11-17-2011, 04:49 AM
Here's a good article about how our town (Juneau) lowered our collective energy consumption 30% when the rates shot up to .53 cents per kilo watt hour. Mind you when this happened it was April in Alaska and electricity and heating go hand in hand for most of us. My wife's business requires the use of heated water so the effect was probably worse for us than others.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14juneau.html
We cut our electricity to the bare minimum- even so far as rationing the light on the fish aquarium and unplugging unused devices to eliminate consumption of "ghost" power. But, with the business plus having parrots with lighting and heating requirements our bill was still about $1200 FOR ONE MONTH. Fortunately when we were building our indoor aviary we had done so using the most energy efficient method of lighting that was available at the time. Otherwise it would have been much worse.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/us/14juneau.html
We cut our electricity to the bare minimum- even so far as rationing the light on the fish aquarium and unplugging unused devices to eliminate consumption of "ghost" power. But, with the business plus having parrots with lighting and heating requirements our bill was still about $1200 FOR ONE MONTH. Fortunately when we were building our indoor aviary we had done so using the most energy efficient method of lighting that was available at the time. Otherwise it would have been much worse.