I read a statistic today that said the typical American household uses about 12,000 kWh of electricity a year.

I keep very close tabs of my electrical usage, and it is nowhere near 12,000 kWh. In fact, I wonder if there is any household in this bbs that uses less electricity than mine!

Below is a small sample of the spreadsheet I use for tracking my electricity usage. This is just a screen shot, but if there are any Excel geeks out there who would like the actual spreadsheet, let me know and I'll send it to you. There's no real reason you should want it, but there are some interesting things being done with conditional formatting and this year/last year comparisons.

The spreadsheet goes all the way back to March of 2011, and only hints at the staggering complexity of Comisión Federal de Electricidad's bi-monthly billing system. My average electric bill comes to less than $20 USD per month.

Exactly half of the total usage is to feed two large desktop computers. (That is meter "C"). SWMBO and I require separate computers because of our difference of religion: I'm Windows, she's Macintosh.

Oh, I should mention that our house is one of the few in Ajijic equipped with both electric heat and air conditioning.

tanstaafl.

How did you manage to consume 7KwH in just one day using only two computers? Heavy use of a laser printer?

That is 1000 watts continuous for seven hours, or 500 watts for 14 hours, roughly.

I have four huge screens (2x28" and 2x 32") plus a 15" MacBook and a bunch of router/WiFi/VOIP gear connected through a 1500 watt UPS, the total consumption is barely 400 watts running load.

Laser printer added some, no doubt. But... do you know why I have three 6-port USB hubs on the back wall of my computer hutch? Because two aren't enough. 60-ppm scanner, webcam, speaker system with subwoofer (not USB but drawing power), two external hard drives to go with the four internal drives, a 27" monitor, an incandescent lamp to light up my work area, it all adds up.

Mostly, though, because I like to keep the two electric meters in sync (God only knows why, I guess I'm a bit OCD) I occasionally plug my rather large side-by-side refrigerator into the computer circuit to even things out. Note that the "A" meter is less than usual while the "C" meter is more on that day. Also, the air conditioner shares both meters (it's 220 volt so it gets one leg from each circuit) so that could have run up the tally if we used it that day. It probably gets used about 10 hours a year, and the heating system another 10. The air conditioner is heat pump so it just runs in reverse for heat.

The meters are the digital kind that automatically send the meter readings to the billing office, and on one day (December 28, 2013) my two meters and the meter for the apartment downstairs (those are the only three that I track) all showed six times the normal daily consumption. I suspect that CFE "tweaked" everybody's meter that day for reasons unknown, hoping that nobody would notice. It only ever happened that one time, but if it happens again I will raise some hell about it.

tanstaafl.

I'm not American, but...

We use 5,000 kWh of elecricty a year. However we also use 24,000 kWh of gas a year for heating and hot water.

We live in the UK, so we have no aircon.

Also, like you we are a two person household. I work from home a lot of the time.

There are always three computers running, often a couple more.

Our electric bill is £50 ($63) a month (and slightly more again for gas).

Well, you don't have to look far. My CFE bill is only $620 MXN for two months, or about $16.50 USD per month.

Probably the difference is two Macbooks instead of the beast of a computer that you have.

Single person household, plus cat. I use just over 4500kW/h per year worth of rented electrons. Not sure on the gas usage off the top of my head.

I only really use the gas for hot water and cooking, as the house is insulated well enough and is small enough that my computers can be considered space heaters with significant processing ability. I'm in the house most of the time, the main computer is on probably 18 hours a day, and there are three servers and various other things on permanently. They're all chosen for minimum power draw because of that.