Published by Hubert Den Draak under Green Living

An Average Couple’s Journey to Decrease Their Power Bills

Visitors to our Nolalu Eco Centre always marvel at our energy independence. Especially, our solar panels and small wind turbine, that provide us with all the power we need, speak to most folks’ dreams of thumbing their nose at the big utility companies. When they see our comfortable lifestyle, they understandably jump to the conclusion that switching to solar and wind will mean good riddance to those dreadful utility bills forever.

“So how much for a bunch of those solar panels?” they ask.

Truth be told, we once thought the same thing. And of course you know what’s coming next: someone telling you it involves a bit more than a bunch of solar panels. Exactly…

Because, as we pretty soon found out: those panels don’t come cheap. Switching our average household to an all-solar one would carry about a quarter-million-dollar price tag!

So after staggering back to our feet again, we asked ourselves: how can anyone afford this?! The answer: no one can. The solution: instead of purchasing solar panels to match your energy consumption, lower your energy consumption to match your budget.

The average North American home consumes 34-38 kilowatt hours of power daily. In other words, every day your home (and ours, back then) uses about 3600 watts to run all things electric in it. And unless we’d won the lottery it’s just not realistic to think we could afford to do that on solar and/or wind.

The much cheaper alternative is to cut back on our energy consumption; the less we’re using, the fewer solar panels we’d need. Ideally, power consumption for an off-grid house is 3-5 kWh tops…

Not having won any sweepstakes lately, we decided to cut back on our energy consumption. In fact, we decided to see if we could bring down our power consumption to a level that could be generated by solar power. We gave ourselves some leeway for the fact that we lived in an older (1937) home that wasn’t exactly designed with energy savings in mind; we also decided not to invest in any additional high-efficiency appliances, or energy-saving renovations. This would be cold turkey, the house “as is”….

The first electricity bill made me do a double-take. Using CFLs and consistently turning off what we weren’t using had saved us about 22%. And the great thing about it: it was effortless. That night we went for a nice dinner (paid for by the energy savings) — and I was hooked.

That first 22% was only the beginning; I was determined to go all the way. The next energy saver was turning off all phantom loads. Next was unplugging the dryer and using the clothes line. In the winter we’d set the thermostat to 20 C (68 F) and simply put on a sweater, so the forced air heater would kick in a lot less. Everywhere I looked I saw more possibilities to save energy.

My partner now tells me I used to cackle when opening each new electricity bill to see how much more we had saved. It was addictive and there was no stopping me. Within a year we had gone from 32 kWh a day to 7 kWh a day.

Okay, maybe I sound a little obsessive about it (hey, who doesn’t like free money?) but I wasn’t nuts: we refused to adopt a Spartan lifestyle. We’d still watch TV, cook extensive dinners, work on our computers, entertain friends, everything. We just used power very, very carefully. That was all, really.

Within that year we had decreased our carbon footprint to a fraction of the national average; we had saved hundreds of dollars in doing so; utility price hikes didn’t affect us any more; the satisfaction that came with all that was, well, priceless.

The next real challenge for us was building our off-grid home. That step is not for everyone; but we did discover that lowering your energy bills (and your carbon footprint) is for everyone. Once you get going you’ll be cackling soon, too!