Data, feedback, and results

Back in December, I told you we got a real-time energy monitor, so I thought it might be useful now, 3 months later, to tell you how it's been working. Right away, we became more aware of what appliances used the most energy. We could tell when we could look at spikes on the graph and recall: "Oh yeah, that's when I did laundry." "Or oh right, that was the day the heat had to crank on a lot because it was so cold." It has gotten to the point where I can come home from work and ask D what was different that the morning, because our usage was higher than normal by $.20. This actually happened today - we usually use about $.65-.75 before I get home for the day. But today the monitor read $.92 cents - it turned out he started the dishwasher before he left.

We realized that the largest amounts of energy usage came from the dryer, by far, followed by the water heater. And even little things made a noticeable spike. The space heater we run in the bathroom 15 minutes before the little one's bath time cost money. Weekends, when were at home with lights on and the furnace churning, cost more. So we made some small adjustments.

First, we decided to stop drying her diaper liners. We use cloth diapers and wash them every third day. The hot water usage is unavoidable but the dryer was the real culprit for expenses. We have enough diapers that we could let them air dry. Especially in the winter when it's so dry out. So we did that and quickly noticed less energy usage. We still dry our regular laundry (well, we usually do, but our dryer just died...more on that next time, hopefully with good news) but just not the diapers.

Second, we realized we were spending a lot of money heating water. And while I certainly wasn't going to stop taking hot showers (hot, by the way, being about 115 degrees max), or buy a more efficient water heater, we decided to stop running the hot to wash our hands - mostly because the hot water very rarely made it to us in time anyway, and it was unnecessarily causing the water heater to crank up.

Finally, all of this added awareness has resulted in us being even better about turning off lights when we leave the room. We usually did it anyway, but now we see that each cent of electricity counts.

In all, we actually have managed to significantly lower our usage since we started. It's hard to compare figures across years because last year at this time, I was home all day with a newborn. And the year before that, we weren't doing tons of laundry and dishes and keeping the house heated more. But we definitely feel like the awareness has resulted in bills about 10% lower. And it's been fun. It will be interesting to see how our bill changes once we start having to turn on the AC...I'm a little scared to find out.