Lowering my electric bill.

I have been trying for some time to get our electric bill under $100. In the past our bill has approached $300. The biggest factor in the last year was the solar powered attic vent that I had installed. It really lowered the amount of air conditioning we use. I thought this month would finally be the month, my usage was far below what I had had in the past. But I was up against the fact that the rates had gone up in the last year. We recently got the bill and I just missed it. The bill was $102.84.

The ironic part is that next month the fuel rates are being lowered due the recent drop in fuel prices. Had the new rates been in place I would have made it. Next month however it will be harder to get to under 100 because it is getting hotter here in Florida and I am not going to give up air conditioning.

Over the last year I have done a few things to lower that bill such as the solar powered vent. As I slowly start using more solar. Step by step I hope to get there. Eventually I would like to get PV panels on the roof but that is a big investment. However it is nice to know that if we had a 5 kW solar system installed, at least for this past month, we would have had an electric bill of $0. And in fact we would have had a surplus to send back to the grid as a credit against later electric bills.
Some day we will be there.

Welcome to Little Solar Steps!

Welcome to Little Solar Steps! In this blog I will write about slowly changing over to Solar power. I will chronicle my own steps as I gradully change my home to solar. Rather than trying to jump off the grid. I will look at slowly moving off the grid step by step. I may never be completely off the grid but I can lower my reliance on it and hopefully save some money as well.

I live in Florida, the sunshine state, so it is only natural that I should take advantage of the free energy streaming onto my house. I have already made a few steps and I will talk about those in upcoming entries and give the details about what I did, how I did it and the costs and benefits I realized. One project has already saved me several hundred dollars.

There are many small steps we can take along the way so that the change is not so overwhelming. By overwhelming I mean both economically and as a lifestyle change. Hopefully the changes will end up costing us less and be an adventure as well.