Electricity Savings:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

We ended up using less electricity than last year at this time, even with the space heater running at night for the baby.  Our costs ended up being slightly higher due to the increase in electric rates that happened last year.  Unfortunately, it is going to take a while for our average monthly usage to get back down to where it was last year.  Our goal this year is to get our average usage back down under 600 kwh per month.

Natural Gas Savings:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Even with the colder than normal weather for January, we only used 8 CCF more natural gas than we did last year.  But with the drastically lower gas rates, our bill was over $100 less than last year.   Again as with electricity, our average gas usage has gone up from last year.  We want to get it back down to last years usage, because we know that natural gas rates are not going to stay this low forever.

1. Turn off lights: This is the easiest way to save money.  Remember, a light bulb that has been turned off uses zero electricity, so get everyone in your family to turn the lights off when they leave a room.
2. Turn down your water heater: Turn your water heater down to 120 degrees, any higher and you are just wasting energy.  For each 10 degree reduction, you will save 3% to 5% in energy costs.
3. Turn off the heated dry option on your dishwasher: Unless you live in a really humid climate, you should turn off the heated dry option on your dishwasher.  This will cut your dishwasher’s electric usage by 15% to 20%.
4. Wash cloths with cold water: You do not need to wash you cloths in hot water.  Today’s laundry detergents work just as well in cold water as in hot water.    Up to 90% of a washer’s energy usage comes from heating the water, so only use hot water on really dirty cloths.
5. Finish laundry: This may sound like a silly tip, but how often have you forgotten about a load of laundry in your washer or dryer and you had to re-wash or re-fluff the load.  This causes you to use a lot more water and electricity to wash a load.
6. Use your computer’s power management feature: If you are prone to leaving your computer on all the time, you can save a lot of energy by changing your computer’s power management settings (located in the control panel.)  By setting you computer to hibernate after 30 minutes of inactivity, you will save a lot of electricity and extra wear on your computer.
7. Use your crockpot or toaster oven instead of your oven: When your oven is on, it is one of the largest consumers of electricity in your home.  So the less that you use your oven the better.  Try to plan meals around your crockpot or toaster oven.
8. Turn your thermostat down: For each degree that you can lower your thermostat, you will save up to 5% on your heating costs.  You can save even more by turning the thermostat way down when you are sleeping or not home.  Try to keep your thermostat on 68 degrees when home and 60 degrees at night and when you are at work.
9. Unplug unused devices: Some devices will consume electricity even when they are turned off.  If it uses a remote or has a clock, it will continue to use electricity when you shut it down.  The best way to do this is to unplug things before you leave and before you go to bed at night.
10. Clean your refrigerator coils: Your refrigerator will have to work harder if its coils get covered in dirt.  This increases its use of electricity and causes unneeded wear and tear on the compressor.  By cleaning the coils, you will keep your refrigerator running longer and more efficient.

If you have any other suggestions for saving electricity, please leave us a comment.

Electricity Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

As you can see, we lost a lot of ground this year.  The summer was hotter than normal, and we ran the air condition quite a bit.  The fact that my wife was pregnant made us regulate the indoor temperature a little more than normal.  So how bad was the set back, our electric usage increased by 28.5% (562 kwh to 722 kwh) and our costs jumped 42.6% ($68 to $97).  So not only did we increase our usage, we were also hit with a huge increase in the electricity rates from our utility.  I knew our electric bill seemed higher, but I had no idea that it had increased that much.

The only consolation that we have from last year is the fact that we are still way under where we started.  Our electric usage is still down 39.8% (1200 kwh to 722 kwh) and our electric bill by 11.1% ($108 to $96) from 2006.  It is scary to see that even with a 40% reduction in usage we are almost back up to the same costs as in 2006.   Electric rates have increase by 32% since 2006, which makes us glad we are now using a lot less electricity.

Natural Gas Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Just like our electric usage, our natural gas usage went up for 2010.  Our gas usage increase by 17.1% (111 CCF to 130 CCF) and our costs increase 14.3% ($112 to $128) .  Unlike the electric rates, the natural gas rates in our area dropped considerably in 2010.  This provided some offset to our increased usage.  This current winter has been extremely cold and long, so I am not sure how much we are going to be able to lower our usage in 2011.

Even with the increased usage and costs we are still way ahead of 2006: we have reduced our monthly gas usage by 36.6% (205 CCF to 130 CCF) and our natural gas costs by 53.6% ($276 to $128.)

Overall since 2006, our average monthly energy costs have dropped by 41.7% ($384 to $224.)  It is surprising that even after we took huge steps backwards in are goal to reduce energy costs, we are still saving more than our original 40% goal.  This just proves that saving energy is not as hard as it seems.  It only takes some simple changes in behaviors to get huge returns.

From this point on, we will be providing updates on a monthly bases (comparing year over year progress.)  Our goal for this year is to get back down to our usage levels from 2009.

Simple Home Energy Audit

The fastest way to start reducing your electricity and heating and cooling usage is to identify the areas where you are wasting energy. Otherwise you are just guessing and could be wasting your time fixing things that only provide a very small reduction in your usage. A simple home energy audit can quickly identify areas where you are wasting large amounts of energy. This valuable information allows you to focus your efforts on the areas that have the highest payback. Wouldn’t you like to find the energy hogs that are costing you and extra $10 to $100 a month?

The following guide will help you conduct you own home energy audit. These steps will give you a good idea about where to start you conservation efforts. For a more detailed audit, you can call you utility company and they can do a full evaluation of your home (the cost of this service typically depends on your income level.)

This home energy audit guide is split into three areas: heating and cooling, water, and electricity.  This guide focuses on auditing the areas that use the largest amount of energy, which will provide the largest payback to your conservation efforts.  The following graph depicts that breakdown of utility costs for a typical home.

Breakdown of the Energy Usage of a Typical Home

Each utility category is further broken up into two levels: Easy, which can be done by anyone without special tools, and Moderate, which may require some specialized tools and/or getting to places that may be hard to reach. Even if you can only do the things on the easy levels, you will find plenty of ways to begin lowering energy usage and your utility bills.

Electricity

• Easy
  1. Check the seals in your refrigerator(s) – Close the door on a piece off paper and then try to pull it out. If it comes out easily the seal is bad and is letting hot air into the refrigerator causing the refrigerator’s compressor to run more often. FIX: If you refrigerator is fairly new, replace the seal otherwise it would be better to replace the refrigerator with a new energy efficient model.
  2. Check the contents of your refrigerator(s) – Freezers work better when the are full, and refrigerators work best when the air can flow freely within them. So check to make sure your freezer(s) are full, and that nothing is blocking the air flow within your refrigerator (especially on the top rack.) FIX: rearrange items in the refrigerator to promote air flow, and fill the freezer with food or empty bottles filled with water.
  3. Check your computers’ power management settings – If you leave you computer and monitor on all the time, you are wasting a significant amount of energy. You can find the power management settings under the Control Panel. FIX: Have the computer go into the hibernate mode after 30 minutes of inactivity (this mode saves your current working environment to the hard drive and then shuts down.
  4. Check your lighting – Determine which lights you use most and look at the wattage of the bulbs. FIX: Lower the wattage of the bulbs in your most used areas (seriously consider using CFLs or LED lights to significantly reduce the wattage.) Also, make sure you turn of lights in rooms that you are not using – this the simplest and cheapest way to start saving on your lighting.
• Moderate
  1. Check to coils on your refrigerator(s) – This usually requires you to pull the refrigerator, since the coils will be located on the back or bottom of the unit. If the coils are dirty and covered with dust and grim, the refrigerator compressor is having to run longer to keep the inside cold. FIX: Cleaning the coils and underside of the refrigerator with a vacuum or broom.
  2. Check your appliances – Older models use considerable more energy than the newer energy efficient models (if you have a Kill-a-Watt Meter you can check exactly how much electricity they are using.) FIX: Replace worn out appliances and begin to use appliances more efficiently (i.e. only run full loads of laundry and dishes.)

Heating and Cooling

• Easy
  1. Check for air leaks around windows and doors – On a cold and windy day, feel around your windows and window moldings for air infiltration.  If you are having trouble feeling for leaks, you can use a stick of incense to detect the leaks.  Just find the places where the smoke gets disturbed by air leaking into your home. FIX: Caulk all places where air is leaking into your home.
  2. Check insulation level in your attic – Since heat rises, having the recommended level of insulation in your attic goes a long way at keeping the heat within your home.  Just stick a ruler or yardstick into the insulation to determine the depth.  Depending on your location you should have between 12 to 24 inches of fiberglass, or 10 to 20 inches of blown cellulose insulation.  FIX: Add more insulation either batts or blown in insulation.
  3. Check your furnace’s air filter – Always remember to check the air filter on your furnace at least once a month.  A dirty filter will make the furnace work harder and longer, shortening its life.  FIX: replace dirty air filter.
  4. Check heating registers – Make sure that nothing is blocking the heating registers.  FIX: Move furniture off all heating registers.
  5. Check thermostat – For each degree you can turn down the thermostat, you will save 3% on your heating costs.  FIX: Turn the thermostat down when you are not home and when you are sleeping.  Replace your standard thermostat with a cheap programmable one, and let it do all the work.
  6. Check your fireplace – Make sure that the damper is closed.  An open damper will an amazing amount of hot air out of your house.   Open fireplaces are very inefficient and will pull heat our of your house even when lit.  FIX: Keep the fireplace damper closed.  Thing about installing a fireplace insert if you want to use the fireplace.  Inserts burn very efficiently and have fans to blow hot air into the home.
• Moderate
  1. Check for air leaks into the attic.  Look for places where the insulation is a darker color.  This can indicate a leak that is blowing dust into the insulation.  Also look around the tops of walls, above lights, and wherever wires, pipes, and duct work enter the attic.   These air leaks are pulling the heat right out of your home.  FIX: Seal leaks with spray foam, rope caulking, and plumbers putty.  Be careful to keep flammable materials away from any chimneys, or can lights.  To seal these you will have to use a high temperature caulking.
  2. Check duct work for leaks – If you duct work goes into the attic or any uncondition space, check to make sure it is insulation and that there are no air leaks.  FIX: Seal the duct work with metal duct tape (do not use standard duct tape – it will deteriorate too quickly.)  and then wrap the ducts in insulation.
  3. Check for thermal leaks.  This goes beyond just checking for air infiltration, this will actual find places where heat is being lost through your walls, ceilings and floors.  For this you will need a thermal leak detector, a simple device that measures the temperature of a remote surface.  FIX: This depends on where the leak is found (i.e. if you detect that the edges of the floor are cold, you might be able to insulate around the rim joist.)  Some fixes will require more work and expense then others – if you detect holes in your wall’s insulation, this would require drilling into the wall and blowing in insulation.

Water

• Easy
  1. Check your water heaters temperature setting – Most water heaters can be set to 120 degrees. FIX: Lower you water heaters temperature to 120 degrees – For each 10 degree reduction, you will save 3% to 5% on your energy costs.
  2. Check your faucets – Look for leaks – a leaking faucet can waste gallons of water a month. FIX: Replace or repair leaking faucets.
  3. Check your toilets for leaks – Add a little bit of blue food color to the tank to test if the flapper is leaking. Leave the toilet for 30 minutes and then check to see if there is any of the blue water has leaked into the bowl. If it has the flapper is leaking and wasting your water. FIX: replace the flapper.

Thermal Leak Detector

Heating and cooling account for almost 50% of an average homes energy usage and cost.  So, if you can find a way to reduce your heating and cooling usage, you can put a significant in your energy costs.  Well, I have found a simple tool that can help you find thermal breaks in your home’s building envelope: the Black & Decker TLD100 Thermal Leak Detector.

This cool gadget is very simple to use.  You just need to set the temperature differential you want to detect, and then just point the device.  The green light will change to either red or blue to indicate places where the temperature is higher or lower than the room temperature.

When I used the device, I waited for a day where the outside temperature was very cold (around 20 degrees), so that any leaks would show up easier.  Since, I only wanted to locate major leaks, I set the thermal detector to 10 degrees.  This setting would allow me to find places along the walls and around doors and windows that was 10 degrees lower then the room temperature.

I then went around the house along the exterior walls and noted any locating where the devices light turned blue.  I paid special attention to the areas around windows and doors, since those are the most likely places that air or cold would be leaking into the house.  With the leaks identified, I then went around and began fixing the leaks with caulking and/or spray foam.

Be removing the thermal leaks and cold spots from our home, I was able to increase the overall comfort level at the same time as reducing our heating costs.  I would recommend that anyone that wants to keep their heating and cooling costs down should own one of these Thermal Detectors.

Electricity Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Well, we knew after the progress we made last year, that it was going to be hard to reduce our electricity usage much more this year.  In fact, looking at the values, we were actually running quite a bit higher than last year until December.  Our average monthly electricity usage went from 587 kwh to 562 kwh (a small 4% reduction.)  Not much, but we still made some positive progress at reducing our electric usage.  Our electric bill did not drop due to the increase in electric rates and went from $64 to $68 (a 6.2% increase.)  This increase in rates just reinforces the reasons we started this journey.

So, since the beginning of 2006 we have reduce our electricity usage by 53.2% (1200 kwh to 562 kwh) and our electric bill by 37% ($108 to $68).  With the increase in electric rates we are saving even more than it looks since we have cut our usage by more than 50%.

Natural Gas Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Our new wood burning fireplace insert continues to help us reduce the amount of natural gas we used in 2009.  With it, we reduced our monthly natural gas usage by an additional 15.9% (132 CCF to 111CCF) and our monthly gas bill by 34.9% ($172 to $112.)  What a wonderful surprise, natural gas rates have gone down significantly from last year.

Since the beginning of 2006, we have reduced our monthly gas usage by 45.9% (205 CCF to 111 CCF) and our natural gas costs by 59.4% ($276 to $112.)  We are now saving $164 per month or $1,968 per year on natural gas.

Our total energy costs have dropped significantly since we started in 2006.  We are now saving $204 per month or $2,448 per year on our energy usage.   We have now reduced our energy costs by %53.1 ($384 down to $180.)  With the help of lower natural gas rates, we have blown away our original goal of 40%.

Electricity Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Wow, we did not expect our changes to have this much affect on our electric usage.  Our average monthly electric usage dropped from 924 kwh down to an amazing 587 kwh and our average monthly electric bill went from $93 down to $64.  That is a huge 36.5% decrease in usage and a 31.2% decrease in cost from the end of 2007.  That is even including a huge jump in usage in December due to taking the gas boiler offline to replace some flooring.  During that time we used electric space heaters to stay warm.

So, since the beginning of 2006 we have reduce our electricity usage by 51.1% (1200 kwh to 587 kwh) and our electric bill by 40.7% ($108 to $64).  That means we are now saving $44 a month or $528 a year on our electricity.

Natural Gas Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Our new wood burning fireplace insert has down a great job of reducing our natural gas usage.  This we were able to reduce our monthly natural gas usage by 23.3% (172 CCF to 132CCF) and our monthly gas bill by 12.7% ($197 to $172.)  Natural gas keeps going up, so I don’t even want to think how high our gas bill would be if we had not reduced our usage.

Since the beginning of 2006, we have not reduced our monthly gas usage by 35.6% (205 CCF to 132 CCF) and our natural gas costs by 37.7% ($276 to $172.)  We are now saving $104 per month or $1,248 per year on natural gas.

Our total energy costs have dropped significantly since we started in 2006.  We are now saving $148 per month or $1,776 per year on our energy usage.   We almost reached our goal of 40%, we have now reduced our energy costs by %38 ($384 down to $235.)

Kill-A-Watt Meter

So you have decided to start reducing the amount of electricity you are using, but you don’t know where to start.  Well one of the first steps to start cutting your electricity usage is to identify which devices are using the most electricity.  Once you identify the energy hogs, you can determine the best plan of action to reduce their electricity usage. One of the coolest tools to find these energy sucking devices is the P3 International Kill-a-watt meter.

The Kill-a-watt meter is simple to use: you just plug it into the outlet, and then plug in the device you want to measure.  The device has several settings that you can use to measure the energy usage of various devices, depending on what information you need. After playing with the Kill-a-watt meter I have found that I only use two of the settings: the current power usage (watts), and the overall energy usage (kwh).

The current power setting lets you see how much power a device is using at any instance. This is great for measuring the energy usage of devices that are on all the time, or to find out the amount of energy that a device uses in standby mode. Many devices use quite a bit of electricity even when they have been turned off, and with this device you can identify those device and either unplug them after use, or install a power strip that you can turn off.

The overall energy usage shows you the amount of energy that a device uses over a period of time. This is the best way to measure the energy usage of devices that cycle on and off throughout the day (i.e your refrigerator), or devices that you use infrequently through the day or week (i.e. your entertainment system.) If you have an old refrigerator running in your garage, you might be surprised with the amount of energy that it is using.

Some things I found while using the Kill-a-watt meter, is that it can be addictive and you quickly became more aware of how you are using energy. This is one device that I think every household that wants to reduce their electricity usage should have in their toolbox. You can reduce your electricity usage without it, but it makes it a whole lot easy to identify the true energy hogs in your home.

One note of caution about the kill-a-watt meter, not everyone will be happy with your new discoveries. I found that my wife was not fond of the device because of how aware I had become (i.e. kept turning things off.) This last Christmas I tested the lights on our tree and discovered they were using almost 500 watts. With a quick calculation, I realized that if we kept the tree on for 12 hours a day over the 30 days it was up, we would use 180 kwh just for the tree. Since our electric usage averages only 600 kwh a month, that would be almost a 33 percent increase! Eventually, my wife and I came to a compromise and we kept the tree on only in the morning and the evening when it was dark (about 6 hours).

Electricity Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

We did not do very well this year at reducing our average costs.  We waited to long to make some needed changes, so they had little impact on this years usage.  At the end of the year, we replace almost all of our light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs and we upgraded our washer and dryer to front load models.  Also, we switched to a gas dryer from our old electric dryer.  As you can see, the usage at the end of the year dropped off pretty fast, so there will be a large difference in 2008.

Overall we reduced our monthly electric usage from 1000 kwh down to 924 kwh (a small 7.6% reduction) and our monthly electricity costs went from $96 a month down to $93 a month (only 3% reduction.)   At least the trend is still moving in the right direction as we continue to reduce our usage of electricity.

Natural Gas Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

As with our electricity usage, our natural gas usage did not change much over the year.  In fact we remained flat going from an average monthly usage of 170 CCF of natural gas to 172 CCF of natural gas.  Our monthly natural gas costs also remained flat going from $203 per month last year to $197 per month this year.  We did purchase a wood burning insert this year, so there may be hope for 2008.

Overall this was a wasted year on your journey to reducing our home’s energy usage, but we are not giving up.  We made some significant changes and investments at the end of this year that should pay off big next year.

Electricity Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Looking at the table, we were able to reduce our average monthly electric usage from around 1200 kwh down to 1000 kwh (a 16.7% reduction).  At the same time, we reduce our average month electric bill from $108 down to $96 (an 11.1% reduction).  Overall we were very happy with the results we accomplished with very little effort.  They only things that we did to reduce usage was to make sure that we kept lights turned off in rooms we were not using and turned our computers off at night.  So, we gained an extra $144 a year without even trying.  Of course that just means that we were wasting a lot of electricity and didn’t even realize it.

Natural Gas Usage:

* This is the monthly average over the previous 12 month period.

Looking at the table, we were able to reduce our average monthly gas usage from 205 CCF (hundred cubic feet) down to 170 CCF (a 17% reduction).  And our average month natural gas bill went from $276 down to $203 (a 26% reduction.)  We were able to accomplish this by lower our thermostat down to 68 during the day and 65 at night during the winter.  So we were very happy that with a small effort we gained an extra $876 per year.

So the first year we were able to reduce our energy costs by $88 a month or $1,056 per year.  Not bad for the amount of effort.