The 3 kWh Challenge
After a poor April (with no year-over-year change in our electrical consumption), we got a new refrigerator and reevaluated our strategy. Reducing our furnace use helped a lot in the winter, but we barely used the A/C last year, so that wasn’t going to improve this year.
Thanks to the refrigerator, May was a good month. We were able to reduce our consumption by 50%! That brought our total usage for May to 121 kWh, which is a little over 4 kWh a day. Given that, I talked Maggie into trying to reduce our usage to less than 3 kWh a day in June. For comparison, leaving two incandescent bulbs on would use up the allotment for that day.
So June is over; how did we do? From June 1st to July 3rd, we used 79.9 kWh or a little under 2.5 kWh a day! Here’s how we did it.
No A/C - A/C isn’t as energy intensive as heating, at least in part because the temperature difference isn’t as high, but it still uses a lot of power. Running a typical central air system for half an hour can use over 1 kWh. Instead, we used blinds to reduce solar gain, opened windows when it was cool and closed them when it was hot, used the ceiling fan and window fans, and, on one particularly hot afternoon, took refuge in an air-conditioned movie theater.
No hot water - the majority of residential energy use is cooling and heating, including water heating. My best estimate is that our 40-gallon water heater uses 300 Wh (0.3 kWh) a day. We got a solar camp shower and we’ve also taken some cold showers. As a bonus, we cut our water use significantly since you don’t dawdle in a cold shower!
No clothes dryer - Our clothes dryer runs about 2 kWh per load! Now that it’s summer, we’ve avoided using it entirely and line dry everything. It takes more planning, especially since we had so many thunderstorms in June, but that’s quite the energy savings!
Reduced computer use - I have a small netbook that uses less than half of the electricity of my normal laptop. I was able to get even better numbers by using Windows’ power settings to dim the screen and slow the processor. I also made sure to take my charger with me when I worked outside the house. That doesn’t decrease my overall electrical use, but partly offsets the fact that I work from home.
Sharing space - In the evening, Maggie and I make sure we spend most of our time in the same room. That means we’re only running one fan and one set of lights. It’s not a big savings, but it’s also pretty easy to do.
We won’t be able to sustain it into the winter, and some of it is extreme enough that we might not be able to sustain it for more than a month or two. I think we’ll be able to keep it under 3 kWh for July and maybe August, but when it gets cold again, we’ll have to turn on the furnace. We also won’t be able to stop using the dryer entirely at that point. Still, for now, we’re feeling pretty good!
This whole 
So we signed up for the SIREN Energy Challenge and have been trying to figure out where we use electricity and how we can cut back, which means Will is running around using his Killowatt on everything. At the same time, I am planning my garden for spring and also thinking about how we will take advantage of the summer bounty. My dad helped me set up a seed starting system with three shelves of fluorescent lights and I’m trying to talk Will into getting a chest freezer so we can store the summer’s vegetables but all he can think about is the increased electrical consumption.
Well, approximately one year after we purchased an 
Next came the fun but mildly intimidating step of drilling a hole in the roof! We rented a “Sawzall” reciprocating saw for the job since it didn’t seem like a piece of equipment we really needed to own. I am mildly afraid of heights but I do love power tools so I had a good time cutting out a big chunk o’ roof. Happily, the solar tube is designed in a way that the hole does not need to be perfectly circular (it wasn’t) since it comes with a rubber “boot” that fits over the hole, under the neighboring shingles. Once we had the hole cut, we pried up the shingles around it, put some roof sealant on the rubber boot, and slid it into place.
Somehow we didn’t get any pictures of us sliding the actual metal tube into place, probably because I kept blinding Will with it. The solar tube is comprised of two very shiny metal tubes and a clear plastic dome. Sun shines down on the dome and then bounces down through the tubes to our kitchen, where a frosted plastic light fixture lets the light shine through without blinding anyone.
So, back up to the roof to remove the dome, swap the tubes, then Will stayed on the roof while I went into the attic and it was much easier to get the tubes together. He pulled the top tube up while I put the correct bottom tube into place in the ceiling fixture, and then he pushed the top tube down, helping me wrestle the two tubes together and then tape them with the shiny metal tape enclosed in our original kit. Whew! I totally used some muscles I didn’t know I had but I would willingly do it again and I know it would go faster the second time.
You know those little projects that you never seem to get around to? Well, our new house came with a security light over the garage that stays on 24 hours a day. Neither of us have ever really been into security lighting, especially the kind that illuminates the back deck, calls in flying insects from nearby counties, and shines brightly in through our windows. There’s also the fact that it drains electricity 24 hours a day, which seems rather wasteful. However, this light didn’t come with a light switch so we had trouble figuring out how to turn it off.
We checked our electric meter after turning the circuit breaker back on and it appears to be spinning at a much slower rate. Woo hoo! Victory! We’re not sure exactly what wattage the bulb was but based on some other on-line security light figures it could easily be as high as 200 Watts. With 24-hour usage, that adds up to 6 kWh per day, almost as much as we used 
My abstract thinking about 
As part of making the house move-in ready, I’ve done a lot of research into efficiency and appliances. I’ve already 
