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Over the first twelve months of operation, the energy bills averaged $78 per month. The graph below shows both the monthly bills and the amount of electricity, in kilowatt hours, that we used. (The August bill was so low because we had a cool month and didn't use the air conditioner much.)
Electricity makes up the vast majority of the energy costs. There is a woodstove, but the area, being rural, abounds in sources of free firewood. The kitchen range uses propane, which ending up costing only about $20 for the first year.
As improvements are made to the house, energy consumption should drop. The biggest need is to insulate the rest of the basement walls, only about a third of which are currently insulated, since it's the weakest part of the building envelope and is responsible for half of our heating load.
One change that's been made since these data was the replacement of the 100+ kWh per month refrigerator with an ENERGY STAR refrigerator that uses only about 42 kWh per month. There are some of the other energy efficiency projects that could be done to cut energy consumption from the electric grid. The 12 V battery system (See solar water pump & composting toilet sections below) that's now charged with utility power could get a photovoltaic module for charging. Also, while building, we stubbed in pipes to make it easy to install a solar water heater in the future. Those changes will probably drop the electric bill to about $50 per month and raise our HERS score from 88.7 to about 92.


