$639! That’s up $100 from last month and more than double any bill from last winter.

I know it’s been a cold winter, but… what the …?!

We’ve had problems with the furnace, a geothermal unit that’s supposed to be energy efficient, but… what the …?!

We had even sealed off the upper floor where our bedroom is and have been living downstairs for the entire month to see if we could trim our bill!

Cecie, my better half, called the electric company to find out what, if anything, we could do. I pulled out our furnace repair bills from the filing cabinet, and we compared notes. We told the lady at the electric company the dates on which the heating guy was at our house.

Turns out that on 1/13/2010, the day after he replaced a circuit board in the furnace and recharged the system, our electricity usage dropped by about half the previous day’s usage and stayed that way for some time.

Two weeks later, on 1/26/2010, the furnace was on the blink again. The heating guy came out to fix it that same day. The lady at the electric company said from that day forward, our usage was back up.

I asked Cecie to ask the lady from the electric company if she could send us a daily usage report for the past month. The lady said sure, but you could get the data more quickly by going to MyUsage.com.

I immediately headed to MyUsage.com, logged on, created an account, and pulled up a list of our daily electricity usage. Unbelievably cool! Why hadn’t I known about this?! You can even have your daily electricity usage emailed to you and/or have a warning emailed to you when your usage exceeds a particular level! (Not all electric companies are plugged into MyUsage.com.)

Then, I headed to the Weather Underground and pulled up a temperature history for my Zip code, so I could see whether the correlation in electricity usage was due more to temperature changes or our furnace woes.

From the data, I could clearly see that the correlation was directly related to our furnace woes. Note the bold rows where dramatic changes in our electricity usage occurred. These dates correspond to visits from the furnace repair guy.

 

From To KWH Daily Cost Temp
2/1/2010 2/2/2010 211 $25.68 37°F
1/31/2010 2/1/2010 171 $16.76 35°F
1/30/2010 1/31/2010 105 $10.29 30°F
1/29/2010 1/30/2010 228 $22.34 24°F
1/28/2010 1/29/2010 235 $23.03 20°F
1/27/2010 1/28/2010 226 $22.15 32°F
1/26/2010 1/27/2010 148 $14.50 32°F
1/25/2010 1/26/2010 94 $9.21 25°F
1/24/2010 1/25/2010 78 $7.64 36°F
1/23/2010 1/24/2010 82 $8.04 54°F
1/22/2010 1/23/2010 84 $8.23 49°F
1/21/2010 1/22/2010 96 $9.41 38°F
1/20/2010 1/21/2010 94 $9.21 35°F
1/19/2010 1/20/2010 78 $7.64 34°F
1/18/2010 1/19/2010 82 $8.04 34°F
1/17/2010 1/18/2010 88 $8.62 35°F
1/16/2010 1/17/2010 77 $7.55 34°F
1/15/2010 1/16/2010 82 $8.04 35°F
1/14/2010 1/15/2010 77 $7.55 40°F
1/13/2010 1/14/2010 95 $9.31 41°F
1/12/2010 1/13/2010 162 $15.88 37°F
1/11/2010 1/12/2010 174 $17.05 32°F
1/10/2010 1/11/2010 183 $17.93 27°F
1/9/2010 1/10/2010 193 $18.91 16°F
1/8/2010 1/9/2010 149 $14.60 16°F
1/7/2010 1/8/2010 220 $21.56 28°F
1/6/2010 1/7/2010 294 $28.81 26°F

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Kill-A-Watt Energy Usage MonitorTo trim our electric bill, I considered taking our second refrigerator out of service. I was curious as to how much that would save us per month, so I plugged my handy Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor and plugged the refrigerator into the monitor to find out.

(The refrigerator is a 21 cubic foot, freezer on top, Frigidaire, model #: FRT21NNC.)

The answer? By unplugging our second refrigerator, we would stand to save a disappointing $66 a year. We would only be saving $5.50 per month by unplugging it. Next, I’ll test our side-by-side model, which we open and close much more frequently.

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How Much Electricity Does My Computer Use?

January 19, 2010

My last electric bill was a whopping $566 – just what I needed to motivate me into thinking about energy conservation. (My bills generally run around $250 in the winter. I suspect that most of the increase had to do with the fact that our geothermal furnace wasn’t working properly during the deep freeze of [...]

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Tips for Promoting Your Book, Yourself, or Just About Anything Online

January 6, 2010

I team up with experts to write about topics I know little or nothing about, so the marketing I do to promote the books usually has little impact. Unlike my coauthors, I lack the credentials and expertise to speak with a voice of authority on most topics we cover, and except for my mom, nobody’s going [...]

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The Team Writing Advantage

December 17, 2009

I have been teaming up with experts in different fields for about five years now to produce books on a variety of topics, including bipolar disorder, food allergies, slam poetry, and real estate investing. I even co-authored a book on oceanography.
I could probably write books on these topics myself, but they wouldn’t be nearly as [...]

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Flipping Houses Back in Vogue?

December 11, 2009

About six months after the publication of my book Flipping Houses For Dummies, the housing bubble burst, the mortgage market melted down, and sales of the book tanked. Rotten timing.
So you can imagine my delight upon discovering a story this morning that appeared in the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago entitled “House Flipping [...]

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Global Warming Skepticism Grows

December 6, 2009

When I first started expressing my skepticism of global warming, the general consensus was that the world was getting significantly warmer and human beings were the primary cause. As a result of a few email messages implicating global warming “scientists” in a plot to fudge the data, the pendulum has suddenly swung the other way. [...]

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Recent Trip to Europe… Photos Posted!

November 3, 2009

On a recent trip to Europe to promote the Slovene edition of Bipolar Disorder For Dummies, visit old friends, and make new friends, I learned a few things and returned with some tips for travelers:

Bring multiple credit cards and at least one bank card for ATM withdrawals.
Make sure you have a couple cards with PINs [...]

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Bipolar Disorder For Dummies Heads to Slovenia

October 27, 2009

On August 12, I received an interesting email message via my Contact Me page. The message was from Darja Budja, who was wrapping up her translation/adaptation of Bipolar Disorder for Dummies
from English to Slovene. Darja has bipolar, hosts her own bipolar Web site at bipolarna.si, and is very involved in the bipolar community in Ljubljana [...]

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Zorg and Andy DVD Now Available!

October 2, 2009

Don’t let your Halloween be a Holloween. Order your Zorg and Andy video today and receive it just in time to host your own Zorg and Andy screening this coming Halloween.
Zorg and Andy is a comedy about love, duty, and sacrifice… human sacrifice. It’s a little bawdy – plenty of phallic symbols, a couple sex [...]

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