I did this, and found that over the past 5 years, I've spent almost $11,000 on electricity for my ~2000 square foot home in Mission Viejo. That was quite the shocker. Over the past 5 years, I've managed to do a decent job with conservation, even with an expanding family.
I've gone from a annual high of almost 14,000 KWh in 2003 to 8,900 KWh last year. I did this by a combination of the following things:
- Switching as many lights as possible to CFL (especially the canned lights throughtout the house).
- Turning up the thermostat (80 when we're not home) 75-78 when we're home.
- Getting rid of desktop computers. I was shocked when I used my Kill-A-Watt device to learn that a powerful desktop computer can chew up so much power consistantly. Switching to a couple laptops made a huge difference.
- Installation of a whole house fan. This has been a lifesaver on milder days. In the evenings when the temperature dips down, we can open our windows and turn these fans on to suck-in all the cool moist air. They're less effective in the summer when it stays warmer at night, but we've been able to do a good job of moderating the use of A/C during the cooler nights.
So, even with all this work my electric bill has decreased, but not as much as I would have liked. Also, in the summer, I still get large ($300-$500) electric bills.
I started to do some research into a few different solutions. Since our whole house fans are working so well, I was poking around on their website and found that they offer a 'swamp-cooler' type device, it sounded interesting, so I figured that I would chat with my brother-in-law about it.
He said that while the idea is sound, execution is difficult if there's any humidity in the air, sometimes we don't have much humidity, but often it is a bit humid. A little while later, he sent me a brochure about Solar City and a new program they're offering called Solar Lease.
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