Friday, February 18, 2011

What are they doing?

Every other month we get a little report from the electric company telling us how our energy consumption compares to our neighbors. Their methodology is that they identify one hundred houses in my part of town that are approximately the same size. They then calculate the average monthly consumption and the average monthly consumption of the twenty homes that use the least electricity. The report has three bars, all neighbors, the "most efficient" neighbors, and us. We fall between the two groups; we're number thirty-nine. Our home is a small house over a hundred years old. The loft is not counted by the city as part of our square footage, so the house is actually about one third larger than the electric company thinks it is. Clever Wife and I both work from home (when we have work) which means the heat is on all day, two computers are running, and one or two lights are on. Despite that, we only use about 75% as much electricity as an average house, that is smaller than our real size. What are all of those people doing to use up so much power? Do all of my neighbors have hydroponic pot farms in their crawl spaces? This really bugs me.

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