My five-year old son Henry likes to measure things. Always interested in comparing one thing to another, he asks, “Daddy, would a Tyrannosaurus be bigger than our house?” or, “Daddy, is a loon faster than a cheetah?”
As a father, this line of questioning can sometimes be maddening. I mean, is there supposed to be some relevant relationship between the length of the stick he has just found and his sister’s height? But as parents we sometimes have to play along, which means we occasionally have to get out the 150-foot measuring tape to demonstrate just how long an Argentinosaurus was in comparison to a blue whale.
I understand that this desire to measure and compare is not limited to five year olds, and I can get caught up by it as well. When we moved into our house back in 2008, I began to keep very close tabs on our energy use. Energy prices fluctuate from year to year, so we decided that if we really wanted to get a handle on how we use energy, we would track kilowatt hours (kWh). I created a spreadsheet and began entering the data from our utility bills each month. From all this data, I can now tell you that December is the month we use the most electricity (we heat our home using a geothermal heat pump), or that our lowest month ever for electricity usage was July 2008, when we used only 317 kWh (still trying to beat that).
Having this information lets us see how the changes we make have an impact on our energy bill. It also lets us see how our energy use compares with other households. In Minnesota, the average monthly household electrical consumption is 817 kWh. For the entire US, households use on average 920 kWh per month. There is very little we can do about the prices utility companies charge for electricity, but we can control how much energy we use. How does your household’s energy use compare to the state and national averages?
(In case you were wondering. . . A 42-foot long Tyrannosaurus would be longer than our house, but our house is still taller than a T Rex, a loon can fly up to 90 miles per hour, much faster than a cheetah, a blue whale at 200 tons is the largest known animal to have ever existed, though an Argentinosaurus would have been longer at 120 feet from head to tail, and . . . Hazel is shorter than some sticks but taller than others.)
Update: We are gaining on the Penny Pinchers! The score currently stands at 53,965 to 78,785 but we’ve been gaining ground fast. Joining our team is easy as 1, 2, 3:
- Click here to join the team
- Click on all of the energy-saving actions you have completed
- Submit your actions and join the Mill Pond Minimizers!
