Quicken says we spent $450 less in 2006 than 2005 (years on this graph run from March to February.) In fact we spent less this year than the three previous years.
I’ll keep the $450 in the same jar as the $3,200 I already don’t spend on automobile expenses.
The money’s nice but this is really about saving energy. Xcel Energy says we used close to 50% less electricity in our home from April to November compared to the year before. For the year as a whole we used 41% less electricity.
This could be explained away by lower temperatures in the air conditioned months…except that temperatures weren’t significantly lower.
Soon I will do some work in the back yard. Tilling for a garden…the community garden is too disconnected from us. A post, hopefully with a solar panel on it, will serve to hold a retracting clothesline that we bought years ago. The Wife likes to line dry clothes. I've been dragging my feet...until I found a new appreciation for clotheslines.
Maybe this year we can use even less energy.
5 comments:
Nice graph usage. Interesting post.
Good on ya, MC!
When we return to Canada, we plan on making a garden an integral part of our lives (at least for the summer months when the ground isn't frozen solid).
Living here in Japan, where electricity is up over 22 cents/kWh, we have learned to use the clothes dryer very sparingly. Everyone here dries their clothes on a line.
Less than a week until we can ditch our car!
The stupid dryers in my apt building work worth a crap anyways, I'm about ready to string a line up on the porch now that the weather's nice. I end up hanging half the stuff all over the apt to dry the rest of the ways anyway!!
My only trouble with not using a dryer is that line drying does not do a very good job of making your towels fluffy.
My basement isn't finished, so I screwed dowling between the open beams on the ceiling and basically turned the room into one big clothes dryer. Use the line outside in the summer 'cause it just smells so much nicer. And it's faster. Have a hand-me-down drier that is probably a real energy hog, but I only use it for sheets, since I only have one set. Crucial that they are dry by bedtime.
Love the charts. Think I'll start looking at my old bills and see how much I'm saving!
The graphs, the charts - why in the world is the kilowatt graph in reverse chronological order?
Post a Comment