Cheap Gas

Well, I was wrong.  (And that is not something I have to admit very often.)  But, in contrast to what I predicted a couple of weeks ago, Rural Way's January 2013 energy bill was not the highest ever.  In fact, it barely made the top five.  The total January cost for electricity and gas was $138.32.  In our economy, that is plenty of money, but, given the amount of heat we'd used, I had fears of breaking $200.  We've done that once before, in December of 2009, but I felt sure that we'd be close this time, too.  Actually, as my reader might guess, I'm glad to be wrong in this case, but I'd like to know why—so that it doesn't happen again.

Since buying The Homestead late in 2008 we have worked to improve its thermal efficiencies.  We have insulated where we could, have added storms to almost all the existing single pane windows, and have forced rags, blankets, and weather stripping into most of the obvious holes.  All of this has probably paid off a little bit.  One way to find out how much is to take the average monthly energy bill for our first full year in the house (2009), and compare it to what we paid last year (2012).  Without controlling for other factors, such as the climate, what we've saved is $13 per month.  That isn't a huge amount, but it is nice to think that we've got an extra $150 under our mattress this year that we didn't have in 2010.

To learn even more about this, though, it is useful to separate the heating months from the non-heating months.  In other words, it takes far more energy to keep The Homestead warm in the winter than it does to keep it comfortable during the rest of the year.  The heating months for southern Utah are generally November through April.  So, when we calculate the average monthly energy savings for those six months (again, using 2009 and 2012), we get $24 per month.  Thus, the total savings for the heating months is about $140.  Obviously this is what really matters.

But, how did we save that money?  What was it that we did?  Was it the insulation?  Was it the storm windows?  It was, actually, none of that.  The real savings came from converting our space heaters from electricity to gas.  In 2009, we supplemented the heat coming from the wood stove by, primarily, using electric space heaters.  By 2012, we had converted to ventless natural gas heaters in some critical areas and had almost entirely given up on electric space heaters.  Here is the financial difference:  During the 2009 heating months we spent $115 per month on electricity, but during the 2012 heating months we spent just $82 per month on electricity, a savings of $33 per month.  For gas, the outcome was reversed—we spent $21 per month in 2009 and $30 per month in 2012—but the increased cost, $9, was more than offset by the reduced electric bill.  In fact, the net savings comes out to $24 per month.  Bingo.  Mystery solved:  Our energy cost savings has come from switching from electric heat to gas heat.