Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Electricity Challenge - Update 10

Week 10 of our electricity challenge!!!! Wow!!!! How did we go this week? Well, over the weekend, DH had the air conditioner running so I was expecting to be up a little this week (note to self - *must* get around to cleaning the filter on the air conditioner to make sure it's running efficiently!!!!). I tend to be more of a cold frog so don't need the air conditioning but he runs hot (ooh yeah! lol) so I can't blame him really. A man has to be comfortable in his own house! :-)

So, our average daily usage ended up being 16.80 kWh's which I was actually pretty happy with given the use of the air conditioner. When you consider our average daily usage over winter was around 40 kWh's per day! Of course, winter is a LOT higher usage for us than spring.

I've just worked out our overall average daily usage for the past 10 weeks and it works out to 16.14kWh's. I had *hoped* to get it down to around 15kWh's per day (which would be an average of 3kWh's per person in our household) but perhaps that was too lofty a goal for us right now.

Comparing that with our "test" week figure of 18.45kWh's, we seem to have succeeded in dropping it down by 2.31kWh's per day. It'll be interesting when the bill comes to see what that says in comparison with our overall usage for the same time frame last year.

Our hot water usage this week was back down to 1.44kWh's per day. I must remember to check with DH as to whether he has turned the overnight boost off again. If we leave it on during the warmer weather we end up using electricity we don't need as it heats it overnight (after the night-time showers) and starts the day off all heated off which we don't really need when the sun is going to heat it throughout the day.

Our average hot water electricity usage for the past 10 weeks works out to 2.03kWh's per day which seems pretty good to me.

I think my next task will be to do a "keeping cool" audit of our home in preparation for the warm weather. :-)

3 comments:

Kacie said...

Hold on a second, I forget, where do you live?

I was a bit startled to see that you needed the AC, but maybe you live south of the equator? I can't remember.

Anyway, looks like you're doing great with your energy usage!

lightening said...

I'm in Australia Kacie - so yes, south of the equator. I know what you mean though. I read blogs talking about the early snow falls and it all seems a bit odd to me sitting here in a tank top with sweat dripping down my face (okay, it's not quite *that* hot yet - I like to dramatise things a little). Isn't the internet a wonderful tool for closing the miles between people. :-)

clairesgarden said...

well you can get all the 'cool' you need in Scotland, brrr.
growing some of your own veggies is one great way to redue your shopping bill.
I really miss my veggies in the winter.