what on earth does electricity cost near you?

[dmccarty]

Don't know how some of you get the usage so low?

All gas appliances?

I average 1000 kwh at my small 1300sq ft house. All led and wood heat.

Another 300-400 kwh at the shop. And am only down there a few days a week

I have tracked our power usage since we moved into the house since I designed what should be an energy efficient home and I wanted to see if the designer was a dummy or got the design right. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

The house is 2425 sf with 10 foot ceilings which help the comfort level in the summer but not so much in the winter. Take your design priority and move on. We have more than the code recommended insulation in the attic and the walls are R19 2x6 walls with 1" rigid insulation. However, we have lots of big windows and doors, so the R19 wall might not have been a wise use of money given the energy holes, aka windows and doors. We wanted to see the place so we think it was a good design choice but it surely costs us some heating/cooling money and maybe a bit of comfort.

Our average monthly power usage is 1247 KWH. The highest being 1336 KWH and the lowest 1164 KWH. Only a difference of 13%, and for most years, the KWH usage is remarkably close year to year.

After heating and cooling, hot water generation is supposed to be a big energy cost, but I suspect in our case it is laundry. We have two kids so the washer, and worse, the dryer is constantly running, ie, spending money. Cooling the house is our biggest power usage, followed I would guess laundry and then heating water. Heating the house can be expensive if we run out of wood, or ironically like this year, when it is warmer than normal when we don't start the fire since it is too warm but chilly enough where we need to heat the house a bit. We have 85ish ceiling cans which have always used CFLs. Our power bill would be much higher if we did not use CFLs. The price of LED is getting close to the point were we will use them instead of CFLs so that should help our power usage a bit.

The house we lived in back in the city was built in the mid 70's, had minimal insulation compared to today's standards AND had metal windows. We were always cold in that house but cooling in the summer was not bad because the house was shaded by big pine trees. The city house was half the size of our current house but used the same amount of power at best. I suspect if we were comparing apples to apples the old house used 25-50% more KWH than our larger house. The diminished power usage in our "new" house is due to insulation, build quality and design.

Later,
Dan

 

[ultrarunner]

The family home is just shy of 2400 square feet and mostly original from 1958... still has the 1958 windows and no under floor insulation with some insulation blown into the walls in the 1980's...

Still 360 kWh per month year round... gas heat and water... electric cooking and laundry.

I can really see how so much depends on climate and lifestyle.

 

[Looking4new]

Don't know how some of you get the usage so low?

All gas appliances?

I average 1000 kwh at my small 1300sq ft house. All led and wood heat.

Another 300-400 kwh at the shop. And am only down there a few days a week

My house is 1450sq' main floor + the same in an unfinished basement. I heat with wood and have all lights LED. There are two incandescent light bulbs in the house. Both of them are in the electric stove and the electric fridge. There is no electric clothes dryer or any other type of dryer except for a clothes line outside. The only thing that is gas/propane is the bbq and that doesn't get used in winter. There are two deep freezers and a sump pump, as well as the drilled well pump. The heater for the chickens' water doesn't take much, but it does keep the water wet in winter.
The billing period I quoted was from 17 Nov.,2015 to 15 Dec., 2015. That was an unusually warm period for this time of year and my location. In 2014 the same time frame cost me 26 kwh/day. But that was unusually cold month as was January 2015 which cost me 29 kw hrs/day.

 

[LD1]

22.5kwd/day is still extremely low.

Likely something I will never see.

Electric water heater is a big one I am sure. 4 people living here mean 3 showers and 1-bath a day.
Dinner in the oven and a side or two on the top burner.
2 fridges and a chest freezer

I think 30-40 a day that I use was pretty good.

 

[4570Man]

Some of you guys are paying a heck of a lot for Electricity. I would think that getting your usage down as much as possible would be a worthwhile monetary goal. Replacing all of your lighting with LED would be an easy and good first effort. With your high costs, it would seem to be more cost effective than some of us that are enjoying much lower electricity costs.

If not already, replacing the water heater, stove, oven, and most importantly heat with gas will be a huge help. Also gas appliances are nice in a power outage. I have an electric water heater because I would have to have a forced vent water heater. Venting straight up wasn't an option, and forced vent heaters are very expensive. I have an electric oven. It cooks way better than the old gas oven.

 

[Looking4new]

If not already, replacing the water heater, stove, oven, and most importantly heat with gas will be a huge help. Also gas appliances are nice in a power outage. I have an electric water heater because I would have to have a forced vent water heater. Venting straight up wasn't an option, and forced vent heaters are very expensive. I have an electric oven. It cooks way better than the old gas oven.

That is why I have electric water heaters and a convection oven.

 

[ultrarunner]

I have an electric oven. It cooks way better than the old gas oven.

Grandma sure did some mighty fine cooking and baking on her woodburning wedgewood stove.

 

[4570Man]

Grandma sure did some mighty find cooking and baking on her woodburning wedgewood stove.

Not mine. She's a terrible cook.

 

[Looking4new]

Mine was an excellent cook on an electric stove.
My insurance company cancelled my house insurance because their risk assessment a-hole couldn't find the words on the front of the cookstove that said BEACH Companion. The stove was made in Ottawa, Ontario in the very early 1900's on Beach Street. I still have the stove, but it isn't hooked up. It is now a feeding station for the cats. Keeps the cat food off the floor so the dog doesn't get into it.

 

[dmccarty]

...
Electric water heater is a big one I am sure. 4 people living here mean 3 showers and 1-bath a day.
Dinner in the oven and a side or two on the top burner.
2 fridges and a chest freezer

We have one chest freezer which uses next to nothing in power and one fridge which does not use much power in the grand scheme of things.

That oven though will pull some power. Our range has a small top oven and a regular size bottom oven. It takes at least twice as long to heat up the bottom oven compared to the top oven. The wifey and one of the kids make cookies last night, :licking::licking::licking:, which I did not need, and they used the top oven because it heats up faster. In the time it takes to heat up the big oven, they had cooked two batches of n the smaller oven. Most Decembers we see a power usage spike which happens because we are usually at home for two weeks instead of work and school but also because we cook big family meals in both ovens.

Most of our cooking is on one burner, the microwave and the smaller stove.

A bath eats power too. Not only the power to heat the water but the power needed to run the well. One of the kids takes a bath and it drive me nuts because of the waste of water and heated water. We have multi spray shower heads that really conserve water. Worst case is the shower heads use about .75 GPM which is not much when we have a 80 gallon water heater. Having said that, while the power usage to pull water from the well and heat it is not a big power user, it does add up.

My guess is that once the kids are out of the house, our power usage will drop at least 25-50% depending on the time of year. Heating and cooling costs will not change much with the kids gone but power usage will go down with less water usage, water heating, clothes washing/drying, lights, computers, extra cooking and opening the fridge and freezer when the kids are out of the house.

Later,
Dan