March 12th – April 14th, 33 days
This month was pretty boring as far as energy efficiency improvements go. We turned off the heat at the beginning of April and got to start working on the yard a bit. We were still splitting our time between the house and our apartment in the city during this month, so the house was using minimal maintenance energy while we weren’t in it. For example, the furnace was set just high enough to keep our pipes from freezing while out of the house, and really only the fridge was using electricity most of the time. So, again, this month won’t be the best representation of our energy use, but will hopefully serve as a good reminder to put your house into low-energy-use mode when you’re gone for extended periods of time. As far as energy efficiency initiatives went we:
- Turned off thermostat starting on April 1st!
- Made sure that all lights and other electricity users aside from the refrigerator were off while we were away.
This month’s upgrade cost: $0
Total upgrade cost to date: $17.64
Over 33 days we used 312 KWH. Which comes out to an average of 9.45 KWH/day. Which is a small decrease from the last billing period average of 10.75 KWH/day. My guess is our decrease came from extended daylight hours, which meant less lightbulb use while we were in the house.
We are part of the Alliant Energy Second Nature renewable energy program, at the 100% level. (In this program you can choose the amount of your energy use that you want to be matched in renewables, and we chose 100%.) So the cost of our electricity is $0.13 per KWH, for a total of $40.85.
We also used 35 Therms of natural gas heat energy. Which averages out to 1.06 Therms/day. We only used the gas furnace for the first half of this billing month, and then of course had some gas use for the hot water heater. Also, we had a pretty warm start to our spring in these parts, so the degree days this month compared to last month: 754 vs. 1383. As you can see, the degree days this month is only a bit more than half of last month, which explains why we were able to turn off our furnace completely for half the month.
The natural gas market fluctuates in Wisconsin, so there is not an easy dollar per Therm number to give you, but during this billing period we paid $32.24 for our gas use.
Our energy bill also provides these numbers for helpful comparison:
Electricity used this month last year: 651 KWH
Gas used this month last year: 41 Therms. Average temperature this month: 43° F. This month last year: 36° F.
Degree Days this month: 754 vs this month last year: 835. Degree days are the number of degrees below 65° F in one day, all added together for the total 33 days of the billing period.
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Want to see previous months of the Energy Efficiency Project? Here is Month 1, Month 2, and Month 3
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