14 weeks till Christmas!

Where has the year gone? I don’t know about you, but ….

Handmade Christmas

Stumped on what to get someone this year for Christmas? Want to support the economy? Buy handmade items made in the US!

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Solar update

Well, we’ve had some great solar days and are getting close to the 2,000kW mark. We had monitoring software installed a little over a week ago and can now not only see our minute-by-minute solar production but also our energy use. Makes you really stop and think when you see that spike in energy use…. “I don’t want to turn on the oven… lets go out to eat” ;).

Update on the freezer situation. Took another look at the energy it was using and figured out it was using about 1240 kw a year. Looked into a new one, and was amazed to see that if we traded our old upright for a new chest model, we could save more than 900kW a year! That’s a whole month’s worth of electric! I didn’t realize the new models used so little electric. So we went to Sears and got a new Energy Star 13 cu.ft. chest freezer. Going to donate the old upright to a new home. Hope they don’t mind how much it costs to run… the new one will pay for itself in less than 3 years.

Looked at the 2001 refrigerator too – but we’d only save about 450 kW a year on a new model – not worth the high price tag on a new one.

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