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Water last night, electricity tonight
Oct. 27th, 2008 09:06 pmSo in the spirit of conservation, you have to know how much you use before you can reduce, right?
Real electricity usage:
So on the electricity front, from Oct 06 to Sept 07 I used 16,336 KWH of electricity. From Oct 07 to Sept 08 I used 15,108 KWH. That is a 1,200 KWH reduction in actual usage. I attribute most of that to using a clothes line for most of our clothes drying this summer. I need to figure out how to get that much reduction again this year.
Electricity purchased:
From Oct 06 to Sept 07 I bought 16,336 KWH of electricity from PG&E (100%). From Oct 07 to Sept 08 I only bought 9,273 KWH of electricity from PG&E. The balance of my usage this year was generated from my solar panels, 5,835 KWH. That generation saved me $1,716 on my utility bills. That level of savings will give me a 12.8 year return on investment. This just gets better as electricity rates go up.
I suspect that my biggest energy user is my hot tub. Since I'm not willing to get rid of it, I think I need to design a solar hot water system to heat it. That would be a huge savings, but also a huge project. We'll see...
Real electricity usage:
So on the electricity front, from Oct 06 to Sept 07 I used 16,336 KWH of electricity. From Oct 07 to Sept 08 I used 15,108 KWH. That is a 1,200 KWH reduction in actual usage. I attribute most of that to using a clothes line for most of our clothes drying this summer. I need to figure out how to get that much reduction again this year.
Electricity purchased:
From Oct 06 to Sept 07 I bought 16,336 KWH of electricity from PG&E (100%). From Oct 07 to Sept 08 I only bought 9,273 KWH of electricity from PG&E. The balance of my usage this year was generated from my solar panels, 5,835 KWH. That generation saved me $1,716 on my utility bills. That level of savings will give me a 12.8 year return on investment. This just gets better as electricity rates go up.
I suspect that my biggest energy user is my hot tub. Since I'm not willing to get rid of it, I think I need to design a solar hot water system to heat it. That would be a huge savings, but also a huge project. We'll see...
