A call for opinion!

So, I want to know what everyone thinks of the Wikidot site I'm working on.  I want to know what you want to see on the site.  Right now, it's my super-spam RSS feed, which has all of my activity from Hulu, Netflix, Wakoopa, Twitter, and my blogs all in one place.

Good start to June Power Usage

So, after a full week of power usage in June, I've managed to reduce my average power usage on both weekends and week days.

I actually got my average weekend power usage down to 8.5 kwh, which is just .04 kwh more than my week day power usage was last month.

I don't really think I'll be able to get next month's power usage any lower than this, and I honestly think it will be a challenge to keep these numbers until the end of the month.

Anyway, I think the only thing that's changed that I'm spending a lot more time outside, and all this past weekend I was out and about.  As far as last week, I can't really think of what else would have contributed to lower power, but I have a theory about keeping my freezer full of stuff.  I think that having cold stuff in the freezer may decrease the amount of energy needed to keep the refridgerator cool.

More to come soon.

Smart power outlets? Awesome!

So, I have to admit that this video does kinda seem like it's just promoting a product, but it's a totally awesome idea!

If you aren't there to use power, you can turn your outlets off!

Anyway... just some food for thought.

May Power Usage Summary

So, while I did use a bit of power in May, an estimated 287 kilowatt hours (KWH), I did manage to keep my power consumption to a minimal.  Some of the key factors that played into this include: Compact-Florescent Lighting, adequate placement of windows for natural light, and never using more than one light bulb.

The two peak days of power usage I have from May are on the two days I did a ton of laundry.  One load of laundry uses almost 6 KWH of electricity (washer and drier,) which is something I am happy to say I do minimally.  Also the dishwasher uses about 4 KWH, which is almost twice as much as my entertainment center (the red line on the graph.)

This month I was able to determine that my entertainment center accounts for just under one third of my daily power usage.

So, how does this compare to my past power consumption?  Let me show you...

As you can see from this chart, at 287 KWH, I have come very close to using an all time low for monthly power consumption (which is 255 KWH in July 2008,) and I used 201 KWH less than I did in May of 2008.  I also spent (will spend...) $51 less on my power bill, and my CO² production was down by 190 lbs.

My average daily power usage was down from 13 KWH a day in April to 9 KWH a day in May.  This reduction in about 4 KWH is partially due to power that I was billed for from my old apartment, however my daily power usage from the month of April shows that this information is most likely true (I am missing 6 days of data from the beginning of April.)

So what does this mean?  It means I am right on track to using half as much electricity this year as I did last year (My data shows that in 2008 I used 5,574 KWH from Jan - May, while in 2009 so far I have only used 2,161 KWH.).

My Power usage Blog!

So,  I decided not to litter my normal blog with a bunch of updates about all the crap I think of about how much power I use around the house.  So, here is my first post to my power blog!

So, here is my power usage for the month of May, and then added to it is My Meter.  For the past nine days I've been monitoring my Entertainment center.  Which I thought would use a significant portion of my total power usage... however it turns out that my Entertainment center, on average, uses about 33% of my power.  Even though I think it is one of my largest single sources of power usage, it is still less than 20% of my peak power usage.

So, the next question I have is, what causes that spike in my power usage that keeps popping up every few days?

I'll have to get to that one soon.