Energy usage log

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FRx
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Energy usage log

Post by FRx »

So this past month I used 182 kWh. I am charged 6.5c/kWh. But I have a base $10/mo charge and some distribution charges so the whole bill came out to $30. My bills have gone as high as $55. But usually it's only $30-ish.
I don't have gas, I think all electricity because no gas shows up on my bill (Portland Gas and Electric). I have a space heater that I use when it gets really cold but I'm using so much less of it than I used to. My stove is electric as well and of course the water heater must be electric.

Peanut
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by Peanut »

What size is your home and how often do you cook?

I really appreciate this thread topic as I plan to start closely tracking these expenses in our new flat--for the first time embarrassingly enough. I look forward to seeing what usage and cost numbers people aim for.

We have both gas and electric power. In the past year the total of the two bills in our old apt which is of a similar size to our current flat--1500 sq ft--tended to be around $50/mo. Heat was not included however, so I don't know if that's considered exorbitantly high or not.

FRx
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by FRx »

I forgot to mention that. I cook all my own meals. Probably every other day. I live in a 400sqft studio. I make coffee at home every day just boiling hot water, I take warm/hot showers but brief ones and I have a fridge naturally. No TV because I know some TVs can guzzle wattage.

henrik
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by henrik »

12 month average: electricity 6.50€ (~65 kWh at ~0.10€ including taxes etc), heat (natural gas, incl heating water) 32€
50 sq m apartment, cooking on electric almost every day, biggest consumer is probably the electric kettle.
Definitely the biggest savings has been to stop using the electric heater built into the bathroom floor, electricity bills used to be easily 4-5 times as much as now. Replacing lamps with LEDs has helped a bit as well.
Heating cost is ok considering we have 5 months of subzero temperatures a year and apartments don't get metered separately.

IlliniDave
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by IlliniDave »

I tend to range from approximately $50-$180, of which $9 is an availability fee. I don't have gas, have a house that's about 2100 ft^2, and have 2 heat pump units, one for each floor. I'm not sure what that is in kwh, but I think we pay $0.10-$0.11 per kwh. I live in the northern half of the southeast US, and the highest usage comes in the winter when above-ground heat pumps loose all their efficiency, and in the summer, when A/C would typically be run daily for about 5 months. Before I started letting my frugal gene fully express itself, my numbers were nearly twice that. As bad as that sounds, compared to many of my homeowner neighbors here in the area, I'm using about half the energy. I cook 7 days per week, and use my electric clothes dryer for the coldest 4 months every year.

cmonkey
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by cmonkey »

We have an uninsulated 1300 square foot, 70 year old home that is all electric. We go as high as $200 during the coldest month of winter and drop to about $80 in the late spring/early summer. Water heater is electric and we cook 7 days a week on an electric range. We don't turn the air on until August turns completely miserable. Even then we stick it out sometimes. We switched to a geothermal system and it is saving us double digit % in costs during the winter, even with cheap NG. We got close to $300 with a natural gas furnace in winter 2014. As NG prices go up, we'll save even more.
IlliniDave wrote:I.... have 2 heat pump units, one for each floor.
Is that an air source or ground source heat pump?

IlliniDave
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by IlliniDave »

cmonkey wrote:
IlliniDave wrote:I.... have 2 heat pump units, one for each floor.
Is that an air source or ground source heat pump?
They are both air source (If that means what I think it does--the heat exchange outside the house uses outdoor ambient air).

cmonkey
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by cmonkey »

IlliniDave wrote:
cmonkey wrote:
IlliniDave wrote:I.... have 2 heat pump units, one for each floor.
Is that an air source or ground source heat pump?
They are both air source (If that means what I think it does--the heat exchange outside the house uses outdoor ambient air).
Yes that is air source. Ground source runs loops of water/antifreeze through tubes in the ground and extracts heat from the soil. That's what we have.

George the original one
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by George the original one »

FRx wrote:Portland Gas and Electric
You mean Portland General Electric... that slip identifies you as a Californian who had Pacific Gas & Electric :-)

If you have piped gas, it will be NW Natural. Some Portlanders are served by Pacific Power. And if you're an old-timer, you may remember getting loads of sawdust for the furnace. No, I'm not that old, but I remember as a 5-yr-old ripping out the boards from the bin in the basement where our house once had a sawdust burner!

1027 kWhr for Mar 18-Apr 15, $119.15. 2 people, one is home full time in 1850 sq ft home, heat pump.

***
At the rural home near Seaside, a small utility coop provides service. The monthly hook-up fee just to have service is $35! Our electric bills down there have been $45-60. Haven't been able to extrapolate what they'll be when we move, partly because we heat with wood.

llorona
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by llorona »

For the past six months, our average electric usage has been 345 kwh/month and the average cost has been $63.65. Two us live in a 90-year old, 1,200 s.f. house. We have a tankless water heater, and approximately half of our indoor lights are LED. I work at home so that probably adds a little to the cost. I have a feeling the old-ish refrigerator that came with the house is an energy suck...

This does not include a gas furnace, oven/stove, and dryer. That has run an average of $30.04/month for the past six months. Usage is much lower in the summer months (about $13/month) largely because we dry our clothing outside when the weather is nice.

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fiby41
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by fiby41 »

121 Unit kWh; 1BHK; ₨ 1280= ~$22.
Monthly average is around ₨ 1000 and rises in summer.

Image

Can we change the title into Energy Usage Log like the 'Investment Log' and 'Exercise Log' threads which are evergreen/perennial topics and update our stats monthly?

That'll also make us more conscious about energy usage.

George the original one
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by George the original one »

George the original one wrote: 1027 kWhr for Mar 18-Apr 15, $119.15. 2 people, one is home full time in 1850 sq ft home, heat pump.

***
At the rural home near Seaside, a small utility coop provides service. The monthly hook-up fee just to have service is $35! Our electric bills down there have been $45-60. Haven't been able to extrapolate what they'll be when we move, partly because we heat with wood.
Update: Looks like we're averaging 660 kWH down here by Seaside for the past couple months. Cost is in the $135-140/mo range <gulp> due to high electric rate and $35 service fee.

So running the heat pump in winter was about 400 kWH and having woodstoves is saving us $40/mo, though that's an understatement since Seaside electric heat is baseboard instead of efficient heat pump. Our woodstoves use about 3 cords of wood per year (which would cost $600-750/yr if we had to buy the wood).

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Chris
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by Chris »

100kWH/mo. 1BR apt, gas for heat, HW, stove.

That works out to about $10/mo in electric supply charges. My base electric delivery rate is high: $24/mo.

In my living space, the biggest consumer is the refrigerator. Living in a rented apartment, not much I can do about it, but in terms of cash cost, it doesn't really matter much. I've tried unplugging it for a month, and it only saved ~$3.

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jennypenny
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Re: How's my energy usage compared to others?

Post by jennypenny »

fiby41 wrote:Can we change the title into Energy Usage Log like the 'Investment Log' and 'Exercise Log' threads which are evergreen/perennial topics and update our stats monthly?

That'll also make us more conscious about energy usage.
I like this idea. I'm just starting to track our energy usage and carbon footprint, and I would find this very useful. The extremes to which people go on the forum always inspire me to push myself harder.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

This is actually a very complicated calculation. Almost impossible to compare apples to apples. Human beings generally roam about a bit and use/take energy from realms that are not directly linked to their home utility bill. For instance, maybe a working mother of two turns the thermostat way down during the day because she drops her tots at a heated day care center and drives herself to a heated workplace and picks up dinner cooked elsewhere vs. a SAHM who cooks. Also, if you wanted to take this calculation to the nth degree, if you own one-millionth of the stock in a corporation that burns $X of energy/year in the manufacture of widgets, and you input money from that investment into your system, to what extent are you responsible for some share of that energy usage? Are you ultimately not responsible if you sequester the money and never spend it before you die, or would you still have to consider the consequences of your will after death?

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GandK
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by GandK »

7Wannabe5 wrote:This is actually a very complicated calculation.
It is, but tracking energy usage within the home is useful for spotting outliers and for self-competition and improvement purposes. So even though you won't end up with precise input/output, it's still math worth doing.

We use dollars spent vs watts used as our yardstick :oops:, and our goal each month is to spend less than we did during the same month last year.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@GandK:

Point taken. Actually, I think it is more interesting, even if more complex, to think in terms of energy usage rather than cash flow. I am a total hot water slut myself, so it's not like I am trying to be preachy. I've just been reading and watching so much permaculture material lately, I've started wondering about how trees converting the kinetic energy of raindrops into trunk growth might relate to the inefficiency of converting chili cheese fries purchased at the corner Coney Island into fat storage on my person.

enigmaT120
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by enigmaT120 »

7Wannabe5 wrote:... I've started wondering about how trees converting the kinetic energy of raindrops into trunk growth ....
Huh?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@enigmaT120: Some scientists believe that the actions of the wind and rain result in effects on tree tissue not unlike the results of exercise on human tissue. Think of a falling raindrop moving a leaf through its stem, like a baseball falling and being passively caught by an absent-minded outfielder.

enigmaT120
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Re: Energy usage log

Post by enigmaT120 »

I wondered if that's what you were getting at. I don't think the mechanical exercise helps the trunks to grow so much as it strengthens them. I was thinning a stand of fir trees that were growing very close, way too close for optimum health. At first I thinned all the way to a proper spacing, and then lost many of the trees I had left to wind storms. They were weak, because the stand as a whole resisted wind pretty well. Now I do the thinning in two stages several years apart, to allow the remaining trees to get stronger before I thin them again. These are Douglas-fir trees, but I would not be surprised if it works similarly for other plants too.

If I had been actively managing these stands all along they would have grown faster and still been strong, but I put it off for many years thinking they would thin themselves. They do, but it's not pretty and takes more than a human lifetime. They're also very vulnerable to fire for a long time. So I'm hurrying things up.

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