Sameer Halai Thoughts, comments, ideas

Do you monitor your energy consumption?

Puget Sound Energy uses Energy Guide to provide very interesting analytical tools to see your energy consumption. It’s similar to tools by Google and Microsoft, both of which do not work with my PSE account.

I hadn’t noticed this visual before which compares our energy consumption with other similar dwellings in the area:

I am not quite sure what we are doing better. When I compare it to the same month last year, my total YoY consumption has gone down:

If we assume no other factors have changed then the main difference seems that we had two more people living with us that month. I remember reading somewhere that hot water consumption is one of the main variable factor in energy bills. Less people means less hot water consumption. Maybe that’s all that makes us “better” than others in our area. If this is true, then just by looking at anyone’s bill in our area one could predict how many people live in that household

Maybe it is due to some other changes we have made e.g. I took down my 24x7 FON hotspot last month. I could be wrong, but I remember from my previous calculations that a 24x7 router adds up to around the same energry consumption as a stove-top used twice a day. Time to put the rusty Kill-a-Watt to some use.