I have been recording my energy usage about every two to three hours (except night-time), and can report the following for the first week (June 22 at 10 a.m. through 10 a.m. on June 29). We are a household of two “older” adults.  The house is totally electric – no propane and we don’t burn wood during any season. We have no solar panels or other alternative energy sources. Therefore, we are probably a fairly typical OPALCO residential user.

The electric heat is turned off for the summer (June-September). Appliances are typical: refrigerator and chest freezer run as needed.  The water heater has been turned lower, twice, to conserve energy.

Each day we both shower in the morning. Most kitchen usage is in the early evening (stove/oven) and the three highest use of kwh are for the dryer (three to four loads per week), stove/oven, and hot water (dishwasher, clothes washer).

Our highest usage is on the weekends. So we are generally typical for an older family of two. Over the seven days, we used 189 kw; most days of the week about 20 kw per day;  weekend about 45 kw per day. At 0.097 cents per kwh, our average daily power bill is $2.62 – or $78.57 per month. And a facility charge is added to that!

The purpose of this exercise was to have a better sense of the cost of electric power in our home.  I will state, strongly, that we will lessen our usage proportionate to any increase in our monthly cost of energy from OPALCO. I suspect that this is the real world for most residential customers.  Living on a generally fixed budget is a bugger.

I would be very curious as to the comparison of our usage with the average for all residential customers throughout the county.

Ed Sutton

Orcas Island