As I wrote a month ago, watching the meter can become addictive. The first thing I do when the Lower Valley Energy bill arrives is sit down and analyze the numbers. Of course, I might not be so eager to track our energy use if it were on the rise, but the conservation measures we've implemented really do seem to be making a difference.

And, they were all relatively simple, inexpensive and easy to do. Replacing 23 incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents only took a few minutes and cost $25. Plugging lots of stand-by devices into power strips was also pretty  easily accomplished. The third step–consciously trying to use less energy–is a little harder to gauge, but it certainly contributes to the bottom line.

So, here are the numbers for the past six months, compared to the same period a year ago:

That's 11% less energy use over the six month period (a 1% improvement over the 5 month comparison, which means our energy use over the past month was 33% less than the same period last year).

For those of you who are wondering what the other key stat that I refer to in the hed is, it's the Akismet counter that keeps track of the amount of spam comments it has blocked since it was installed a little over a week ago. The number: 3,209!

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