— from Ed Sutton —

Foster;

As I mentioned recently, I have been recording my energy usage about every 2-3 hours (except night-time), and can report the following for the first week (Monday, 6/22 at 10AM through 10AM on 6/29):

We are a household of two “older” adults.  The house is totally electric; no propane; we don’t burn wood during any season.

We have no solar panels or other alternative energy sources.  Therefore, we are probably a fairly typical OPALCO residential user.

The electric heat is turned off for the summer (June-Sept.)  Appliances are typical; Refrigerator, and chest freezer run as needed.  How water heater has been turned lower, twice, to conserve energy.

Each day we both shower in the AM;  most kitchen usage is in the early evening (stove/oven);  the three highest use of kwh are for the dryer (3-4 loads per week), stove/oven, and hot water (dishwasher, clothes washer).

Our highest usage is on the weekends.

So, we are generally typical for an older family of two!

This past seven days, we used 189 kw;  most days of the week about 20kw per day;  weekend about 45kw per day. At 0.097 cents per kwh, our average daily power bill is $2.62, an $78.57 per month.  And, a facility charge is added to that !

The purpose of this exercise was to have a better sense of the cost of electric power in our home.  I will state, strongly, that we will lessen our usage proportionate to any increase in our monthly cost of energy from OPALCO.  I suspect that this is the real world for most residential customers.  Living on a generally fixed budget is a bugger.

I would be very curious as to the comparison of our usage with the average for all residential customers throughout the County.

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