My 3rd electric bill came in at the same usage as the 1st full month: 73kWh.

My latest natural gas bill also came in and, though it wasn’t as low as I’d anticipated in my last blog entry, it does show a substantial reduction over the previous tenant’s usage. The actual meter reading showed about 86 CCF of gas used in January and February combined (72 {estimated} and 14 CCF, respectively).

The usage history for this apartment for February (the month for which I have the longest record, 3 years), shows a much steeper decline than what I suspect actually occurred. In 2007, the previous tenant was billed for 111 therms (CCF) for February; in 2008, the figure was 34 therms. I suspect that the apartment was unoccupied for a substantial part of the month (or it was unusually warm in Columbus!). If we assume my own consumption was about the same for both January and February this year, then I used about 43 therms in February (though I think it was somewhat lower than January’s usage).

As it is, the graph, going from 111 to 34 to 14, could be a poster child for conservation and efficiency! But 111 down to about 40 is still a 64% decrease– that’s nothing to sneeze at, and I haven’t even done all that I could do to minimize consumption and maximize efficiency.

~Ben
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