The Oil Drum

My Electric Bill

Posted by Glenn on October 11, 2005 - 10:27pm
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: con edison, conservation, oil, peak oil, sustainability [list all tags]

Last month I did a big energy conservation sweep of the apartment. I unplugged a bunch of small appliances that are a contant draw on the electricity. I converted all my lighting from old incadescent bulbs to compact florescent bulbs and turned everything off before leaving the apartment. I mostly read and listened to the radio for entertainment. Used a fan instead of the air conditioner. I even dimmed my computer monitor a bit. You get the picture...

Yesterday I got the results of my experiment. I was able to trim my electric usage from over 8 KWH a day to just 4.7 KWH per day. Some of that was just the natural transition of a hot August to a more mild September, but I think I can do even better for October.

At the price that I pay as part of the Con Edison Energy Solutions, Green Power Initiative, 5.64 cents per kilowatt hour, I paid just $8.46 for my actual electric usage. I'm not sure what the average is, but I think this is pretty low overall.

That's the good news. For the bad news, go below the fold

In addition to my actual electric usage charge of $8.46, there was a $12.07 "basic service charge" and then a supply charge of $19.97. At least the supply charge was based on actual usage - 12.8 cents per KWH.

That got me thinking - the actual power generation cost less than half of the cost of supply. That is the power (pun intended) of local energy generation. If we can move supply closer to the end user, we can potentially reduce total energy costs significantly.

Now turning to my gas bill, it shows zero usage, but I still pay $14.36 in basic service and tax charges. Now I do cook, but I still haven't used even 1 CCF of cooking gas in the last 3 months.

So total Con Ed bill for
August: $64.89
September: $50.31

So the question is: How many KWH do you use per month?