I am at
This Year 30 days 1,328 KWH 44.3 kwh per day
Last Year 31 days 1,115 KWH 36.0 kwh per day.
This is for a household of 2.
We are freaking out.
We have a 2 bedroom, relatively largish house with very old wiring, some original-i.e., cloth cords, and 12 foot ceilngs. We have an gas stove and gas water heater. We live on the North Coast; very moderte weather, never any AC, and limited heating during winter - in winter most rooms are pretty cgilly-bad insulation, bad windows. (I love the old rented Vic but....)
We have flourescent light bulbs in every light bulb except on halogen lamp. We do maybe 3-4 loads of laundry a week, all in cold. We line dry a lot in the summer but this winter we haven't much. We have a thermal carafe coffee pot. We have a tiny microwave we use maybe once a day for a few minutes. We have a coffee grinder we use once a day. We have 2 computers on 24/7, and a printer. We have 3 TVs plugged in, one dual VCR/DVD. We have no hairdryer, curling iron, electric kitchen appliances other than a crock pot. We have 2 small space heaters-the radiator/slow/oil heat kind that are supposed to be fair as opposed to awful. We know heaters are a lot but we run one very low only on cold nights. Tthe other, we had used in the computer room, but much less often now-when my boyfriend took some time off and was in the computer room all day with heat on low, the heating bill jumped by $160. Even without that, though, we feel we should be NOWHERE near $200 a month!
We know PG&E is doing some rebate stuff in CA, but it's been so tough to see if it would be worth it. I look at the "average" usage per appliance on different charts, and add them all up, and even overestimating (I think) and accounting for old, inefficient washer/dryer/fridge, get no more than 664 KWH. Since we are double, I don't know whether to double everything, or what. (Or watt, he he.) So I can't effectively determine how quickly we could recoup money with a new dryer and a good rebate.
I mean, it might be worth, but how can I tell? If the very fact of my old wiring is what does me in, does it help much to get a much newer dryer?
Okay, okay, I'm not expecting answers, sorry about the rant. But my freaking electric usage is outrageous, especially considering our "actual" usage!!!
This certainly doesn't help my
(modified) minimum wage challenge.