Powering down

This is our electricity usage for every month since we moved into our current house:



If you look closely, you'll see that only twice has our usage been higher than the same month of the prior year (2/08 vs. 2/07 and 9/07 vs. 9/06). And even then, only by a tiny bit.

You might also notice that our usage was pretty high during most of our first year here. You know, before we started being conscious of such things. Even so, we were just around the national average that year.

This year, we are averaging about 50% of what we were using two years ago. And June of this month was WAAAY down from two years ago. Like one whole megawatt-hour. I don't even know that our quality of life has changed much as a result. A couple of the changes cost a little cash, but nothing outrageous.

At over 600 kWh per month, we're still way over what some people are aiming for, and like ten times what other people have already accomplished. It's getting tougher to cut, but I'm hoping to keep our downward streak going. On the graph you'll see that the first step down is always bigger than the next one, because the initial changes are the easy and the obvious.

In my next post, I'll try to give an overview of the changes we've made, and which ones have had noticeable differences in our electric bill. Most have been just being more conscious of electricity usage, or good old-fashioned conservation. Seems like you don't hear much about that approach. I guess it kind of gets lost in the din of voices extolling us all to "Buy Green!"

Oops. I don't think I was supposed to point that out...

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