Watt Whacker, Part 2
Numbers and Graphs
So here, for those few truly dedicated, or desperate, souls who have followed us all the way here, is the proof, the pictures, and the numbers. The data goes back all the way to July, 1996, when our family first moved to Wallingford. Some of the information in the earlier years is estimated, so small year-to-year variations should not be taken as particularly meaningful. Recent data is very accurate.
First, let’s look at the heating cost. For many of us, maybe most, this is the biggest category of energy use.
Numbers and Graphs
So here, for those few truly dedicated, or desperate, souls who have followed us all the way here, is the proof, the pictures, and the numbers. The data goes back all the way to July, 1996, when our family first moved to Wallingford. Some of the information in the earlier years is estimated, so small year-to-year variations should not be taken as particularly meaningful. Recent data is very accurate.
First, let’s look at the heating cost. For many of us, maybe most, this is the biggest category of energy use.
Note the drop in energy consumption (red line) in 1999-2000, after we installed new windows to replace the original single-pane ones. But nothing much else happened until around 2004, when the price of oil started to climb. Our new heating system, installed just before the 2008-2009 season, reset everything and reduced our heating costs to about what they were twelve years earlier, even without adjusting for inflation, and it’s still going down.
About that red line, which goes with the right-hand axis: it’s adjusted to compensate for the weather, through something called “degree days”, so it’s a measure of my home’s efficiency. (Lower is better.) Degree days, or DD, are a way of calculating how much heating is needed each day through the year, and adding that up. (There are also cooling degree days.) So we measure energy consumption per DD. And by comparing each year’s degree days against “normal” for the area, we can see how warm or cold each year is; that’s the black line with yellow pips. You can see that last year was way below normal, actually a little over 21% lower. So part of my savings this year were due to the weather, but as the red line shows, I made some efficiency gains as well.
What about electricity? Let’s look at the overall energy costs, in which I’ve separated out oil, gas, and electricity, with inflation shown on the blue line.:
About that red line, which goes with the right-hand axis: it’s adjusted to compensate for the weather, through something called “degree days”, so it’s a measure of my home’s efficiency. (Lower is better.) Degree days, or DD, are a way of calculating how much heating is needed each day through the year, and adding that up. (There are also cooling degree days.) So we measure energy consumption per DD. And by comparing each year’s degree days against “normal” for the area, we can see how warm or cold each year is; that’s the black line with yellow pips. You can see that last year was way below normal, actually a little over 21% lower. So part of my savings this year were due to the weather, but as the red line shows, I made some efficiency gains as well.
What about electricity? Let’s look at the overall energy costs, in which I’ve separated out oil, gas, and electricity, with inflation shown on the blue line.:
Note the big increase in the purple blocks starting in 2004-2005, after we added the air conditioning. Again, the run-up in oil prices is visible in the red blocks along the bottom, disappearing in 2008 when we switched to gas. Between 2007-2008, our base year, and now, our total energy costs have gone from $5861 to $2705, for a total reduction of nearly 54%. And even a more “normal” winter would have added no more than a couple of hundred dollars to that bottom line.
Total savings to date, assuming only that expenses had risen with the CPI: $11,454. Costs to date: $8,000 for the new heater, $3,500 for weatherization, $1,100 for the refrigerator, and a few hundred for LED lamps and other items. About $13,000 total investment, so it’ll be fully paid off this year, but will keep saving me about $3,000 each and every year, forever.
Looking at just the electricity, we’ve invested about $1800, including the cost of the TED 5000, yielding a savings of $776 before adding in the $240 PECO rebate, or over $1000 this year alone – a savings of nearly 44%. Our investments in electricity reduction have been fully paid for.
How’s My Carbon Footprint?
We didn’t start this project to save the planet, just to save money. But look what’s happened to our carbon emissions:
Total savings to date, assuming only that expenses had risen with the CPI: $11,454. Costs to date: $8,000 for the new heater, $3,500 for weatherization, $1,100 for the refrigerator, and a few hundred for LED lamps and other items. About $13,000 total investment, so it’ll be fully paid off this year, but will keep saving me about $3,000 each and every year, forever.
Looking at just the electricity, we’ve invested about $1800, including the cost of the TED 5000, yielding a savings of $776 before adding in the $240 PECO rebate, or over $1000 this year alone – a savings of nearly 44%. Our investments in electricity reduction have been fully paid for.
How’s My Carbon Footprint?
We didn’t start this project to save the planet, just to save money. But look what’s happened to our carbon emissions:
Our total carbon emissions stood at 16.3 tons for our base year, not much different from what it had been since we moved in. That dropped dramatically, to just over 12 tons, when we changed over to gas heat – gas is the least carbon-intensive of all the fossil fuels. Gradual declines followed as we continued to cut our electricity usage.
Starting in 2011, we decided to invest about an extra half-cent per kWh (less than $45 per year) to buy 100% Pennsylvania-generated wind power, out of our electricity savings. Without all that coal being burned, our emissions rate has plunged to less than 6 tons a year, a reduction of 65%.
Interested in tracking your energy usage? Contact the Residential Team at [email protected].
Starting in 2011, we decided to invest about an extra half-cent per kWh (less than $45 per year) to buy 100% Pennsylvania-generated wind power, out of our electricity savings. Without all that coal being burned, our emissions rate has plunged to less than 6 tons a year, a reduction of 65%.
Interested in tracking your energy usage? Contact the Residential Team at [email protected].
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