Now We Just Need to Generate our Own Water

As noted earlier, this weekend we turned on our solar power system, thus stigginit to the man, or at least generating a good portion of our own electricity.

If I’m doing the math right, and if the current information I have is correct, we’ve been averaging 17 kWh daily consumption from the electric company (I’ve only looked at one bill, so that number is suspect until I can look at a years’ worth). In the three days we’ve had our system on – including Sunday, which was rather cloudy – we’re averaging just over 20 kWh of power generated. In any case, we’re anxious to see what our next few bills look like from them.

However, the city of Ammon is now entering a test period for metered water. Insert frown here.

I understand they need to conserve water, as additional water rights are harder to come by. But our experience with metered water when we lived in Rexburg and Sugar City equals high bills and brown lawns. They propose now to let us use 7,000 gallons of water at a flat rate of $30, with a $1.25 per thousand gallon charge after that. For seven or eight months out of the year, that’s not a problem as we’re below that 7,000-gallon threshold. When we turn on the sprinklers in the summer, however, that’s when we get in trouble and, if we don’t reduce consumption, we’re looking at bills of close to $100 a month or more.

They’re telling us now that these are only preliminary numbers, which may face adjustment after the test period is over.

So my plan is now to eventually cut our watering time in half. For the first part of the test period, I want to run the system for about 2/3 as long, just to see what our bills would be like. Depending on what we see, we’ll adjust further.

Fortunately, our kids are already on the water conservation bandwagon, as they don’t take showers until we can present them with clear visual evidence of stink lines.