Energy Use and Your Bill

Units:

Energy Use and Your Utility Bill

Next time you open up your utility bill, bring out your lesson planner in addition to your checkbook. Your bill provides many opportunities for student learning.

Following are just a few teaching ideas (if you have others, please let us know):

Energy Use
Adjust the amount of Electricity or Therms used or both. How does this affect what you owe the utility?

Through this online course and other resources, you can learn ways that you can really adjust your energy use. For example, you can buy energy-efficient appliances or you can monitor when and how you use energy (by turning the lights off when you leave the room, for example). See Energy Conservation Tips for some ideas.

Energy Costs
What if the cost of electricity or natural gas increases or decreases? Find out how much people pay for energy in other parts of the country or the world and adjust the bill using those rates. Now how much do you owe?

Seasonal Influences
Simulate how the bill might vary throughout the year. Create and print out 12 bills. How would you adjust the bill to show winter energy costs compared to summer? Why?

Appliances
Find out which appliances are the major energy users in your home. How might your bill be reduced if you used energy-efficient appliances such as an Energy Star Qualified Refrigerator? Use the bill to calculate your savings!

Do any of your appliances leak electricity? How much? How much would your bill be reduced if you could eliminate the wasted watts?

Heating
How much are you paying to heat the air outside your home? What if you could remove this cost from your bill?

If you heat your home with electricity (rather than natural gas) how might you adjust the bill to reflect your electric heating costs?

Energy Bill Calculator
Look for this Icon throughout the online course. When you see it, it means there is a connection between the topic being discussed and your utility bill. Click on it to return to the bill and make the connection!

You can use this online version of a bill to explore how changes in energy use affects what you pay each month. To make changes, simply click on the "Enter User Data" located at the bottom of the bill. When you get to the data page, you can adjust some of the information. See suggestions below for how to use these changes as learning opportunities.

This bill uses a generic format patterned after one utility in Wisconsin. Your local utility bill will have variations. Use these differences as discussion topics for your students.

We also decided to allow changes only to items over which the energy consumer has control. In other words, you can change the amount of energy you use but as a customer you cannot change the tax rate or cost of energy per therm or kilowatt-hour.

Carbon Dioxide Emissions
Recalculate the bill to show pounds of carbon dioxide produced rather than dollars and cents. After you have changed data on the "Enter User Data" page, look at the bottom of the page for the button labeled "View in terms of pounds of Carbon Dioxide." It will bring you to a copy of the bill that displays an approximation of CO₂ emissions based on your data.

For more information on CO₂and other greenhouse gas emissions, and their connection to climate change, go to Section B.2. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate Change. This section also includes additional greenhouse gas / carbon footprint calculators.

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