Last year we had solar panels installed on our garage. They started producing energy in August. The solar company estimated the panels would cover 80% of our electricity needs.
Over the course of a year, we would like the panels to cover all of our electricity needs. We don't have batteries so for us this means simply using as much as we generate. We only have so much room on the roof so we couldn't install more panels. Our challenge is to reduce the amount we consume.
With our solar panels, comes a system that provides minute-by-minute updates on electricity consumption and generation. If you don't have solar panels, there are devices you can purchase to monitor consumption in real time. It has been interesting to watch what takes up the most energy. So far, the winner of that contest is our clothes dryer. We assume later in the summer the air conditioner will take up a significant amount of energy, but we haven't really used it since the panels started operating. This is a screen shot of our energy consumption today. After noon and around 8 p.m. you can see high rates of consumption. We were running the clothes dryer at these two times (plus at the later time, my kid took a shower so our electric hot water heater was going too).
We live in a place that is quite cold in the winter. I have seasonal allergies to so I am reluctant to hang things like sheets outside to dry during the warmer months. We will probably continue to use the dryer, but we have started to make a concerted effort to do less laundry. We noticed that we have been washing a lot of bath towels. Three people should not be sending 11 towels to the laundry in a week. In order to help us, I made little badges from denim leftover from my garden apron project with the initials of our first names on them. I binder clipped them on to each of our towels. I did this with our table napkins too, but that was less about laundry than about the fact that the napkins were getting mixed up and we were losing them.
On the day last week when we started the new system, I gathered up all the towels in the bathroom and put them in the laundry. Then I took out a clean towel for each of us and hung them up. A few hours later my spouse informed me he kept two towels on the back of his door because he needed a second towel for his hair (he has much shorter hair them me). On the first night of the new system, my kid told me had used the new system and used the towel with his initial on it. On the second and third nights, he forgot and took out new towels from the basket. So I put this sign on our towel basket.
We put the two extra towels he used aside to use the next week. We managed to do only
three loads of laundry this weekend including bed sheets, but we are still struggling with the towels. I just went into the bathroom and found a fourth towel that had no tag on it and that was wet. There are two possible culprits and since I haven't yet taken my shower today, it wasn't me. Let's hope it works better next week.
