how's your electrical consumption this year?

[vavet]

I've been keeping a little closer eye on our power consumption this year because we had a roof mounted solar array installed the first week of April. It's a 10kw system which would offset ~100% of our consumption in a typical year....but this year has been anything but typical.

The power meter was replaced April 17 with a bi-directional meter and since then it has accumulated about 1900 kWh. A month by month analysis of our consumption shows about a 10% increase on average from 2019 consumption to 2020 consumption.

I attribute our increased consumption to a few things.

My wife has been mostly working at home since March. She's using our electricity to power her laptop and monitors, but I think the big consumer is the programmable thermostat has basically been negated. We used to let the temps swing up and down during the mid-day absences, but she wants to be comfortable while she's home. My son has been doing at-home school, so there's electricity for his device, refrigerator opening for snacks, etc.

In addition, I added a 18k mini-split to my workshop in October 2019. A full year of consumption from that was not included in the sizing of the solar array.

Despite the increased consumption, we are still way ahead in both overall energy consumption and expenses in that she drives to work only 1-2 times per week on days when I'm off or I've arranged to work from home. She does a little more errand-running, (mid-week grocery shopping, library trips for our son, etc), but her driving is WAY down. We've also been able to drop the expense of after school care for our son. That's another $170/week savings!

I'm eager to see what our 12 month energy production looks like when April rolls around to see how close to our goal we got with the sizing of the system. I'm not interested in adding more panels because I don't want to oversize it for a typical year. If we were to add an electric vehicle to the fleet, then it might be worth adding some additional panels.

 

[nadogail]

IMHO, Comfort is worth spending a little money. There is no Free Lunch, everything has a cost involved.

 

[larry_g]

Have you considered energy consumption change in the kitchen? Food prep and such? It's hard to make comparisons when we don't know what you have on the electrical load vs gas or other energy producers.

lg
no neat sig line

 

[jkeyser14]

My bill is down nearly 30%. Unlike last year my wife and I are working from home now, the older child is online learning, and grandma/grandpa are here every day to watch the younger child.

The big difference is my electric car isn't getting used to go to/from work. Previously it would use 17-18 kwh per day for my 75 miles of commuting.

 

[510ebl]

Consumption is down a bit in 2020, maybe 5%-8%. A Nest thermostat, smidge of refrigerant in the 20 year old central air (and new start cap and thorough cleaning), and a new kitchen fridge account for the decrease as far as I can tell.

I would have thought the opposite, as we worked from home 3 months. Also our daughter attended school remotely and was therefore home more.

 

[pepi]

My bill is down nearly 30%. Unlike last year my wife and I are working from home now, the older child is online learning, and grandma/grandpa are here every day to watch the younger child.

The big difference is my electric car isn't getting used to go to/from work. Previously it would use 17-18 kwh per day for my 75 miles of commuting.

That's funny as hell, paid less for gas and boosted the electric bill 30%..

 

[yeldogt]

My electric is up .... Keep getting warnings from the electric company. NG use is steady as the temps are mild so higher use is not adding much

My overall utility costs are way down .... we are not doing much and things are basically mothballed

 

[yeldogt]

My bill is down nearly 30%. Unlike last year my wife and I are working from home now, the older child is online learning, and grandma/grandpa are here every day to watch the younger child.

The big difference is my electric car isn't getting used to go to/from work. Previously it would use 17-18 kwh per day for my 75 miles of commuting.

That's interesting on the car ....


I had figured about $3.50 one way to my beach place when I last factored one -- the hybrid was a few penny less at 58mpg. We have expensive electric

 

[PFSard]

vavet >> Good luck with your energy consumption analysis.

Me personally : Up around 20% because of the record temperatures during the summer in Arizona. Compared to the prior nine years. Been here 23 years; never seen anything like this.

 

[Don1357]

My electric is about right but the wood burning is ****** out of control... On previous years we would light up the fire burning stove on weekends or a few week nights here and there, awesome for pumping a lot of heat in the house. With the girls doing college from home my elder has been burning wood like the is no tomorrow...

She doesn't know it yet but she's going to owe me well over a cord of wood by the time the winter is over, and I expect her to get it all back one log at a time

 

[reader2580]

I have solar and don't have a self consumption meter so it is hard to know if consumption is up or down. However, based on the fact my solar was offline for about three months this year and I was running the A/C in my motorhome a lot I am certain my consumption is up.

I was shocked because my most recent bill was $75. (Solar was running for less than one week of the bill period.) I would previously only see a bill that high in the summer months. I still had over $200 in credits from solar over production so at least I didn't have any cash out of pocket.

 

[Higgins]

Our electrical use is about the same as last yr. here in TN. We're on LP for cooktop, dryer, bsmt. wall heater in lower level, and fireplace.
Although some neighbors have gone solar, it doesn't make sense for US as I'm not going to be around that long!
Our house is 3 stories and has some basic design layout issues that would cost to much to consider going thru all that demo. (1) We added a 30K LP wall heater to the lower level, so that solved that problem. (2) will be relocating the CAR from the garage to the lower unit. Will help with the air flow.
Our electrical bill typically is running 125-150 a month which is OK with me. As our bill back in IL could run north of $300 a month. LP is one 350 gal fill a yr.
So we are happy just where we are !!
AL

 

[Snapped-off]

I don't have the kwh used off hand, but I get credited $30-60 a month because I use so much less electricity than the rest of the neighborhood.

We use the heat and ac as needed so I don't know how everyone uses so much electricity.

Most of the houses have solar panels but we don't see anything that comes out of those, the housing contractor sells it back to the grid.

 

[reader2580]

Although some neighbors have gone solar, it doesn't make sense for US as I'm not going to be around that long!

A friend of mine who does solar installations moved to Tennessee about two years ago. He said there isn't much solar activity in TN because electric rates are relatively inexpensive and a lot of the electricity comes from hydroelectric.

 

[jkeyser14]

That's funny as hell, paid less for gas and boosted the electric bill 30%..

Yeah, but I still saved over $150 a month versus gas.

 

[WisJim]

We have a bit over 7kw of solar electric, some of it originally installed in 1982 and the rest added in various amounts over the years. About 5.4Kw is grid tied with microinverters. We bought a Nissan Leaf in 2014 to replace a very fuel efficient Chevy Metro 3cylinder and to use some of our surplus electrical production, and then installed 2 minisplits for heating our house in the shoulder seasons. We still don't use all of our electrical production and the utility sends us a check for the unused surplus after the first of the year--they figure our production on an annual basis, so we start over January first each year, but we do get paid a pittance for our end of the year surplus. We are retired so are actually driving more than in recent years because of working on another shop and garage and house in town that we hope to move into in the next year. I've been assisting a lot of friends and acquaintances to install their own systems in the last few years and they are doing it for $1 to $2 a watt of installed panels, including all panels, mountings, inverters, etc., and sometimes even hiring an electrician for the final connection. This for all new equipment and components and they end up with excellent professional looking systems that "pay for themselves" (how I hate that attitude) in a few years.

 

[LOW1]

Up a little. It would be interesting to calculate how much more we would have been up if we did not have LED bulbs. Four kids leave lots of lites on.

 

[Noltz]

I swapped out all of our conventional E26 base bulbs with LEDs and noticed almost no difference in energy consumption. I'm somewhat a stickler for turning off lights anyway and have a couple kids that also like to leave lights on (and now have high-powered, multi screen computers). So maybe I've just offset some of our consumption.

 

[Crazyjake8493]

Our electric has been higher this year, mainly due to many more loads of laundry (electric dryer). I also have a hanging electric heater in the garage now, but it's only been used 5-6 times this winter season, so no major impact there yet. Natural gas has been about the same, we leave our thermostat on 68 all winter and NY winters are always about the same.