Our electricity bill came the other day.
Yikes!
We’ve had a somewhat warmer summer here than last year. Not nearly as hot as the Summer of 2007….how I remember that well since I was pregnant with kiddo at the time! 
Our kilowatt hour meter reading was off the charts for us this month: 880 kwh which is about double what it was in 2006. I remember because our bill would nearly always be about 450 kwh and it rarely varied from that except during the summer months. I’m not a huge fan of air conditioning, but since our son was born we try to adjust the temperature to suit him rather than what we really want. As a result, our bill has creeped up little by little every year.
We decided to try to trim our energy usage from other areas to help compensate for our air conditioning use. In fact, we’ve set on a challenge for this month: our next bill will not be for more than 750 kwh’s despite the fact we’re headed into August shortly. We’re making some changes!
Now, the bill we just received was still only about $100. We belong to a fabulous electricty co-op and our bill is actually quite low compared to other people we know. But we’re also trying to make some changes from an environmental standpoint as well. Do we NEED to have fans going in rooms we’re not using? Do I NEED to dry every load of laundry using the energy-hog dryer we have? Do we NEED to turn the air conditioner on at 9am even on a moderately warm day?
So our goal for our next bill is 750 kwh. To that end, I’m writing this post on battery power, in the dark without the television on! I figured I’d better put my money, or intention, where my mouth is at least while I’m writing about it!
