The spikes in our daily electricity use you see in this Google PowerMeter snapshot of our April 2011 electric usage are a direct result of us running our dryer (the middle gray line = 10 kWh).

Call me crazy, cool, or just plain weird, but we’re going to try and use less than 200 kWh of electricity for the month of May.

[No, we do NOT yet have an electric car. That’s because we live in Colorado, not in California, Washington, Arizona, or another of those lucky few EV rollout states in the U.S. Obviously, with an EV, a 200 kWh month wouldn’t be possible!]

As far as I know, we’ve never come in under 200 kWh for a full month here in our 2,000-square foot (this total includes a furnished basement), 3-bedroom home, where four of us have lived for the past five years. But we’ve come damn close, dropping coming in as low as 220 kWh for a full month of usage several times.

Ever wonder how your household electric use and costs stack up against those of others in the U.S.?

Wonder no more.

SolarChargedDriving.Com stumbled across a great electric use and cost resource on the web recently: ‘The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Average Monthly Electric Bill page’.

We’ve produced 2,300 kWh of electricity more than we’ve used since we went online with our 5.59 kW home solar system in late June 2010 here in sun-soaked Aurora, Colo.

Thanks to our utility’s ‘indefinite rollover option,’ this means we’ve been able to bank these extra kWh hours for future use.

With winter approaching, thankfully, rather gradually so far – we have not turned on the heat once yet and it’s the end of October – a decision about whether to use some of these banked kWh to heat our house is fast approaching.

Our thermostat shows 66 degrees after having been pushed there not by our furnace -- which we haven't turned on once yet this year -- but after having been pushed up naturally by a balmy 75-degree, late October day in Colorado.

Heat?

Who needs it?

We don’t – at least not until November this year, a record for us here on Colorado’s Front Range.