Riot of Austerity – Month 36

This is the Riot for the (crazy) month of October 2011 for the 3 of us. Our first year’s averages were calculated here, our second year’s averages can be found here. Edson fixed the calculator!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person.

17.16 gallons per person

41.8% of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. Strangely enough, we’ve not received our NSTAR electricity bill! We usually get it on the 26th and that’s how I monitor our usage. Weird development and no one’s answering the phones over there. One thing we know, because we are grid-tied, our solar production for the one and a half (bright and sunny) days that we were without power, was wasted (got diverted into the ground).

We produced 359 kWh with our solar array, but I’ll have to fill in later what we actually consumed.

{Update} Our bill arrived – it was the storm cleanup that had held it up. Like last month’s, it was  again just for “distribution charges”, meaning we produced more electricity than we consumed and so didn’t have to rely on electricity generated by NSTAR (coal or wind). In fact, some of what we produced we did not consume as NSTAR paid for it. Unfortunately, they do not state how many kWh that is – just the credit in dollar amounts. I should deduct that from what we produced. Will investigate.

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person. October was warm enough not to have the heat on, and when we did  have it, it was from wood. We’re now simply turning off the furnace and water tank until an hour before we need hot water for a shower. It’s not cold enough yet for us to need the furnace as backup for night time heat.

7.65 5.85 gallons of oil

12.4% 9.5% 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.

431 gallons pp.

14.4% of the US National Average

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