Electricity

In the post today I received a letter from my electricity supplier informing me that they'd taken a look at our electricity usage over the past year (we've been with them a year) to check that we are on the best plan. Well, it seems we are. We switched to a "green" company last year which not only meant that the company generates all it's electricity using renewable resources but are also a carbon neutral generator and retailer.

So anyway, they said over the last year our usage was 5174 kWh units. I was kind of surprised really. Last year when I blogged about changing retailers and deciding to go with the "low user plan" we were using just over 7000 kWh and I thought we were doing well. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that our usage was quite a bit lower yet there have not been any major changes to the way we do things. Which really only leaves...

~ The new "larger" hot water cylinder we had installed when the last one died (around the same time as we switched electricity company).
~ The hot water cyclinder in our kitchen died about 9mths ago (both cylinders would be near on 60yrs old, so pretty good run really!) and we haven't bothered to replace it so we're saving on not wasting hot water to rinse fingers and dishes. The only inconvenience being that we need to bucket water from the laundry about 3 metres away once a week to handwash large items that haven't fitted into the dishwasher.
~ Large upright freezer has been continually turned on (but not the most economically since it is half empty).
~ I have been more diligent in turning off my computer every night (but we could still turn off other electronics instead of leaving on standby).

I did notice that we only got the small fan heater out maybe 3-4 times over winter which I usually use for a 10min stint on really cold mornings to heat Danielle's room for the kids to get dressed in, whereas last year we had it running a lot more than that. This year though, I reckon there were a lot less frosty mornings. Equally too, over summer we rarely needed to use the fan whereas the year before it felt hotter during the days??

Our power usage does not include any other home heating since we rely on our wood burner (which we got away with only buying 4m3 this year and supplementing on a bit of foraged wood). We run the dishwasher every day and the washing machine probably 4 times a week on a cold wash only (have dropped 2 loads a week now that Danielle is no longer in washable nappies during the day). And we don't own a clothes drier. Simon and I have a shower every day and the kids a bath about 3 times a week.