February is Energy/Utilities Month

In 2016, I’m trying to walk the talk via The Great Money Experiment—a year of avoiding giving my money to Big Business.

I was going to do food next—it is, after all, a pretty significant part of our budget. However, I’m part of a Transitions Streets group, and we’re focusing on energy this month, so it just made sense to do the same here!

One of our tasks in the Transition Streets group is to find out how much electricity we currently use. Seems like a good thing to do, because I have no idea! So, I just looked it up, and the last bill says we used 24.265 kWh per day. In August it was 22.516 kWh per day. This is a bit confusing to me, because we have gas heat, so I would have expected the usage to be higher in July/August (A/C).

Anyway, I’m looking forward to investigating the following this month:

• How much energy do individual appliances at our house use? (using an electricity monitor)
• What are ways we can reduce energy use? (That’s less money to the corporations…)
• What are alternatives to the corporate energy companies? (Take an in-depth look at our local Energy District.)
• Are there ways to be more sustainable within the constraints of these monopolies (e.g. signing up for renewable sources of energy)?
• What about Internet? Report on the progress in our town to establish a municipal Internet utility.

Transition Streets recommends the following action items:

• Know how much you’re using
• Reduce your standby power load
• See the light (switch out light bulbs)
• Control your heat
• Weatherstripping
• Air sealing
• Insulating water heater, pipes, attic, and wall

I look forward to learning all sorts of things about energy this month—and hope to save some money in the process, thereby reducing my contributions to corporate energy companies and their shareholders.