LED, Smart Plugs and a New Energy Efficient Refrigerator Yield an Energy Savings of About 50% and a

First, I am an energy geologist and analyst and have worked as an energy equity analyst and portfolio manager for several large mutual funds and hedge fund - so I love science, experiments and data. As a result, my house became a huge energy experiment. The above chart is a continuation of previous published charts with more time included. Our house is represented by the black curve and blank linear trend line. The orange/red curve is for All Neighbors within a mile radius. There are a mix of large and small homes in this group. The green curve is for the Most Efficient Neighbors as defined by Xcel Energy. We originally were consuming energy in excess of All Neighbors. This is not something to be proud of. So, I started researching technologies that we could benefit from. The Fed had already passed a law that had been implemented regarding the phase out of incandescent light bulbs. We had tried a few compact fluorescent lightbulbs and were not impressed by its esthetics or its lighting. Xcel began offering deep discounts on light emitting diodes (LED) bulbs and I began buying them only when they hit $5/bulb. In September 2014, I bought a large number of LEDs at $5/bulb and installed them in high traffic areas of our house. That was the first major drop in electricity consumption - from being located above All Neighbors to within All Neighbors and the Most Efficient Neighbors. This was huge reduction. I left things alone as a scientist would do to see if the results were real. Once they held within the band, I bought another round of LEDs and energy efficient smart plugs. Those technology implementations show up in September 2015. We have been riding the Most Efficient Neighbors curve, some months slightly above that curve and some months slightly below that curve. In November 2016 our 20 year old refrigerator died. We replaced it with a new one and that difference sent us well below the Most Efficient Neighbors. I then overlaid our energy consumption with our monthly cost shown in blue with a blue linear trend line. The energy savings far exceeded any expectations. The total cost of LED light bulbs, smart plugs and refrigerator was $2100. (We searched for a very specific refrigerator that would fit a custom space and we only found 1 refrigerator which was $1300). In 3 years our average bill decreased from $150 per month to $90 per month. That makes it a 30 month payback on the investments. Looking at the energy trend line of our house, we dropped our energy usage from 1300 kWh to 700 kWh, almost a 50% reduction. If every household and business were to do this, then we could close all of the pre-1964 coal fired power plants, without building any new power plants.