This past month, I was noticing how high my utility bills really were. 💡 I guess shouldn’t be that surprised, but I guess I didn’t realize I was paying nearly $100 a month for electricity and gas for my apartment. 💰 That seems like it’s a lot more then it was years ago, but honestly I’ve been using autopay, and not paying much attention. It’s been creeping up, despite all my efforts to save money.

I try to conserve power whenever possible, because I understand that my power mostly comes from the burning of fossil fuels. 🏭 Many years ago, I used to pay a renewable energy surcharge to ensure the energy I was using came from wind or hydro, but it looks like that surcharge has come and gone. With the high cost of power these days, I was thinking about discontinuing paying for it — but that’s now a moot point. Honestly, I am not sure how worthwhile paying that extra money really was — most of utility-scale renewable projects were going to get built at any rate. Eventually, my hope is be off-grid when I own land,🤠 so I won’t be burning that much fossil fuels for electricity, although I expect to be using fossil fuels for my truck and machinery, for the foreseeable future.

Conservation is my priority. ♻ I’ve never kept my heat above 50 degrees most of the year, although in exceptionally cold weather I’ll turn it up to 55 or 60. ♨ Without use of the electric radiator upstairs, it really never gets much above 55, which is fine because I kind of like it cold. I wear a sweater and climb under my sheets. 😳 I don’t own an air conditioner. I don’t have Internet or television at home, all my lights are energy efficient bulbs, although I admit the LED strip I built uses more energy then I would have liked. 💡 I do however tend to operate it at lower output levels, but the power supply I have is only about 85-90% efficient.

I do need to find ways to reduce my power usage, and try to get my bills down. Obviously in a few weeks I expect the thermostat to be turned to lowest setting, so the natural gas boiler won’t be running except for whatever waste in built in the system — a few therms because it’s impossible to turn completely off at my apartment. I’ll turn the hot-water heater breaker off anytime I expect to be gone more then a few days for camping. The refrigerator can’t be turned up much, otherwise it gets too warm in my experience. Most other things I try to leave unplugged and turned off when I’m not home. I don’t have Internet or Cable at home, so there is nothing along those lines getting used, and my big monitor and computer speakers 💻 for the most part is turned off except the rare times I’m actually using it.