March Bill ~40% reduction in energy use

OK OK OK....yes I've been slacking.  And by slacking...yeah, it's been a LOT.  There's no good excuse for me, so sorry! 

I will say that ever since we switched to e-billing, I don't get to see the bill when it comes...so I have to bug my wife to let me know what it says.  So there...ha!  I can somewhat blame my unresponsiveness on her, right?

We got March's bill on the 6th and here's the results:

March 2011 Bill - 953 kWh over 28 days or 34.04 kWh/d
March 2011 Natural Gas Bill- 24 CCF  over 28 days or 0.857 CCF/d -->converted--> 25.9 kWh/d
Total March 2011 = 59.91 kWh/d

March 2012 Bill = 1051 kWh over 29 days = 36.24 kWh/d
% Savings = 39.51%

Comparison to March 2010 (Townhome) = 71.10 kWh/day
% Savings = 49%

So the savings keep adding up.   Since March 2010 was when we first moved into our new home, the comparison against the Townhome is over.  On average the Geothermal system has reduced my energy consumption enough (in the 2700 sf single family house) such that our energy usage is ~16% less than the former 1300 sf townhouse.  That's pretty cool.

Below is a figure showing our home energy usage from when we moved in to date  (Note:  April 2012 is just an extrapolation from the TED data to date).  You can see that our energy usage used to varied greatly with the seasons especially in the summer and winter.  Afte we did all our housework and installed the Geothermal system our energy usage is significantly lower...one average 33%...and it would be higher except that during the spring and fall (like what we're doing now), we turn off our HVAC system because the house stays comfy day and night with simply opening up the windows. 

Money wise its not as significant thanks to the latest Duke Energy increase in rates.  But it could be worse, that's for sure.  Below is how our total energy bill has compared.  I like the fact that our bills are much more reasonable (again...the April Bill is just an extrapolation of the TED data).  Since installing the geothermal, our largest bill was the January bill (aka dated in January...but actually for December). 

I guess now the question is...what do I do next? 

I certainly do plan on installing a new HW heater in series with my existing to optimize the Geothermal dessuperheater.  Eventually I'm going to add in a Nyle Geyser ASHP to the new HW heater. 

And today, I'm meeting with Green Spring Energy to talk about solar panels.  That'll be a discussion on another post...maybe tomorrow?