  There is a sliding glass door and 2 larger windows on the Southwest side, which are only useful for catching the late afternoon sun in the summer and heating the house up.

The last picture here shows a view of the Northwest wall.  The other windows are under the verandah (visible in the photo of the lawnmower).

http://www.smallsolar.org/BTH/garden/640x480/BILD0024.jpg

BTH

[DamonHD]

Damn, you beat me to power-diet bragging today!

I'm feeling very virtuous because we're taking delivery of a new A+ rated fridge/freezer today which should save ~1kWh/day...

I'm aiming for a net domestic consumption of ~5kWh/day (allowing for the grid-tie solar PV to offset ~1kWh/day of office use), and I think that we may be close.

Rgds

Damon

[jimjjnn]

The link you supplied, led me to a web hosting site instead of your pictures

[BT Humble]

The link you supplied, led me to a web hosting site instead of your pictures

    Jim Denver,CO



Curses!  Sorry about that, it should have been:

http://www.smallsolar.org/BTH/garden/

BTH

[BT Humble]

Damn, you beat me to power-diet bragging today!



Don't feel too bad, you're just coming out of winter at the moment aren't you?  

Summer is our lowest electricity-consumption season (no aircon).  Our consumption will douible or treble once we start heating the house again.

BTH

[DamonHD]

Yes, indeed, though this morning is cold and frosty.

Our electricity consumption is, I think, fairly constant year-round since we don't use it for heating.

Though our new fridge/freezer with its better insulation should suck a little less power in summer than the old one would have done...

Rgds

Damon