The Great Kilowatt Challenge

I'm joining in with Greening of Gavin's Great Kilowatt Challenge. Here is the challenge in his own words:

"Who would like to join me in an energy  challenge?  We will only begin with grid Electricity as most folks have it connected.  Subsequent posts will be about the following;

how to read your meter, the quick basics about electricity terminology, how to manage the data you are collecting, documenting your energy baseline for the first week, and then launch into an energy efficiency programme. I have an MS Excel spreadsheet that I designed that will help out.  For those who don't have Excel, Open Office or Google docs will suffice.  I will guide you all the same.

The posts for the challenge will be over four weeks and at the end of each of the four weeks we will post the total percentage of electricity reduction we each have made.  It should be good fun, and I hope that we can all achieve a big reduction in our consumption".

I am really looking forward to this challenge for a number of reasons. We have tracked our electricity usage in the past - namely at our first house before and after we got solar, and then initially at our moldy house. Since we are currently based at Granny B's and she has just had her solar installed, we are keen to reduce her usage as much as possible. She is preparing for her "retirement" in the future and would like to be as resourceful and frugal as possible as who knows what the future may bring.

We also settle on our new house in a few weeks, and begin a renovation that will include things like insulation and rewiring to reduce electricity usage to name a few things. A new house always brings surprises / challenges with usage until you get a hold on all the extraneous variables like drafts, insulation etc, so this challenge couldnt happen at a better time.


I'm looking forward to seeing what the next 4 weeks bring.