My Month Without Power at Catch a Gideon

November 9th, 2006 by digerati

Well, not quite without, but greatly reduced… I was looking over the past electric bill. They put how many power units (kilowatt hours?) for the previous year on each bill. Its rather apparent that the spring and fall months are the best. In fact I use almost a third of the energy in the fall than during the summer. I’ll chalk that up to DC’s ungodly heat and humidity during the summer.

This year I decided to experiment with how long I could leave the HVAC off entirely. I started almost a month ago now. It was cool enough to open the windows at night instead of running the AC. It also wasn’t getting so hot during the day that I couldn’t do the same thing.

Then it started getting cooler. DC has the strange weather condition of having temperatures regularly jump between 40 and 70, which is what’s happening now. But, I’m happy to say I have yet to turn on the heat. It’s been really cold a few nights but adding extra blankets kept me nice and toasty.

I should also say that I’ve got really good double paned windows and just put in new insulating blinds. Anyway, the temperature in the apartment hasn’t gotten below 68 degrees. I suppose I’m getting some heat from the hallway, but still I think that’s pretty good.

I’ve also been using far fewer lights, though I have to admit that wasn’t intentional. I had a number of lights burn out about the same time (strange how that always seems to happen). One of them was the large halogen light that lights the entire living room. I can’t get it to work again (won’t light with the new bulbs) so I just haven’t been using it and instead have more targeted (and lower watt) bulbs at my desk.

Should be an interesting month for power consumption.