October Energy Bill. Up yet still Down

September  2013 Energy Usage

Wow...what a wondrous month its been.  The kiddos are certainly keeping me busy and slightly sleep deprived.  But it's getting better.  Every week they are sleeping a little more during the night.   As I mentioned last month, I knew my energy usage was going to sky-rocket.  But I think it's been manageable.  While overall, my energy usage for this month compared to last is up by 45% (see detailed info below), I was expecting much worse.  Let's show the Bill results first:

October 2012 (Sept 5 - Oct 2) --> Blog Post Here

Total Energy Consumption = 409 kWh
No. of Days = 28
Average Daily Energy Consumption = 14.61 kWh/day
Bill = $49.91


October 2013 (Sept 4 - Oct 2)

Total Energy Consumption = 595 kWh
No. of Days = 28
Average Daily Energy Consumption = 21.25 kWh/day (45.5% INCREASE in consumption)
Bill = $68.13

Looks bad right?  However, October 2012 was also one of my lowest energy usage months ever too.  Much of my usage was in the first half of the month (see the Pic above) where I was using about 30 kWh/day.  That was all HVAC usage as I needed to keep the house around 72F for the kiddos.  Halfway through the month I was able to turn the system off because the nighttime temperatures were cool enough to allow me to open up the windows at night and use "super fan" to cool the house.  

So I asked myself...how does it compare to October 2011?  The geothermal was still installed, just not the GE Geospring.  So here's that comparison:

October 2011 (associated blog post here)

Total Energy Consumption = 771 kWh
No. of Days = 32
Average Daily Energy Consumption = 24.09 kWh/day
Bill = $79.75

So 2013 was a 11.8% DECREASE in energy consumption compared to 2011.  Now, there's some savings.
So in about a week, I'm getting 1.962 kW of solar panels installed.  I chose to go this route since I believe I've done what I can practically on the energy efficiency side of my home.  All that work resulted in roughly a 50% decrease in my annual energy consumption (compared to 2010 when I moved in) .  Only after all of that work was done would I consider energy generation.

Overall, the solar panels should produce roughly 1/3 of my annual power usage.  I have a limited southern roof exposure so that was part of it of not trying to get more.  I could always add more panels in the future, but they would have to go on my West Facing roof.  Stay tuned next week for that blog posting.  I'll also include my math on ROI.