Damn electricity!

The bane of my life at the moment is our electricity usage - essentially it's appalling! We had a shocking month last month (pun intended!), using, on average, a whopping 30 kWh per day :-( It was an unusual month in that we were sick with gastro for a week or so - which required probably triple the amount of washing we would normally do in a week (*lots* of towels!), and because a virus was involved I washed the really spewy sheets and towels in hot water. And of course no one was up to hanging out washing on the line so it nearly all went in the clothes dryer. Since then, it's been either *incredibly* humid and sticky, so the air conditioner has had a huge workout, or there have been many storms - so too wet to hang the clothes out. Fed up with musty clothes from the humidity, nearly everything since then has also gone into the dryer... It just goes to show how much power air conditioning and clothes dryer contribute to global warming!

I read yesterday that the average yearly electricity consumption in the United States is 10,656 kWh per year. When I multiplied our last month's electricity usage over a year I got 10,986 kWh! I know it was a *bad* month, but surely that means that over a year, our use probably isn't too much below that :-(

Out of curiousity I then googled some electricity use averages from around Australia and the world:
* United States - 10,656 kWh/annum
* The United Kingdom - 3,880 kWh/annum
* European Union - 6,398 kWh/annum
* Australasia - 5,945 kWh/annum
* Australia - 6,700 kWh/annum
* Perth - 3,500 kWh/annum
* Port Hedland WA - 10,200 kWh/annum
* SE Queensland - 10,937 kWh/annum
* Canberra - 8,000 kWh/annum
* Victoria - 6,398 kWh/annum
* Melbourne - 6,265 kWh/annum

So it seems I'm right up there with the worst energy users around the world :(

We've already addressed a number of energy issues around the house, in particular:
* Installing window tinting on the western and northern windows;
* Installing "phantom" power "kill-switches" on the two entertainment units and turning the computer paraphenalia, clothes dryer and microwave off at the wall when not in use;
* Installing more ceiling fans;
* Getting rid of the very old bar fridge;
* Buying a new energy-efficient fridge;
* Boiling only enough water as required in the kettle instead of filling it;
* Getting rid of all but one "wall wart".

I've had another look at the list of green tips I have on saving energy, and googled some more, but really the only things we seem to be doing wrong are:
* The air-conditioner. I'm sure it has to work much harder when it's so humid too.
* The clothes dryer. I only really use it when I *have* to. As I said last month was unusual.
* Not turning off all lights when not in use (a HUGE bugbear of mine, I am struggling to get through to the rest of my family about the importance of this!) and also, directly related to this:
* About half our light bulbs are incandescent or halogen bulbs. We can't replace the halogen bulbs, and most of the incandescents we have are the candle bulb type. To date I have only found ONE candle type CFL bulb available in Australia but a) it's too big for our fittings, b) it's a much lower wattage (the equivalent of 25 watts versus our 40w bulbs) and c) you can't install them in lights with dimmers on them. In fact, the vast majority of CFLs cannot be fitted to lights with dimmer switches (there is now a normal-size dimmable bulb available in Australia apparently, try neco.com.au).

Given that incandescent bulbs are going to be banned for sale in Australia in three years time, I am hoping that an alternative is available way before then, LOL. In the meantime I can only think to get in an electrician to remove the dimmer switches and install the low voltage candle bulbs until a higher watt version is available - and hope that we can still get enough light to read by, LOL. I should also add that these candle bulbs start at $16.95 EACH... and we need eight of them! *Sigh*

I know the dryer and air-con are big culprits and minimising their use is really important, but I really don't know what else to do? Our average use still seems to be about 27-28 kWh per day according to January's readings? Argh!