Back in April, I wrote about our utility bill and peak hours.
Since then, we've lowered our energy usage by over 20%.
Here's what our electricity consumption has been:
May - 693 kwh / 28 days = 24.750 kwh per day
June - 681 kwh / 32 days = 21.281 kwh per day
July - 539 kwh / 30 days = 17.967 kwh per day
How'd we do it? One simple trick.
We only ran the laundry machines and dish washer on the weekends or after 8pm during the week.
Seriously, that's it. It's all about the peak hours, man. Ours run from 7am-8pm, so it doesn't make sense to pay more to do laundry doing those hours when you can do it for cheaper in the evening or on weekends.
Now, this isn't a hard and fast rule. A handful of loads totally sneak in during the day once in a while, but we still lowered our energy use by a respectable amount.
I'll be interested to see how the next few months go. With Mike not at home all day and I only run the air for a short period at night on miserably hot days, our kilowatts should continue to fall.
The savings to our actual utility bill, however, are not so straight forward.
| Read Date | Total Usage
(kWh) | Billed
Amount† | Days Billing
Period | Average Cost
per Day | Average Use
per Day |
| 06/11 | 539 | $87.95 | 30 | $2.93 | 17.97 |
| 05/11 | 681 | $106.94 | 32 | $3.34 | 21.28 |
| 04/11 | 693 | $89.05 | 28 | $3.18 | 24.75 |
What happened here is that we voluntarily changed our utility rate to be higher.
You've probably picked up on our whole "Go Green" thing. Well, Alliant (our energy company) just started a renewable energy program called Second Nature.
You can select to have 20, 50, or 100% of your power come from renewable energy sources. The catch is that you have to pay a slightly higher rate because harvesting clean energy is more costly (at this point in time).
I was super excited about this opportunity. For commercial buildings, these are called Renewable Energy Credits and help a business to offset their carbon footprint. Now it's available to the residential market.
We selected the 100% option. As renters, we don't have the opportunity to install geothermal or throw up solar panels. This is the easiest way for us to support clean energy.
The price tag?
A whopping $0.02 cents extra per kilowatt.
Before, we were averaging about 12.7 cents per kilowatt. Now, it's about 15.7 cents per kilowatt.
That's why you see a jump from the April to May bills, as May was the first month with the new rate structure.
What this means is that from here on out, we'll be paying $20 extra a month to have clean energy.
End result - we lowered our energy consumption by 20% only to raise our bill by 20%.
To some, this may seem odd to deliberately lower your usage just so you can afford to increase your bill. But to us, it's all about the kind of impact you can make with a meager dollar. $20, in this case.
Would you ever volunteer to raise your energy bill to support renewable energy?
As I was paying my bills this morning, I started digging around my utility bill. The winter months have averaged $135 while the summer bills were around $100. I have been questioning lately whether this is an appropriate amount for 2 people in a 900 sqf condo (built in 2008). I found a great chart online of our energy usage and costs since we moved in.
| Read Date | Total Usage
(kWh) | Billed
Amount† | Days Billing
Period | Average Cost
per Day | Average Use
per Day |
| 03/11 | 1,088 | $138.29 | 30 | $4.61 | 36.27 |
| 02/11 | 1,052 | $134.83 | 29 | $4.65 | 36.28 |
| 01/11 | 1,110 | $142.70 | 34 | $4.20 | 32.65 |
| 12/10 | 703 | $97.99 | 32 | $3.06 | 21.97 |
| 11/10 | 620 | $86.42 | 29 | $2.98 | 21.38 |
| 10/10 | 630 | $92.92 | 29 | $3.20 | 21.72 |
| 09/10 | 709 | $119.71 | 30 | $3.99 | 23.63 |
| 08/10 | 827 | $141.67 | 32 | $4.43 | 25.84 |
| 07/10 | 638 | $106.56 | 30 | $3.55 | 21.27 |
| 06/10 | 473 | $71.56 | 32 | $2.24 | 14.78 |
| 10 Period Total | 7,850 | $1,132.65 |
I found this really informative. We spend around $4 a day on electricity. Wow. What really blew me away is the total. Over a grand shelled out for energy in 10 months.
I have no idea how these stacks up to other condo/apartment dwellers. If I were feeling ambitious, I'd dig out our records for our other rentals and compare. All I know is the year we lived in a Victorian house, we had bills in the winter that were over $500. Yeah, we cried a lot over that.
I think what's important here is that our energy usage tends to remain constant for 3 months at a time, correlating to the time of season. What that means is that there are opportunities to decrease that amount.
Our energy usage in terms of appliances looks like this:
- Mike is at home all day, so obviously he has to use energy whereas other couples leave for 8 hours and that's it. However, he's only using the computer and is good about keeping lights off and such. He also tends to do laundry and run the dishwasher.
- At night, I'm kind of a nazi about flipping off light switches. As foodies, we probably use our oven way more than other people do so that probably makes a difference. There's also the TV/DVD player for movie watching.
- Constants: fridge, water heater, furnace, and for all intents and purposes, the computer.
My job has given me an enhanced understanding of energy and utility rates. So I decided to look up what are Alliant Energy's peak hours. Peak hours are a fun rating system by the utility company. They charge up to 50% higher for energy used during these hours. It varies around the country, just like utility rates, but these typically cover the afternoon hours / the hottest parts of the day. Do you know what mine actually are?
7am-8pm. (Alliant Energy)
WTF?
That's crazy. Here I was thinking of putting cute signs on the dish washer and washing machine saying "don't use me between 12-4pm." Just kidding.
This changes things considerably. Obviously it's impossible to not use any energy during these hours. And I'm not fond of keeping European eating hours.
To save energy, these is going to require a shift in activities. I think the easiest and most effective change is to simply not run the dish washer and washing machine/dryer during the week (or before 8pm). Luckily, off-peak hours include the entire weekend so that's easy enough to just save those tasks for then. Once the weather is better, I also plan on making our patio a drying rack so that should help too.
I doubt we can adjust our cooking habits and Mike needs the computer during the day for school work and job hunting. Perhaps we can come up with a plan to decrease the amount of hours the computer is actually on though.
We'll give this a try starting from here on out and see if it makes a difference. Will let you know!
Question of the Day: How does your energy bill/usage compare? How do you save money on your utility bill?
