Assessing Your Energy Usage

Every month you receive a bill from OPALCO for the electricity your home has consumed. Do you know how to read your bill? Do you know how much you pay per Kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity used? Have you wondered how your electricity usage compares to your neighbors?

Reading your meter

Currently, we have two types of meters in use, the old mechanical meters with the cogs and the new AMI meters with digital display.

Old Meter

New Meter

If you wanted to know how much electricity your home consumed over a certain time span, like 24 hours, all you have to do is read your meter at the beginning and end of the time span. Subtract your beginning reading from your ending reading and this is how many kilowatt hours of electricity consumed. With knowledge of actual usage, we all can make choices to improve our energy efficiency and save money. The first step is to conduct an energy assessment of your home.

Home Snapshot Energy Assessments

Have a certified Building Performance Analyst assess your home and determine where you can save the most energy and money. Get on the path to energy efficiency! Islanders Bank is now offering the Get Connected Small Home Improvement Loan Program to fund your energy efficiency upgrades.

Do-It-Yourself Tools

If you are a Do-It-Yourself type, start with the following tools:

Home Energy Saver – a powerful online energy audit tool. Input our residential rate ($0.0758/kWh) for more accurate results.

Kill A Watt Meters – Members can check out a Kill A Watt meter at their local San Juan County library and use it to calculate electrical expenses by the day, week, month or year. Simply plug a household item into the device and it will calculate the efficiency of that item by displaying the kilowatt hours used. Reference our Appliance Cost Fact Sheet to check your findings. Here’s an example we did in the office: Kill-A-Watt Convect Air Heater Example

In-Home Displays and Online Software – The latest trends in helping people assess there electricity usage are In-Home Displays such as The Energy Detective (TED) or online software such as Google Power Meter. OPALCO is assessing both In-Home display units and software that would allow our members to monitor their usage in near real time in conjunction with our Automated Metering Infrastructure. Stay tuned.

If you want to discuss the results of your DIY energy assessment with an energy efficiency specialists, contact us.