I've been pretty tight when it comes to my electricity usage for awhile now. Two months after buying my first house which was all electric with baseboard heaters I received my first electric bill which was $218 and covered December and January. It worked out to 54.35 kwh/day and almost 7 years later is still the highest usage bill I received even though I've since moved across town to a house 3 times as large. I started working on reducing my bill at that point and it's pretty much all downhill since then.
Last summer my electric company offered a 10% challenge. Reduce your consumption by 10% (adjusted for weather) and receive a $75 bonus. My usage the year before was 11655 kwh. This is a 2400 sqft all electric 2 story. I supplement heating with wood but the primary is an air source heat pump. I had intentions of installing a solar hotwater setup which would easily reduce my yearly bill by 30-40% so I signed up Thinking it was an easy $75. In the end I never did get the solar installed. I continued on with the challenge anyways. In the end they say I saved 21%(adjusted) my spreadsheets show I saved 1984 kwh or 17%. So I got the $75. The 17% reduction however works out to an additional savings of $206 before taxes, fees and other associated charges. After all was said and done even with the constant rate increases in the electricity costs my bill was 19.8% lower then the year before. This puts me at 49% lower then a comparable home with comparable family size in my area according to the power company.
This was all done spending effectively no money on improvements, simply habits like using my clothesline more (538 kwh saved) making sure the heat is set lower and the heatpump cooling was only used 12 days all summer and quite sparingly when it was used.
The best part was after it the challenge ended and they gave me my totals and cut the cheque, they gave me the option to sign up again. So I did. From Oct1st of this year to oct 1st 2013 I need to save 967 kwh. My first thought was I had already trimmed most of the fat and it would take spending money this time. I have however already found some areas to improve. First off this PC never slept. It was used for work, media center,... and ran 24/7. I had planned on this when building it and it's quite low power usage at only 100 watts considering what it is. However I decided it can sleep when not needed which is nightly for 8 hours a day at least. this works out to 292 kwh a year or 30% of what I need right there. Having started hitting the sleep key when the PC isn't needed I've already noticed that my bill is 2-3 kwh lower then normal for the last week. Either my PC is using more then I estimated or something else has changed around here as well. Either way we're down to 15 kwh/day when my normal over the summer was 18 kwh/day and last year during sept I averaged 24 kwh/day
After that simply using the woodstove a little more and the HP a bit less should make up most of the rest. I also have 5 IC bulbs that will be going LED shortly. They haven't been used all summer but will start being needed as the days grow shorter. The rest are already CF.
After all of that I still want to get the solar hotwater going. I have previously recorded it's power usage and had a daily average of 9kwh going towards heating water. This was based on 3 months of readings taken early last winter. My analysis suggests that over the period of a year I can save 2873 kwh. that would leave me with a yearly usage of 6506 kwh or 542 kwh/month. At that level of usage I'm seriously thinking about installing a grid tied solar system. Systems that would provide that amount here are about $8000 plus racking and install. It's possible with the rebates that the system could cost me less then I've spent on electricity in the last 7 years since this journey started. My only hesitation is the net metering agreement here sucks. At best I can break even, they won't cut me a cheque for any excess.
if anyone cares to see the full numbers my spreadsheet is here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApVxorRXyiMHcEVIUFAxR1JHRnhOY0lTWTVCWW9XRXc&authkey=CJC147YI