It occurred to me yesterday that I didn’t have to wait a month to see if my electricity saving measures were having an effect. The electric company did tell me what the meter reading was on May 31st, and I can read numbers off a digital meter and do the subtraction.

So I did. And then I divided by the 8.5 days that we were into the month and the number was HIGHER than my average usage for May. After completely freaking out, I realized that I had not begun trying to save energy until 5 days or so into the month, so the numbers were skewed.

This morning, I tried to find the scrap paper where I wrote yesterday’s reading down and could not find it. I estimated what it was and then did the math and that number was so astronomical I wanted to cry. I decided my estimate was wrong, but to confirm this, I’ve gone out twice this morning to check the reading. So far, in 4 hours, I’ve used 6 kwh. I’m totally cool with that. That would only be 36 kwh per day, compared to the 121 kwh per day I had last month.

Except, of course, that mornings are not quite as hot as the afternoons. At least I’ll have a baseline and I can see how efficient my A/C units aren’t. My goal is 90 kwh per day or less. I’m willing to be extra hot on the weekdays to make things more comfortable when hubby is home on the weekends.