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usage vs temperature
The FPL bills are in, and we were very pleased. FPL has some nice tools for monitoring usage and bills over time and we did great. There are two graphs they make available which show how good we did, which I blended together here.

In the graph you can see our total Kilowatt hours over the last two months. Our home is just about 3,000 square feet and my wife stays home, so we can’t turn the air up during the day. If you look at the graph for 2007, our usage jumped dramatically from June to July. However, in 2008 our usage actually dropped even though the temperature remained high.

Year over year for the month ending in July, we used about 20% less electricity in our home. This was more then we expected and certainly great to see. Our bill was also less then the previous month and much lower then in 2007.

The eleven blinds cost us about $500. Since we installed them ourselves, we had no labor charges which kept the cost down. We felt we saved at least a hundred dollars on our electric bill, which means the project payback is just five months. Not bad at all.

While we can not tell everyone that installing blinds will have such a great benefit, we certainly feel great about the project for us. We have added some style to our home and we are saving money. By cutting down on our use of electricity we are also doing our part to save the world.

Once again, we find it’s OK 2 Be Green™!