Brrrrr...

Hello all-

It's gotten cold in the Carolina's the past couple weeks.  Morning temperatures have been flirting with the high 30s...with afternoon temperatures in the high 50s, low 60s.  You know what that means....the heat is on.   Below is the TED historical usage.  Electricity usage is up into the 30 kWH/d range.  Those days that show usage in the 40 KWH/d are when we're doing laundry (Sunday/Monday).  It's amazing how much the eletric dryer uses even though we have a high efficiency washer which really spins the water out of the clothes.  Maybe I'll investigate the default settings on the dryer to see if I can save some energy there...but I kind of doubt I'll find anything. 


TED Historical Usage up to 11/2/2011

My HW usage is up too...not suprising as anyone can tell you how nice a hot shower is on a cold AM....even though I have the super-low flow 1.5 gpm showerhead.  And now I have the results to show it (see below).  On average we're using about $0.50-$0.60 per day on HW.  One an avearage month...that's $15 in my Bill.  Probably at best, I can reduce that by about 50% if I upgrade my HW heater to one of those GE Geospring Units and run it in series with my existing HW (turned off) to maximize the geothermal desuperheater.  At that amount ($7.50/mo), I'd save $90/year.  Thus it would take roughly 10 years to pay off the HW heater. That's not exactly a great ROI, but who knows...maybe prices will drop to make it more attractive.  I really wish Duke Energy would offer a rebate on higher efficiency hot water heaters to make it worthwhile.  A $300 rebate would mean 3 years off the ROI, which is great.  But...Duke energy's program is for HVAC only...bah!

TED HW Usage - Oct 31, 2011

FYI...so the NC Utilities commission, denied Duke Energy's request for the 15.4% rate increase this year.  Instead they recommended a ~5% increase.  Duke's pretty pissed about this and I'm sure they'll find another way to get the rates out of us.   Maybe I'll need to start really looking at solar panels soon...