Well, now that I’m realizing that PDFs are a nice way of hiding information, I’m converting my home energy consumption tracking to online pictures for easy viewing.
I track four things: water, gas, electricity, and natural gas.
Gasoline use is probably easiest. I own a 1993 Plymouth Colt that has EPA ratings of 30 city and 36 highway but has averaged about 37 mpg the last 11 years. Not bad for not being a hybrid. I have an annual goal to use less than 100 gallons of gas, compared to the Minnesota average of 500 gallons per year (or so). For the record I don’t include rental cars, work vehicles, or carpool miles in my calculation but I like to think it’s still a good effort.
Water use is a little more nebulous. I track it but most people really don’t so they have no reference point for comparison. In general, my water bills are miniscule – about $15 every three months.
My home is about 1000 ft2 and I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota which has generally cold winters and mild but sometimes muggy summer days. My electricity use is very easy to track and averages about 100 kWh/month – the average Minnesota household uses 700 kWh/month. I don’t have a central air conditioner, a furnace fan, or an electric hot water heater, and I’m only one person (generally), which would drive the numbers up but it’s still pretty low. The previous owner was a single person and used about three times as much.
Natural gas is a little harder to track because some winters will be colder or warmer than others. This first graph shows my attempt at standardizing it – look at the blue lines for the generally downward trend from the previous owner and my efforts over time. The difference between blue and black is the weather.
This last graph shows trendlines between the old owner with the old boiler, me with the old boiler, and me with the new boiler, standardized to the weather. The steeper the graph, the more efficient the usage.
