Electric usage down over 60%; bill down 68%

Since early June I have been on a campaign to slash our electric bill.  I looked at our bill in early June and saw that we had used over 40 kilowatt hours (kwh) per day in April.  Past months were even worse.  We changed appliances, notably removed a 60 cubic foot commercial refrigerator and recycled several decades-old refrigerators and freezers on the property.  We purchased a new Whirlpool Sidekick refrigerator only and a 20 cubic foot Frigidaire freezer for the porch, both energy star compliant.  We replaced our 14-year-old electric water heater with a new propane model and we replaced a 30-year-old electric dryer with a gas dryer once we realized that propane costs 2.4 less than what electric costs here.  Of course, with gas prices on the rise, that ratio will change.

Since our last bill and report of a 51% drop in usage, our primary change has been switching incandescent light bulbs to florescent and other energy efficient bulbs.  It is an adjustment (read: we all despise them), but we do like the outcome in terms of our electric use.  I had no idea it would have such a big pay-off.

With the cost of gas on the rise, we will have to keep watching the cost of gas versus electric.  One of the factors that makes that a moving target is that as our electric usage lowers, so does our cost for every kilowatt hour.  This month, we used below our baseline allocation.  Our allocation is 19.4 kwh/day and this month we used an average of 18.13 kwh/day.  This month, each kwh cost 11-12 cents each.  Last summer we were paying up to 22 cents per kwh hour for every kwh we used that was 100% above our allocation – every day 12 of our kilowatt hours cost 22 cents.  Now we are paying much less for every kwh.  So we have two things happening here:  our electric is cheaper than it has been in the past and gas prices are rising. 

On one blog entry I described how to calculate the cost of propane versus electric and show that in terms of BTUs, 26.84 kwh of electric is equivalent to one gallon of propane.  Now that we are below our baseline allocation, 26.84 kwh of electric costs us $3.22 whereas one gallon of propane costs $1.59.  But if propane costs increase by 70%, we will be paying $2.70 per gallon – still cheaper than electric, but not the huge savings we thought would help pay our start-up costs for our new gas appliances.  And in our case living in an isolated area, we do face electric outages longer than most urban areas do (under normal circumstances of course).  In those cases, it is a good thing to have the propane tank heating our tea water. 

When I started this household campaign in June, knowing nothing about all of this, I hoped that we might take advantage of the rebates in California for solar.  With such high usage levels, I hope that with conservation AND solar together, we could reduce our usage to about 15 kwh/day.  We are nearly there and we have not finished our conservation efforts.  We need to replace our well pump and switch to a holding tank system from the current pump-on-demand system.  We are also planning to install water storage tanks throughout the property to store rain water to water our garden and landscape.  I expect that these changes will lower our usage to under 10 kwh/day.  By the way, all of these changes – those we have already made and those in the planning – are cheaper than generating our own electricity, even with the generous rebates and tax incentives offered in California.  Conservation is undoubtedly the most cost-effective first step in reducing use of electric and gas energy.  You hear that all the time and it took me until well into my 30s to do anything with the information.

Comments

[Patricia W.]

Congratulations on the savings! I switched to fluorescent bulbs about two years ago. They burn forever (coming with a 5 year warranty) and they've come a long way from what they were when they first appeared on the scene. I came from Texas and got sick of the heat generated by incandescent bulbs, fluorescent burn much much cooler on top of using less energy.

[Kim]

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