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Since moving into our house in Aug 2007, we've been trying pretty hard to reduce our energy consumption, in particular our use of electricity.

Our house is a detached single-family dwelling, built in 1998, with one finished floor of 2000 square feet (186 square metres) with a full partially finished basement of 2000 square feet. Since our only energy source is electricity, the main challenge is to reduce energy wasted for space heating (using conventional electric baseboard heaters throughout) and hot water (using a conventional storage type electric water heater).

The graph at the right shows our average daily consumption per two month billing cycle for the past 2.5 years or so. We've managed to cut our electricity use by just under 20% over the first year's baseline, saving a total of approximately $620 (at an average price of 7 cents per kWh).

Part of this savings in the past year is due to a relatively mild winter on the South Coast of British Columbia in 2009/2010. On the other hand, we had an extended cold snap last winter (2008/2009).

The rest of the savings I attribute to

• Installing seven programmable digital thermostats (weekday/weekend mode)
• Replacing weatherstripping and improving the sealing/air barrier in our house
• Unplugging unused appliances, including second refrigerators and freezers
• Replacing almost every lightbulb in our house with a compact fluorescent or low-energy model
• Installing motion-detector/ambient light switches for exterior lighting and reducing exterior lighting
• Insulating our hot water heater
• Turning off (not just to standby mode) computers and printers when not in use
• Paying attention to turning off unused lights and appliances, run dishwashers only when full, etc.

Of these measures, the most effective by far (though not the cheapest up front) was installing the programmable thermostats. In all, these cost about $350, and I believe they've paid themselves off already in energy savings.
Total time to install all seven was several hours, say an afternoon.

Everyone's situation is different so what was effective for us may not be your first priority. For example, if you have a window that doesn't close properly, or are in an older house with a poor air seal or insulation, these areas would probably take priority.

Since our electric utility rate is relatively low for North America (it's a two-tier system, but the average cost is $0.07 per kWh for residential customers), the dollar amount in savings possible is much greater for those using electrical heating in most other regions.

There's a number of incentive programmes in Canada, and British Columbia in particular, which make it even more worthwhile to reduce energy consumption.

• BC and Canada Incentives: Livesmart BC
• BC Hydro Rebates and Incentives: BC Hydro

For us, the next steps are: continue to improve air sealing of our house; reduce hot water usage and waste heat from water heating (turn down the temperature on the water heater, get a digital thermostat/timer for it). Consider moving to an alternate/secondary fuel for heating and hot water; install an 'on-demand' heater. Consider feasibility for solar hot water. I have a number of fairly radical energy system improvements in mind, which could give further energy consumption reductions of 60 to 70%, once we've reached the limits of conventional, incremental improvements.

By the way, this works out to about 5 tonnes of CO2 saved over two years, assuming the national (US) average of approximately 0.6Kg CO2 per kWh of electricity (http://www.epa.gov/RDEE/energy-resources/refs.html). In BC, much electricity is generated from Hydroelectric generators, so this number is probably higher than the actual savings; however, since the electrical grid makes consumption and generation a regional/national scale problem, it's not completely unrealistic to use national averages. For example, BC Hydro buys "excess" coal-generated electricity from the States at night, when demand is low, so prices are low, and uses this electricity to pump water from downstream reservoirs to upstream reservoirs, to generate electricity during the day to sell to the States at the higher daytime rate. Hydroelectric generation therefore acts as a demand buffer to allow less coal-fired generation to happen.