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-$1.28 Gas Bill

April 3rd, 2009 at 05:43 pm

This post is a fitting follow up to the last one. (re: our energy bills are not high!)

I got my gas bill and was a little confused about why it was -$1.28. I had to dig around for the detail and found this in small print at the end of the bill:

“Congratulations] You earned a credit under PG&E's Winter Gas Savings Program. You've received a bill credit of $29.28, which is a total of 20.00% off your total PG&E gas charges from January 1 through February 28. The credit is based on your cumulative gas usage reduction of 11.00%, compared to the average usage at this location in January and February over the last three years.

Bill was only $28 before the credit. That explains much. I’ll take a negative bill any day! Big Grin

I can’t take much credit – the winter was mild. Though now that I think about it, all the thermal drapes maybe played a role. We tried to be a little more mindful also. But I think the mild winter explains most of it! I don’t think we topped $100 this year, at all. We usually do in January.

Also, because winter came so late, the cold has lingered longer than usual. Our $30 (pre-credit) gas bill was $10 higher (50% higher!) than the same bill last March.

It is getting warm enough to turn down the hot water heater. We rachet it down every spring, and even more in the summer. We pay little for gas the rest of the year (maybe $15/month average). We use it for cooking and hot water the rest of the year. (Gas heat in the winter).


I’ve been keeping an eye on our electric meter.

I notice spikes when we do laundry. Most days we have been averaging 15 Kwh per day. I noticed it was 22 kwh - Sunday, but I later realized we did laundry ALL DAY. I got a pile of free clothes for LM, for one. I hate the smell of other people’s clothes, plus they had some stuff all over them. So we washed washed washed, not to mention I washed my work clothes (no dryer for those though) and we had to wash our paint stained clothes from Saturday. So it was an unusual laundry day for sure. (Our dryer is as energy efficient as it gets though).

We’ve had a couple of low days of 11 Kwh. That’s about as low as we seem to go with people home. We haven’t all left the house more than an hour or so in WEEKS so I still have no idea what the baseline “nobody home/nothing on” usage is. I am very curious – of course. We will find out in May.

A quick web search shows our fridge probably used about 1.3 Kwh per day. I am not sure if newer ones are that much more efficient. (We bought ours in 2002 - right after they made a major step up in efficiency). Each of our DVRs uses about the same amount of electricity. This would put our baseline at 4 Kwh per day plus whatever for our clocks, smoke alarms (they are attached to the electrical system for backup), etc., etc. Will our baseline be 5 Kwh per day? It will be interesting to see how much the little stuff truly adds up. I can also look up our fridge model for a better estimate. I will later.

1 Responses to “-$1.28 Gas Bill”

  1. Steven Says:
    1425186091

    I notice our electric usage spikes on Fridays and Sundays, which are laundry days.

    I'm guessing it's the dryer.

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