Need a little extra spending money? Here’ s a great way to get some, and it won’t cost your parents anything extra. Just get them to agree to pay you the difference if you can reduce your family’s energy bills.
Ask your family to commit to saving energy for three months. Explore the Use Energy Efficiently section of this website for ideas.
Keep your energy bills for those three months, and ask your parents to help you compare your energy use to what your family used during the same months of the prior year. If a comparison between this year’s and last year’s energy use is not on the bill, ask your parents for last year’s energy bills. (If you no longer have your old bills, you can request this information from your local energy utility.)
Directions
- Print these pages.
- Choose either your electric usage (measured in kilowatt hours or kWh) or your natural gas usage (measured in therms or CCF, which is 100 cubic feet).
- On the first three lines, show how much energy you used during the same three-month period last year and this year (for example, January, February, March, or June, July, August).
- Add together your energy use for those three months to get your total, and write it on the “Total energy used” line.
| Last Year | Last Year’s Kilowatt Hours (or Therms Used) |
Last Year’s Price per Kilowatt Hour (or Therms Used) |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | ||
| Month 2 | ||
| Month 3 | ||
| Total energy used last year |
| Current Year | Kilowatt Hours (or Therms Used) |
Current Price per Kilowatt Hour (or Therms Used) |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | ||
| Month 2 | ||
| Month 3 | ||
| Total energy used this year |
Subtract the number of kWh or therms you used this year from the number you used last year to find your energy savings and write it here: ________________________
Multiply the number of kWh or therms you saved by the current price per kWh or therm to find your dollar savings and write it here: ________________________
(Note: If the price of your energy went up, this year’s bill may be higher than last year’s, but energy saved will still show up in fewer kWh or therms used.)
Results
If you saved energy: Congratulations! Ask your parents to pass the dollar savings on to you!
If you didn’t save energy: Try to figure out why. Was this year hotter or colder than last year? Were extra people living in your home this year? Were you away on vacation part of last year? What other reasons can you think of that might have made you use more energy this year compared to last year?