So we have been in our home for a little over a year and just paid it off earlier this month. Now it's time to wage a war on our $200-450 a month electricity bill. I live in southeast Texas with a family of 6, so A/C use is pretty constant, but I should be able to find some improvements.
I am comfortable tinkering with electrical circuits so I bought a few usage tracking tools that I read about on here. We have 2 outdoor light posts (4 bulbs in each) that are hard wired into one of the outside circuits that never turn off, day or night. Those are getting capped and ripped up asap, the first one was already done 2 months ago. There are a few lights that have not been converted to CFL or LED's too, which should help some.
I also plan to do a full checkup on every breaker circuit to look for shorts or other issues. This should locate any appliance with standby loads as well. I'll be building a clothesline to go old school on some laundry too, we have a beautiful south facing lot with plenty of sunshine.
There is another audit I've been considering and that is thermal imaging. It should locate any areas with weak insulation and holes where heat/AC is escaping. Could also be used to find leaks in the attic vents. Flir 1 was recommended to me as an ipad attachment, but it's still almost $300. Does anyone have any experience with thermal imagining? I may try to find one to borrow somewhere, since it's expensive and not a tool that I can see myself using often.
My mother in law lives with us in a converted garage that is not insulated, this will be a somewhat larger renovation task to add, but could save us a pretty significant amount over time. I bought her a smaller window unit so the main A/C is not over worked as bad trying to keep up.
All appliances are electric and gas is not a solution in this area.
Anyway, I'll mark my progress here:
---------------------< war on ridiculous utility bills begins
Oct: 2015: $350.51
Sep 2015: $380.76
Aug 2015: $406.92
Jul 2015: $405.19
Jun 2015: $326.29
May 2015: $280.28
Apr 2015: $220.81
Mar 2015: $301.30
Feb 2015: $338.33
Jan 2015: $373.33
Does anyone else have embarrassingly high electric bills they want to fight this year?