Riot for Austerity – Month 37

This is the Riot for the month of November 2011 for the three of us. Our first year’s averages were calculated here, our second year’s averages can be found here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. We drove to NYC and back for Thanksgiving. I walk Amie to school and back again every day, but activism necessitates more (local) drives than usual.

13 gallons per person

31.6% of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. After two months of not having to pay NSTAR (them paying us, instead) we got a bill again for  69 kWh (all wind). According to our solar meter, we produced 1403 kWh since the system was turned on, 274 kWh in November.  (You can follow our solar harvest live, here).

So in November we consumed:

274 (solar) + 69 (wind) =  343 kWh

17.1% of the US National Average

That’s quite amazing, one of our lowest numbers yet! And as you can see, we also made our first megaWatt last month and are well on our way to the next one! Those megaWatts are important because here in Mass. we can sell them as SRECS, which are the main component of the system payback.

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. November has been crazy warm too, just like October. We had a few evenings of wood stove heat, but never needed the oil furnace backup for our “Annex” or for at night. All the oil consumption was for warm water (shower, dishes, laundry).

11.05 8.45 gallons of oil

17.9% 13.7% of the US National Average

{UPDATE} 3 Jan 2012: The way I have been calculating our heating oil consumption is by reading off the furnace how many hours it ran, then multiplying it by .85 because that’s the amount of gallons of oil I *thought* it used. Now DH just told me that our furnace is more efficient than that and the correct number is .65. Hence the correction.

Trash. After recycling and composting this usually comes down to mainly food wrappers.

10 lbs. pp per month

7% of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person.

376 gallons pp.

12.5% of the US National Average

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