Originally Posted by
Whiternoise
Bulbs will have saved you a fair amount. If you've got a 100W filament bulb and you replace it with a 20W eco one (that gives you a similar amount of lux) then you've saved 80W (or for every ten hours the bulb is on you've saved 800Wh - that seems like a lot to me, i'll double check).
Nice to see it actually paid off!
What i think is really interesting is that you seem to flatlined your power usage. In the past, your data shows that you used about double the electricity in winter than you do in the summer. With the various improvements it's more or less the same. That, to me, would imply that changing the fridge didn't have that much of an effect. If we assume that your fridge/freezer is on 24/7 then each month you will have almost exactly the same number of kWh dedicated to it. So, all your "always on" devices give you a sort of baseline, a minimum expenditure.
When you use heating and lights, your TV and consoles, appliances, you vary your consumption above that baseline. You can take your summer consumption as roughly the minimum since you don't need heating, lights only need to be on for a couple of hours a day and so forth - while at the same time you're using your appliances with the same regularity (though you could also have a couple of weeks of baseline use due to a holiday).
So, where's this going?
Well, your baseline consumption hasn't changed that much, it's hovering around the 800kwh mark per quart. Less than the previous year, but not by much. This implies, to me, that where you've saved most of your electricity is in heating and "occasional" power usage, things like lights, the TV and things that used to be on standby all the time. The fridge probably dropped your base consumption, but not by that much.
You've dropped it by quite a lot since a year ago, but as i said, your consumption now is almost equal throughout the year (almost no variation in comparison to last time). I suspect that most of that saving was from turning things off at the wall rather than letting them just turn off (and suck up all that quiescent power). If you turned off your PC and peripherals that might save you, what, 40Wh per hour it's off?
In some respects i think that's more important than just dropping it, now you know you can keep your usage consistent. People should take note, there is NO reason why your electricity usage should suddenly skyrocket in winter.
Out of interest did you cut down on your heating as well, put on a few woolly jumpers sort of thing?