Use Less: My Monthly Utility Report From February 2010.
To help me keep track and to hold me accountable, this year I am going to track all my utility expenses for the year. The average household uses 936 kilowatthours (kWh) of electricity and 400 gallons of water per day, while the average individual uses 250 kWh of electricity and 70-100 gallons of water – just so you have a baseline to judge against. Here is the most recent and last month’s reports:
FEBRUARY 2010:
Electric Bill & Usage – $28.69 total. I used 199 Kwh for the month, or 6.63 Kwh per day. Not bad.
Sewer & Water – $10.01 total. $2.57 in water (1,350 gallons/month), $2.84 for sewer. $4.25 service fee, $.35 meter read fee. I gotta get this water usage down a little bit, as it bothers me that I use 1,350 gallons every month!
Total for the month: $38.70
JANUARY 2010:
Electric Bill & Usage – $31.17 total. I used 221 Kwh for the month, or 7.36 Kwh per day. This was to be expected to be higher because A. I was home for the entire month and B. it was cold out!
Sewer & Water – $8.85 total. $2.02 in water (1,060 gallons/month), $2.32 for sewer. $4.25 of that bill, the majority of it, is just the service fee.
Total for the month: $40.02
What do your utility bills look like? Can you reduce your consumption? I think keeping track can help you to use less and of course spend less. Care to start tracking yours too and reporting back every month?
Related posts:
- Use Less: My Monthly Utility Report For January 2010.
- Use Less: My Monthly Utility Report For December 2009.
- If Possible, Buy Green Power From Your Utility Company.
- Save Water By Making Your Toilet A Dual-Flush Version For $79.
- Off-Grid Man Jailed For Confronting Utility Company
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If you’re tracking your energy usage, I highly recommend the TED5000:
http://www.theenergydetective.com/ted-5000-overview.html I have recently installed it myself and it’s great. I haven’t tried out all the features or hooked it up to Google power meter yet but it would certainly help your project.
Thanks will check it out. Although, my ebills do show me all that info anyway.
Is this for an entire family or just a single individual?
Our Feb electricity usage was 195kwh for a family of four and it has been consistently low since our oven blew many months ago
For me – you must be the world record holder for energy use if that’s for 4 people!
Everything in my house is unplugged when not in use, so please – share your secrets!
It’s low, but it wasn’t always this way. Last year at this time we were consuming approx. 354 kwh / month.
The secret? Since last year we have made the following changes:
- wash clothes by hand and air dry them. I really enjoy washing clothes by hand and we purchased a wringer to squeeze the water off the clothes before we hang them to dry.
- no more oven (it broke). Our stovetop still works, but we very rarely use it. We steam most of our food if we cook at all.
- Ditched cable TV and video games. That Xbox 360 I use to play every night on a 50″ screen was sucking up loads of electricity. Since the TV might only be on for the occasional movie, there’s no wasted juice.
- All lights in the house are 13watt compact fluorescent and they are always turned off when not in use.
- We no longer use a desktop PC (we had two) with CRT monitors. Instead, we use laptops.
Our water heater and furnace run on natural gas.
Now I’ve noticed the days that we have to use our appliances more than usual, our consumption goes up quite a bit.
When our utility company offered “stats” on our own usage to compare with the rest of the street, city and country, we were often much lower than the rest. Making a few changes can certainly go a long way in saving some money!
I was wondering where you obtained the data on average usage. I have seen a couple of figures, so I was curious. My biggest problem is working from home with children during the summer months. Unfortunately AC becomes a must. I am glad that my bill is still much lower than my neighbors. Surprised to see that many people already have theirs running while my family has not been using ours. It is such nice weather right now.
Yea, AC season definitely helps to bring those bills up for sure!
AC is brutal. I certainly can live without it, but my wife can’t
I forgot to mention, one other “secret” to lowering electricity/water is to wash dishes by hand but DON’T leave the water running and running.
I am working on a greywater system to reduce the water usage.For the AC, I am trying to reduce with a combination of ventilation, insulation, and fans.