For a Bit of Colored Ribbon

You already have more feedback and comment than I guess you wanted, but my view would be:

  • what the energy company says is interesting but not conclusive

  • you must first get to a position where you know what you are using all of your gas and electricity for, and cannot easily reduce it further. You should be doing this anyway!

  • then see if you are still “above average” and ask the the utility company for their comments, if so.

A parting shot: insulation is the big winner, investment vs returnwise

Another vote for insulation. Heating and cooling become soooo much more efficient with blown in attic insulation. Double check the level you have and upgrade. Many older houses have little to no insulation. If that’s the case you will make all of the money back that you spend insulating in the first year. There are also incentives to add insulation depending on the state. We were able to use a rebate program to get back over a third of what we spent to put in the new insulation.

This is a trick. They will tell you that you’re using way more than average, but that’s what they tell everybody. Why? Of course to steal your cash and get rich!

Find someone who has power consumption way below average in their monthly charts. I challenge you.

Where I am, there consistently are several cases where people went on holidays (turning off everything at home) for half a month or even a month, only to receive upon return the same amount as their regular usage or even more on the power bill. If there was no power usage, where did the power “usage” come from? It’s all a big money game.

Hi Jeff,
you should have a look at:
http://www.bwired.nl/how_rfxcom.asp (monitoring obsessed guy… see http://www.bwired.nl/)
or
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/
"you Can’t Improve What you Don’t Measure"
Why don’t we replace google powermeters program ? it’s just one o two weeks of .net programming…
http://www.google.com/powermeter/about/index.html
I think its a good project

Something I have learned from examining the one my electric company sends me:

Its a LIE. I have compared what they sent me with actual bills for the time period they reference and they doubled or tripled my numbers to make their graph.

Its a marketing scam. They know most people wont check the actual numbers, and will do what they can to lower their bills, even if they are already the lowest in the neighborhood.

I can’t help wondering how it benefits a company like PG&E if their customers use less energy? What did I miss?

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