What's your KWH consumption?

[PaulM2]

Get everything you can on power bars and switch off those phantom loads. Just simply turn things off when you're not using them. My power bill is down to $70 cnd. for two months. My "Energy used" as on the bill is averaged at 7kwh per day for the months of Feb/March this year. This puts less demand on your solar/wind source. So how are you doing?

[JeroenH]

My girlfriend and I live in an apartment and we use about 2,5 kWh/day on average. Some days we use about 4kWh and some days as little as 1. We have lowered it this far by doing three things:

1. Stop waste. Everything that uses energy when not in use is on a power strip. Device not used? Switch it off, and I mean REALLY off, not just standby. When I'm not home, there are only three devices using electricity: the refrigirator, the central ventilating unit and the central heating/hot water boiler. And sometimes I switch off the central ventilating unit as well.
   
2. Energy efficient devices. We've replaced our old refrigirator and washing machine with new ones which are much more energy efficient. We both have a computer, we've replaced both CRT-monitors with TFT's. The TV is next in line to be replaced. Of course all lights are CF (except the light in the bathroom).
   
3. Changed behaviour. When you leave a room, turn off the lights. When you leave the house, switch everything off. Don't do stuff and have the tv running as 'moving wallpaper'.
   
   

We live normally, otherwise. We watch TV (although not al lot), we play computer games, we have an XboX. There is a lot you can do without secrificing much comfort.

For comparison, I measured the electricity usage of my parents and my girlfriend's parents. My parents (2ppl-household, slightly bigger house) use about 10kWh/day, and my girlfriend's parents (much bigger house, 4ppl-household) use about 25kWh/day!! But they cook electrically, while we use natural gas.

Next step: solar PV power, but I have to save some money first.

[Gary D]

We use close to  700 average kw per month. With a hot water heater using around 400 per month.... a large chest freezer, pool pump running 10 hrs. a day May to Sept (21 footer), and electric non energy star fridge, computer, water pump, washer and electric drier ( clothes line occasionally but NOT on in-laws clothes) all electric home in other words. Heat is wood- 2.5 to 3 cords a year otherwise it would be electric heat.

 Hot water heater is the first thing cost saving wise to get attention here (quicker payoff time) but limited funds are making things MUCH slower than I would have hoped

 Have cut 100 kwh per month in the last 2 years thanks to different stories posted by members of this board, while at the same time adding a second family's clothes washing (in-laws getting older).

 Small steps here, but slowly getting there. Gary D.

[ghurd]

Can pre-heat the water with wood in the winter.

And a tempering tank will help. Just another water heater that does not heat, with the insulation removed. Gets it from 55' to 72' before the electric heats it.

Made a huge difference in a duplex- just 1 @ 80 gal tempering tank before the 2 electric hot water heaters, less than a year payback they figured.  

Near (not too near) the wood burner would be a great place. Maybe just a few winter months payback.

G-

[Gary D]

Forgot to mention 2 window A.C. units cooling (and hehumidifing)1800 sq.ft.

  Gourd, I'd be much happier with a unit replacing the coils in my 80 gallon tank as a heat exchanger with an active homemade panel, and a small 20 gallon electric primary. However it looks like I'd have to make it myself (heat exchangers are truely overpriced). Your preheat idea may be the quickest fix (even if only for 4 months a year). We're getting off topic tho... would love to hear of other's power usage ( don't think I'm the only power hog)  Gary D.

[pyrocasto]

Our average use is increadable. It was around 3000+kwh a month, but I think we've cut it by at least 500 or so. I've done alot of replacing lights with CFLs, where they are not visable, or where other people dont care. Make sure lights are off much more, turn heating/AC off during the day. We use the attic fan more often to cool in the summer.

Now I've got a battery bank and will be working on my genny to help out. Will have hot water and ac(hopefully) as a dumpload. In the winter I'm doing Solar heating to hopefully take care of the sunny day heating needs.

[Paulm]

My 7kwh per day I first mentioned is in my storey and a half house with aloft. Just built 3 years ago on 6 acres. 2x6 construction to R2000 standards.My previous 30 year old house in the city was 2x4 walls and used about 12-15 kwh per day. I heat mostly with wood but we do heat the basement and water with our oil burning furnace. I have started using my ebay cell panels but so far only produce 75w during the sunny days.I have more to make up to 300w this summer. Hot water panels going up next summer.

[PHinker]

We use right around 700 KWH per month for a 6 person family.  Three teenage daughters and a 10 year old son.  Cooking, clothes drying, and a large chest freezer.  I've dropped our usage a couple hundred KWH per month by replacing many of the lights in the basement (where the kids live) with sensor switches (noone in the room for 5 minutes, lights go off).  The kids simply refuse to turn lights off when they leave.  Also, put a solatube in the main bathroom.  Changed the clothes dry from an outside vent to a filtered interior vent which adds heat and humidity to the basement in the winter.

I'm currently renovating a new house in the country which doesn't have gas so the heat (living and hot water) is electric.  I tore out all the baseboard heat and am replacing with radiant in-floor heat.  Also slowly gathering the parts and knowledge for one or more windmills on the 40 acre property to reduce what comes from the grid.  My goal is to produce at least half what we use via solar and wind generation which will require additional conservation.

Paul

[ghurd]

We are averaging 340 KWH per month at home.

Electric stove, but we eat out more than here. Everything else is natural gas.

With 2 home based bussiness, at least 1 computer (with every bell and whistle) is on 14 hours a day, sometimes 2 (older). 4 cordless phone, 3 cell phones, fax, modems, copier, 6 (!!!) remotes on the coffee table... Too many phantom loads to add up.

TVs maybe 6 hours total.

Hair dryer for a 16 year old girl, who never shuts off a light or TV.

I have managed to get the girls to unplug the wall warts when not in use.

CFLs or regular FLs everywhere but the bathroom.

Very little RE at home now. Too many neighbors and rules.

Going to sneak in a 'large solar battery charger'.  160w solar and 2 T-105s. When the smoke clears, if the battery is full, I 'may' expand the 'battery drain'.

A few 12V CFLs and the main TV.

The shop is 100% RE. No grid, Nat Gas, or phone. Solar and a 20" 10w windmill (I know- I'm trying!).

There is a diesel for air.

G-

[wooferhound]

I've lived here for 7 months

Average over 7 months is 940 kwh per month

Gas heat, No air conditioning

Electric kitchen

900 watt heater in the greenhouse for a few months

Totally CFL lighting

Two People, 1600 sq. ft.

No RE help at the moment

[chux0r]

Even better, get a dozen 4ft lengths of copper pipe, and a pile of elbows, and make a radiator-type-thingy on top of the wood stove.  One end hooks to the bottom of the tempering tank, the pipes go back and forth and back and forth as many times as you can on top of the stove, and the other to the top of the tank.  Convection will draw in cold water from the bottom, through the radiator to the top of the tank.  Then draw from the top of the tank into your water heater.  (My dad did this ~30 years ago, and I can't imagine how much money it's saved since then!)

This gets the water up to 120-130 degrees.  The only time the electric runs is if we're using the dish washer, or too many showers drain the tempering tank to where it only has cold water.

[chux0r]

For your house in the country, for about $3k you can do a simple propane fired furnace (no central or ducts or anything, just a box in the corner).  My mom did this when she got tired of feeding the wood stove.

I don't know what it costs to heat a whole house with electric.  (And I hope I never find out!)  I did a small apartment, and it was about $200/mo for 55 degrees in the winter!

So including monthly propane delivery, the breakeven should be awful quick compared to electric heating.  Of course you will supplement with passive solar but you'll be way happier to fall back on gas than electric when the sun isn't shining!

[wpowokal]

Domestic wise we (2 ppl)use 3.5-4 KW/day, Gas stove but use electric appliances as required. Gas and sola (sun) water heating.

We live in the end of our packing shed, sort of a bed sitter, not large.

I gave up worrying about leaving things like the fax on so the inverter never shuts down. Generally we have excess power comming in so I suffer the fax.

allan

[troy]

When I first bought our house in '99, we averaged about 650 kwh/mo. Replaced electric water heater with nat. gas, new energy efficient fridge, electric dryer replace with nat gas dryer, all cfl lights but bath and bedroom, power bars to kill the phantoms, better habits.  Monthly use went down to an average of less than 200 kwh.

Last fall I got my Lister/biodiesel co-generator on line and I anticipate that my utility electricity use will drop to less than 100 kwh/mon as I increase the use of the cogenerator.  I also have two solar panels to make 160 theoretical watts, so they help out somewhat.

Conservation is the fundamental absolute non-negotiable key to any successful energy policy, as an individual, as a family, and as a nation.

Good luck and have fun!

troy

[CarlB]

I just got my electric bill. Used 466KWH (15.5KWH/day), at $0.107/KWH. 2 ppl in house; house is older construction (poorly insulated, double-hung windows, pier-and-beam). Gas cooking, heating, water; electric dryer, central A/C. All but 4 lights on CFL; 2 of the others are table lamps with dimmers. All potential phantom loads are power-stripped.




I bought a Cost Control and have had it on the fridge for just over a week. It's reporting the fridge uses 2.6KWH/day. My next appliance replacement will be fridge, followed by gas dryer.




The electric bill has a handy little bar graph showing the past 12 months' usage. It looks like my usage has ranged from under 300KWH to over 900KWH, depending on the A/C load. I'm hoping the programmable thermostat (installed 3 months ago) will put a dent in the high numbers. My GF moved in 5 months ago, and fell in love with all my electric kitchen appliances, which I seldom used. She loves my steamer the most, so I'm going to try to switch her to use the stove. Dilemma: the stove may produce more heat load for the A/C and fridge!




The next project will be tightening, shading, and insulating. If I REduce, there's less to REnew. How about updating the 3 Rs to 4: REduce, REuse, REcycle, REnew?

[Peppyy]

4. people, (2 teenagers, 2 adults) 12x50 mobile home with 12x50 addition 3/4 basement.
   
4. computers, DSL Router 90% fl lighting, gas stove and water. Electric Clothes Dryer. Forced hot air and radiant wood fired heat / outdoor boiler. avg 600 kwh/mo. Biggest savings was a new maytag fridge, almost 200 kwh/mo compared to 20 year old wards.
   
   

Bought an energystar tv for the daughter but since it is on 24/7 it dosn't really make a lot of difference. I am concidering installing a whole bunch of home automation control and running it from an old laptop. Bet I could save over 50%.

Ahhhhhhh Dreams.

[nanotech]

Do a quick Google for corn burner stoves.  

The local Hank's Hardware uses one to heat thier entire building (HUGE tin building with NO insulation) all by itself in northern Minnesota winters.  And this winter they only forked over $385.00 for corn.

You can find new corn burners for around $600.00 now.  The nicest thing about them is that they are EXTREMELY efficient.  The one at Hardware Hank's was going full blast.  I asked about the danger of kids or pets getting burned by it.  The guy sat down on top of it and said there's NO danger of it.  He told me to go outside and stick my hand inside the chimney.  It was about 85 or 90 degrees inside the pipe.

I was amazed.  I am definately sold on them.  I'm getting one before next winter so I can completely strip out the electric heat in my house and run a heat exchanger for the hot water heater as well.

[PaulM2]

I'm going to move my deep freezer into the basement. Main floor is 75 degrees basement is a cool 58. The freezer runs 6 hours now, put in the basement it will run 4 hours. That's 33% less. Or about 11kwh per month less. A good idea.

[nothing to lose]

Well it was about 510Kwh average over a 6 month period, but I am sure it went way up since then

I installed FL lighting, got new tools, reduce one power load add another.

Got a bunch of batteries from the scrap yard, good deal, prices dirt cheap, lots and lots of 40 amp charging and pulse charging on many batteries. That eats alot of power too! Now I got some good batteries really cheap, but I raised the electric bill doing it I am sure.

 Then again, I was running 2 house for awhile on one metter. I had the remote house I was running on the battereies and inverter for awhile, and to cahrge the batteries I would charge while driving in the truc and also from the grid at home with the 40 amp charger.

 I did this and that to lower the home usage, then did this and that to raise it also. So it should be real interesting to say the least to see this next 6 month bill!!

Did it go up or down ??

Not that I really care in a way, I saved alot of power on all the things I was doing before it's just that I did alot more things recently. Alot of the more things will actually lead to using less in the future so that's not bad either. Like running more tools, doing more work, later I will have more gennies flying. All that power for batteries was reconditioning them and now I have some good working batteries that will store the power I make. So it all evens out in the end. But this next bill should be fun to see, the one after that will be fun because it should be reall low!

[BeenzMeenzWind]

I deliberately don't look at my electric bill! It's on a pay-as-you-go meter where you pay at one of the local shops and swipe the card in the meter when you get back. It was in when we bought the place and there is NO WAY I'm paying the utility company £700 to change it for a normal type. We put about £40 pw week in it @ £0.07/ kWh. I'm not going to work that out!

At present in our 'burb renovation project (£70,000 equity and counting! :-) ) we have three kids and 3 adults. Me and Zoe have cottoned on to turning everything off when not in use, except for the PC. That never gets switched off, ever! Admittedly, there are days where I'm not using it much...

The kids don't seem to realise that switches have an off function! They leave all the lights on, TV on, Playstation, XBox and Gamecube on, wall warts all plugged in even with nothing on the end...

I've swapped all but the bathroom light for CFs, except for the kitchen which has 6 50w halogens on a dimmer. I know this is BAD, but I do all the cooking and I like to be able to see what I'm doing with a 10" chefs knife!! There is also a 12v 1 foot fluorescent that runs off an old car battery in the meter cupboard, trickle charged by an old battery charger for 1 hour a day, on a timer. It has a pull cord, so you can see what you're doing at night. (I get batteries for nothing from local junkyard, so I just change them when they're ruined!)

I intend to put the kitchen mains on a timer, so the halogens will be locked out from 11pm until 7am. Kids come down in night, as our bathroom is downstairs behind the kitchen, and leave the bloody things on when they go back up.

We're currently insulating everything that can be, getting quotes for double glazing manufacture (I can fit them. Done it lots of times) and generally sorting out the draughts and chilly little corners.

We've just bought a Class A energy efficiency fridge / freezer. Even the light inside is a CF. It uses 160 watts when it's running, which seems to be about 12 minutes an hour. The sides and doors are really thick and heavy and seem to contain a lot of insulation. It has spiral hinges and fairly powerful magnets in the door seals too, so they will pull themselves shut if you don't close them properly.

The new range is dual fuel, gas rings with electric fan ovens. Not plumbed that in yet, so not sure what sort of energy efficiency it has. It's Class A rated, though!

We have a condenser dryer and a Class A washing machine and Dishwasher, too. Again, they're new so...

[Volvo farmer]

When I was a kid, My dad said he'd give us kids the difference between this year's and last year's electric bills if we could save electricity. I remember learning how to turn off lights and geting a $5 bill at the end of the month for a while, He did the actual KWH calculations so the training worked, we actually reduced our usage by just turning off lights when we weren't in the room.

[Jeff7]

Odd aside here - I've tried moving to CFL bulbs, but I'm finding that they don't last as long as incandescent bulbs, which is quite odd. And they're not all in locations that are used for just a minute several times a day - some are on for well over an hour at a time.

In particular is the track lighting above the sofa in the living room. One bulb is CFL, one incandescent. We went through TWO CFL bulbs, while the incandescent kept going. Might be the brand - Sunbeam bulbs haven't been good to me. GE seems to work....but then, they're GE, big supporter of Bush/Cheney Inc, so there are pings of guilt with using their stuff. (Probably nearly impossible though to find a corporation that doesn't like the current administration.)

What brands of CFL's are generally good? I think I'm going to say "no" to any more Sunbeam lights.

[ghurd]

Sunbeam is not what it used to be.

I think the name was sold to crappy importers.

I like the 'Lights of America' brand.  

Someone recently said they didn't.

Easy to get at many stores.

I believe they make some CFLs for GE.

Some CFLs get pretty hot in a can fixture, probably shortening the life.

Some say in the fine print not to use them upside down.

Maybe the electricity leaks out? lol.

Bet it is the heat getting to the electronics faster.

Have some in a ceiling fan with open bottom, closed top glass shades.

They still get hot even though I drilled vent holes in the shade mounts.

G-

[troy]

It's the brand.  Lights of America (Imported, WTF?) and Sunbeam are both very short-lived in my experience.

Good luck and have fun!

troy

[JYL]

Not using much electricity. (Joke)  Just about 76 Kw/h per day. (yearly average)

All electric including Heating/Hot Water/Cooking/2 Frig/1 freezer

Pool -- AC -- Several TVs -- 5 computers/DSL/HUB, several sound systems, etc...

No GAZ -- or any other fuel: Just 100% electric.

I live in Quebec,Canada.  The electricity is king here so that using other energy source does not make much sense -- YET.

The funny thing is that my house have many "power saving" feature including mostly CFL lighting, Electronic thermostat, Front loading washing machine, recent -- with good energy rating fridge and freezer, Outside lighting by sodium (35 Watts/h) and many more.  But I still consume a lot.  

[ghurd]

"Imported, WTF?"

LOL

I hate the ones with the big Flag, and "Designed in America" or "An American Company"...

Bought a furnace part from Heatmaker last week.

Made in Mexico. Packaged in China.

Just in a 3X3X3" box- that's it. Not even a bag or dessicant pack.

Is it really cheaper to make them in Mexico, ship them to China, put them in a box, and ship them back?

Stupidest thing I have seen in a while.

G-

[DavidC]

5kwh a day

oil fired hot water ,oil heat

i dream of solar panels but so far i find it much easer just to turn things off

24 dollars a month cost