kWh

Well, it's been an exciting evening. I decided to do some math about our electricity use here at the house. At 9:20 PM the electricity meter read 25711 kWh (which is suppose is a cumulative number). Later, at 10:42 PM it read 25720 kWh. So, we used 9 kWhs of electricity in 82 minutes. This is equivalent to 6.59 kWh of energy used per hour.

Now, here's how money enters the picture. We pay about $0.15 per kWh. So, that's about $0.99 of energy used per hour, or about $670 per month. If that sounds high, it's because it is. I'm expecting to pay less than half of that this month. So, why is it so high? Consider what was going on tonight during the time I measured energy use: the thermostat was only at 78, but both the washer and dryer were running the entire time. Must have been that, but I'm planning to check the meter tomorrow morning to calculate the average rate of energy use overnight, for comparison.