Digitizing and Energy Savings

So if you know me then you know I am (or attempt to be) organized and can sometimes get uptight about it. Well, recently I have had kind of a mental switch from keeping everything because I might need it to getting rid of the stuff that we just don't use. It is a stress producer for me to keep track of all our stuff. I have a tendency (thank you dad) to be a bit of a pack rat. I don't need to keep everything. I always think, "I might need this 6 months down the road so I better keep it." Doesn't matter I haven't used it in 2 years. Well, now I am leaning towards, "I haven't used it in 2 years, so get rid of it." If I need it 6 months down the road, I'll go buy it. It'll save me stress. You may be wondering what this has to do with Digitizing and Energy Savings ... wonder no more.
As part of my getting rid of stuff, I occasionally go through my filing cabinet (where I file too much stuff) and see what I can weed out. I had to file an Aquila (electric) bill and saw that I had all my Aquila bills for the last 3 years (basically since we got back from Romania). Aha! A perfect candidate for weeding out. I can scan these 36 pages of bills into just 3 documents and store it on my computer as a pdf, then shred those paper bills. As I was looking at my bills I noticed our energy usage from last year for that month was considerably lower which got me thinking. And me thinking can be dangerous (and potentially time wasting). So being the geek that I am, not only did I digitize my Aquila bills, I also entered the important data into a spreadsheet and graphed some of the stuff I find interesting(It only took a total of 2 hours to throw all this together). The main point of me looking at this data is to find out how we are "spending our electricity" so I can slow our usage a little and SAVE SOME MONEY.
In 2005 (the most recent date such statistics are available - links to an excel file at the department of energy) the average american household used an average of 938 kWH (Kilowatt Hours). In Missouri that number was 1102 kWH. In 2006 we used an average of 699 kWH/month, which was well below national and Missouri averages for the prior year ... yay for us. Unfortunately, our 2007 monthly average is already at 1000 kWH. So I want to know why this is. What happened that caused us to use more electricity? check out my geeky cool graphs for some insight.

So this graph (above) shows our average daily use per billing period (total kWH for billing period / number of days in biling period). Check out the spike around August (billing period 8). Hot summer? Run our air conditioner too much? Our new deep freeze purchased in december of 2006 working too hard? What gives?


And here is daily change.



The last graph is a big one for me. This is how much money we could have saved had we only used as much energy as we did the year before. $280. It's not life changing but hey $280 is an iPod.

So, I will be consciously thinking about turning off lights and trying to save energy. Good for the environment (at least as much as piddly little me can make) and good for my wallet.

So what about you, how much electricity do you use? Let me know in the comments or send an email. And you don't have to tell me, I am a geek ... I know this.