In January I talked about myNovember MLGW bill, today let’s talk about December and January’s. These bills will give you an idea of a “normal” winter bill is for us. This is the first winter that we have spent in this house, so after the previous tenants telling us the average bill was $150, I was floored to get our bills.
In November our bill was $152.75 with an electrical usage of1090kwh and a gas usage of 62ccf. According to MLGW our bill was much lower then the normal bill of my Memphis neighbors. I knew that the bill would be higher then our summer bills since gas is more expensive then electricity but I wasn’t prepared for December’s bill.
December’s bill was $219.01, more then $50 more then november, ouch! The usage was 1086kwh and 95ccf, so it was obviously the gas increase that helped to bump the bill past $200. Again MLGW’s website and bill analyzer said that our bill was much lower then our neighbors. But I was still worried about January’s bill since I knew it would be getting colder so that ment more heat.
January’s bill suprized me, it was only $218.43, it was actually less then December’s but then I read the fine print. The cost of gas had gone down by $0.14 per ccf. Our gas consumption actually went up to 110ccf and the electricity usage went down to 1003. I think it’s great that our changes like unpluging laptops and making sure computers are turned off are making a difference in our electricity usage, but even keeping our thermostat down in the middle 60’s didn’t help.
As you know in February I have turned down the thermostat even further, and had an energy audit. What the audit found was that the insulation in the attic was doing a lousy job of keeping the house warm. So until the Landlord gets that taken care of, we might not see a big difference in our gas consumption. The problem with February is that the weather is all over the place. One day it can be 70 and the next it will be 28, so it’s not a month that has an a “normal” average.
The average temp in November was 53, in December was 53 and January was 42. As you can tell December has the same problem as February, one week it was in the 70’s and the following week is was below freezing. So there were more heating days in December then November even though the average was the same.
Have you been keeping track of your energy consumption? If you live in Memphis, MLGW has a great new website that really breaks down your energy costs. How much energy have you saved this month?
