Last month I got our electric bill and have to admit I was a bit ashamed. Well first let me tell you a little background on the story, we moved into the Good Project about 4 months ago now and were very excited that our utility bills were going to be super low compared to the standard efficiency home we were living in before. We now have solar panels and high efficiency appliances and all the other goodies crammed into the Good project. Anyway, month one came and went and we did not have an electricity bill so we called PG&E and they gave us their usual shpeal about new accounts and some paper mill that sent out bills being slow to respond. Month three rolls around and we finally got our first bill and I was ecstatic to see that we were only paying about a dollar a day in both gas and electricity. Yeah well apparently I am not that smart because what I forgot about the whole solar on the roof thing was the fact that our bill for electricity is set up on an annual billing cycle….Yeah so we were not actually being all that good with electricity after all, the real bill that I was finally able to get from PG&E was much higher.

I know long rambling story here but bare with me there is a point and its worth your time. When I saw that we were paying so much and were living in an energy efficient house I realized that we were the only ones to blame for this problem. I started going on a rampage turning things off all over the house and being way more careful about running the electric heaters. In less than 30 days we were able to reduce our electricity usage by over 70%. I know crazy huh? Well there is one thing that makes us sort of cheaters, our electric dryer was not venting correctly and was taking longer to dry than it should have taken and that was going on in our “big spender” portion of this test. But still…Our new bill after we started being careful was 80% less than our previous house and 70% less than what we were doing in this house when we were not being careful.

So although its not a 100% accurate test, there is a moral to this story. The little things do add up and you can save a ton on electricity by turning things off and buying the right light bulbs and appliances.