As a company-wide challenge, we're currently using the site to track our home electricity usage. We can get this information by reading our electricity meter every week, and adding the usage total to our "facility" (aka our house) information on the website.
I've done this before, with older software. It's a good experiment because, like tracking what you're eating, it encourages you to look at your consumption, evaluate what you're using, and figure out where you can save some usage.
Reading the meter is simpler than looking at your home electric bill. In Ontario, at least, the hydro bill is a terribly confusing document referring to charges and fees that don't make it clear what a household or business is being charged for. When I first took this job I spent a week just learning how to read bills, both industrial and residential. There's more information on the web now to explain the charges, but it still can be a daunting task.
The meter exists to do one thing: show you how much electricity has come into your home. It's pretty simple and straightforward. It doesn't take into account weather which can have a huge impact on how much electricity you use, but it at least gives you a decent idea of what you've been using.
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| We do laundry and heavy electrical usage chores on the weekend, as you can see from this report. |
Many utilities are now installing smart meters for their users. These meters mean that you can see a detailed breakdown of your usage on the utility's website. You can see what you're using during expensive maximum peak times if you are on Time of Use billing. There can be a variety of reports that are available as well. You can compare weather and electricity usage, or figure out which patterns are affecting your usage the most.
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| Weather vs electricity usage in May. You can see when I had the AC on. |
Do you check your electricity usage at home? Do you know what tools are available from your local utility to help? Electricity (and other utilities) are not expenses that you just have to bear. You can learn about their use and affect what you use. Take a look at your bill or at the utility's website to find out more about how you can save your family money.
A challenge to my readers: Between writing this and posting it, a great TED Talk has been posted to YouTube about how behavioural science can help people lower their utility bills. You can see my electricity usage for the month of May above. I know that compared to my peers at work, my energy usage is pretty low. It's probably lower than yours. I challenge you to find out your energy usage, see how it compares, and let me know what you're doing to bring it down.
If your usage is lower than mine, please let me know what you're doing. I'm interested in learning more from you on how I can get my consumption down as well.Reports are showing my actual home electricity usage for May 2013, as they appear on the Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro website for my account.
Very interesting topic.As an apartment dweller we don't have laundry or other high use electricity that we can put off to the weekends that would impact our bills, but we are very aware of TOU billing (Time of Use) and regularly check our electricity bill to see how our usage is comparing to past months. We look for variations in our usage and try to pinpoint why that occurred. Technically we can access our individual meter as it's in a closed cupboard down the apartment building hallway but I don't think they want us accessing it so we just go by our statements and use the comparison chart. We look at hours of daylight which would impact how much our lights were on as well as if we had the air conditioner or fan on or if one of us was home during the day as opposed to being at work during that period. We have power bars set up so that our tv and entertainment equipment is not running on phantom power and the only things left running constantly are the fridge and the deep freeze.
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