rOn Sat, 19 Jan 2008 09:40:37 -0600, Steve IA wrote:

xposted: alt.energy.homepower,alt.home.repair.misc.rural

Our average electricity usage for the last 6 years for December is 653 kwh
with a range of 120. December 07 our usage was 682 kwh. This would not have
been unusual except for the fact that, due to an ice storm, we had NO
electricity for 6.5 days. Billing cycle per the bill was 31 days.

Facts:
Elec clothes dryer.

After looking at this thread and then re-reading your initial post, this caught my
eye. Presumably your dirty clothes backed up during the outage. How many loads of
wash did you do when the power was restored?

If your dryer is typical it draws about 7kW. That means that it would use 7kWh for
every hour of operation. Assume a load takes an hour. Mine does.

You had power for (31-6.5) = 24.5 days. If your usage was average then you used
653/31 = 21.06kWh/day. For the month that would be 24.5*21.06 = 516kWh. The
difference from your average would be 653-516 = 136.9kWh.

136.9/7kWh per load ~= 20. So if you did 20 extra loads of clothes after the power
came back on, just the dryer usage (ignoring all other additional loads such as
whatever the washing machine and well pump used to support the extra clothes washing)
would account for the difference.

Since you and your neighbors were in similar situations, it wouldn't be unusual for
them to have done extra laundry too.

You probably also had dirty dishes piling up (additional well pump and maybe electric
dishwasher usage) and probably didn't vacuum during the outage. I bet that if you
sit down and carefully recount your activities after the power came on, you could
account for most, if not all the apparent discrepancy.

I'm still betting on an estimation catch-up reading but even if they really don't
estimate, it's not very hard to account for the difference with just a few lifestyle
assumptions and undoubtedly the extra degree-days involved. After all, you DID have
s storm severe enough to cause an extended power outage.

John
--
John De Armond
See my website for my current email address
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.johndearmond.com -- best little blog on the net!
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
Why the US is losing its competitivve edge:"It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."-James Niccol