Clawing our way to energy independence
By a fairly aggressive program of energy pruning, we've managed to get our powerbill down to under 700kw/month for the past 4 months. Last november, we used 1.049mwh, and this november it was 661 kwh, and that's while leaving three computers running 24x7 (the three computers and associated electronica use
about 150kwh [edit: I stripped out all the unnecessary network infrastructure and converted to a point-to-point network and got it down to about 107kwh]; I might be able to prune that down a bit if I run the servers
off a battery pack (they are all tiny little VIA EPIA5000 boxes which are too
slow for running Linux+KDE+'Zillafox (sometimes I wonder if anything is fast enough to run Firefox, which has bloated in a truely awe-inspiring fashion), but they're more than fast enough to run a traditional text version of Unix. And they don't use more than 50w even loaded up with a couple of 160gb disks, a CD-rom, a pci ethernet card, and a big 120VAC power supply) and 12vdc->(+/-)12+(+/-)5+(+/-)3.3 power converters, but that's picking away at 150kwh while 500kwh goes forgotten.)
We've already cranked our hot water heater down to 107.5°F, which has probably given us 100kwh/month back, and we've got a nice super-efficient clotheswasher, but we've still got the traditional big energy suckers known as a clothes dryer, an old inefficient electric stove, and a regular refrigerator. Surely some of those can be cleaned up.
But, even as it stands it's a pretty good improvement. At the rate we were using energy last year, we would have had to install a 12kw solar array to saw ourselves loose from the grid. That would have been barkingly expensive; the handy pricing calenders that the people who sell solar provide claim that that sort of array would cost upwards of US$70,000. But now, it's "only" a 5-6k array, or in the ballpark of US$40,000. Still barkingly expensive, but US$30,000 less barkingly expensive than our previous setup.
We could replace our fridge with a brand new Sun Frost unit (~250kwh/year), but those things are somewhat expensive and they'd only save us ~250kwh/year. 250kwh/year is about what all the wall warts in the house use, and I could get half of that back by (a) replacing pete's motherboard with one that has 4 usb 2.0 ports, (b) replacing the SGI1600 monitor on pete with one that's got a better power supply, and (c) rearranging the network wiring in the basement so that I don't have to use a switch [we have three wired computers in the house -- downbelow, the wireless access point, and the backup machine. They're all wired to a switch, and if I could directly connect them to each other then that would be 5-6w (and another 20 seconds of UPS runtime) clawed back.
(Note that I'm not even considering energy conservation through behavior modification right now. I want to be energy efficient AND maintain my decadent style of living as long as possible, and if we really wanted to be energy efficient we'd be spending US$40,000 to have the efficiency crews come in to replace our windows, door seals, and insulation; right now we burn around the ballpark of 350 gallons of diesel fuel a year to keep the Big Yellow House warm, and until we can reduce that carbon fountain, sackcloth is nothing more than another version of the Department of Homeland Hysteria's security-by-handwaving policy.)