Riot for Austerity – July 2012 – Month 45


Here it is, the Riot for the month of July of 2012 for the three of us plus my parents-and sister-in-law. My summary of our first three years is here. Edson fixed the calculator: all go tither to crunch those numbers!

Gasoline.  Calculated per person. DH and SIL have been driving into Boston every day for work (shuttle doesn’t operate during the Summer) and that is inflating our gasoline usage, but since this is calculated by person int he household, it actually lands us in the lower percentages.

13.86 gallons per person

33.7 % of the US National Average

Electricity. This is reckoned per household, not per person. We cook on an electric stove. According to our solar meter, we produced 5058 kWh since the system was turned on, and  621 kWh this last month (you can follow our solar harvest live here). We owed NStar nothing but how much we consumed is a mystery: the NSTAR billing software apparently cannot handle negatives! But we’ll know soon how much we’ve consumed over the year, from mid-August 2011 till mid-August 2012 (when our one year of solar production is up!).

In the meantime, we’re working on some ways to reduce out consumption more.

Heating Oil and Warm Water. This too is calculated for the entire household, not per person, and since our numbers have doubled, our consumption has obviously gone up, but not by twice as much (last month we used 6.5  gallons of oil, which was 10.5% of US nat av), which is good news.

9  gallons of oil

14.6% of the US National Average

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

6 lbs. pp per month

4.4% of the US National Average

Water. This is calculated per person. Unfortunately this is higher than usual.

572 gallons pp.

19.1 % of the US National Average

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