In the name of saving energy (and, consequently, saving money), I’m going to keep a tally of my main electrical usage each day.
On my electric company’s web site, you can see how many kilowatt hours you are using each day, including days that haven’t yet been billed.
I will keep track of how many times I run the dishwasher in a day, how many showers happen (and the length of them, if I can be particularly good about it), how long the heater is on, and how long the oven is on.
Some things will always be on the electric bill, such as lights, refrigerator, etc.
I will record the kilowatt hours we use each day in a spreadsheet to see if I can spot trends. Should be fun!
This will be such an interesting study! Let us know of the results!
That’s really awesome that they show non-billed useage — do they have radio-signal meters that they monitor? We get analyzation of our past month’s bill, but don’t know our useage except to read the meter ourselves, which is about 90% accurate (it’s not digital, so sometimes reading it is a little off). I agree the results would be interesting to see!
Wow, now that could be some very useful information for the frugal! I wonder if my Electric Co. has that option. You could really put a dollar value on certain electrical usages which would probably help you to scale back on stuff.
Funny that you posted this! I was going to go out and read my meter every day and track similar stuff. I’ll have to check and see if my electric company’s website does that too! I was considering the same for the water, too. Will be interested to see how this goes.
I’ll certainly let you know the results.
I have no idea how the electric company does this–whether it’s radio or some other signal to tell them.