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What Electric Bills Can Tell You About Energy Use

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Abstract

This project is a great way to "bring home" the concept of energy use. All you need to get started is a good-sized sample of monthly electric bills from households in your area. Building from this simple beginning, you can ask questions that can take you in many different directions. For example: How much electricity does the "average" person in your area use per month? How much does electricity use vary among different families?

Summary

Areas of Science
Energy & Power
Difficulty
 
Time Required
Very Long (1+ months)
Prerequisites
To do this project you will have to collect sample monthly electric bills from at least 30 different households, along with the number of people living in the household.
Material Availability
Readily available
Cost
Very Low (under $20)
Safety
No issues
Credits

Andrew Olson, Ph.D., Science Buddies

Sources

This project is based on:
  • O'Brien, Jr., W.P., 2007. "Mining Power and Hydrocarbon Consciousness from the Monthly Electricity Bill: A Classroom Project," Physics Education 42(1, January): 81–87.

Objective

The goal of this project is to estimate consequences from household electricity use using data from a survey of electric bills combined with information about electricity production.

Introduction

You might not think that a monthly electric bill would be terribly interesting. However, if you collect a stack of them from different households, you'll find that you can do some very interesting analysis of the numbers.

You'll be able to see how much electricity the "average" person uses per month. Perhaps more importantly, you'll be able to see the amount of variation in usage of electricity from one household to another. To learn more about electricity, see the Science Buddies Electricity, Magnetism, & Electromagnetism Tutorial.

You can also do some calculations to find out about the costs of using electricity. Not only in terms of dollars and cents, but also in terms of resources consumed, or carbon dioxide produced. This project is a great way to start thinking about the importance of energy efficiency and energy conservation.

Terms and Concepts

To do this project, you should do research that enables you to understand the following terms and concepts:

Questions

Bibliography

  • Official energy statistics are available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  • Here is an Excel tutorial to get you started using a spreadsheet program:
    Excel Easy. (n.d.). Excel Easy, #1 Excel tutorial on the net. Retrieved June 11, 2014.
  • Because energy use patterns can vary greatly from one family to another, a home energy audit can help you identify what you can do to save energy around your house. If you're interested in doing a home energy audit, this website can take you through the process:
    LBNL, (n.d.). The Home Energy Saver. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  • This project is based on:
    O'Brien, Jr., W.P., 2007. "Mining Power and Hydrocarbon Consciousness from the Monthly Electricity Bill: A Classroom Project," Physics Education 42 (1, January): 81–87.

Materials and Equipment

To do this experiment you will need the following materials and equipment:

Experimental Procedure

  1. Do your background research so that you are knowledgeable about the terms, concepts, and questions, above.
  2. Collect monthly electric bills (ideally from the same month) for at least 30 different households.
    1. Make sure to find out how many people live in each household. Have the participants write the number of household members down on the bill.
    2. To maintain privacy, the participants can black out (or cut off) identifying information such as name, address, and account number.
    3. The more households you can include in your sample, the better. See the Science Buddies How-To resource Sample Size: How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?
    4. Here are some ideas for getting volunteers to participate:
      • Start early on this part of the project, because it will take time to gather a large sample of bills.
      • Ask your friends, relatives, and classmates.
      • Make a one-page flyer describing your project and your need for monthly electric bills. Make sure that your flyer reminds people to write down the number of people in the household, and lets them know that they can remove their name, address and account number from the bill. Get permission to post your flyer at one or more local businesses with a lot of foot traffic. Leave a collection box or envelope for utility bills.
      • See if you can get a neighborhood newspaper interested in writing an article about your project. Readers could send their bills to the newspaper office for you to pick up.
  3. Once you have the bills in hand, it's time to start analyzing them. You can do this by hand with a calculator, or you can use a spreadsheet program (like Microsoft Excel or WordPerfect QuattroPro).
  4. You may think of more calculations to make with the data as you go along, but the table has some suggested statistics to compute to get you off to a great start:

    Quantity Range Mean Median Standard Deviation
    kWh/household-month        
    $/household-month        
    persons/household        
    kWh/person-month        
    $/person-month        
    cents/kWh        
    W/person        
  5. Here is an explanation of each of the quantities in the table:
    1. Kilowatt-hours per household per month (kWh/household-month): electric use is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh).
    2. Dollars per household per month ($/household-month): the total dollar amount for electricity use for the month for each household.
    3. Persons per household (persons/household): this number should be supplied on each bill. If the number is missing, don't use that particular bill.
    4. Kilowatt-hours per person per month (kWh/person-month): for each bill, divide the total kilowatt-hours by the number of people in the household.
    5. Dollars per person per month ($/person-month): for each bill, divide the total dollar amount for electricity by the number of people in the household.
    6. Cents per kilowatt-hour (cents/kWh): for each bill, divide the dollar amount for electricity by the number of kilowatt-hours, then multiply by 100 to convert from dollars to cents.
    7. Watts per person (W/person): for each bill, divide the number of kilowatt-hours
  6. For each quantity in the table, calculate the range, the mean, the median, and (for advanced students) the standard deviation. Start by entering the raw data for each quantity in a separate column in a spreadsheet (or raw data table).
    1. Spreadsheet programs will have all of these functions available so that you can create formulas to make the calculations automatically.
    2. If you need help with using a spreadsheet program, try this tutorial http://www.excel-easy.com/.
  7. See the Variations section for presentation ideas on how to make these numbers more meaningful.
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Global Connections

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) are a blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all.
This project explores topics key to Responsible Consumption and Production: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Variations

Here are some ideas for taking the project further:

  • Investigate other environmental consequences of electric generation. For example:
    • Burning coal produces about 1 kg of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced (plus other pollutants). (O'Brien, 2007) Figure out how much CO2 this amounts to per person for the "average" electricity user in your study.
    • Heat-driven electric generation (e.g., coal, natural gas, nuclear) has only about 30–35% efficiency overall, which is roughly half of the theoretical maximum efficiency (Second Law of Thermodynamics) of 64%. (O'Brien, 2007; EIA, 2007b) Coal has a heat energy of 6.6 kWh/kg, but because of the 30–35% efficiency of the electric generation process, only 2.2 kWh of electricity is produced per kg of coal. Figure out much coal is required per person per year for the "average" electricity user in your study.
  • To give some life to your numbers, think of equivalent measures for per-person power consumption. (O'Brien, 2007) For example:
    • You could figure out how many 60-watt light bulbs could be powered by one person's average monthly electric usage.
    • You could figure out the equivalent horsepower for a person's monthly electric usage.
    • You could figure out how much sunlight (in terms of area at the Earth's surface) would be required to provide one person's electric power consumption (using currently available solar electricity technology).
  • Learn about the mix of generation sources that produce electricity in your state. How much of the capacity is from renewable sources? What fraction of the generation capacity could realistically come from renewable sources in the future? (EIA, 2005b; for states other than California, substitute the desired state name for 'california' in the link text)
  • Advanced. Investigate the differences in per person energy costs that you can identify in your study. Do some families have a more energy-efficient lifestyle? Design a more in-depth study to find out why and how.

Careers

If you like this project, you might enjoy exploring these related careers:

Energy Engineer
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How much energy do you think all the houses and buildings in the United States consume? It turns out they eat up 40% of all the energy that the U.S. uses in a year. The figure is high because all those houses and buildings need to be heated, cooled, lit, ventilated, and supplied with heated water and electricity to run all sorts of electrical devices, appliances, and computers. Energy efficiency engineers help reduce the energy that houses and buildings use. This saves families and businesses… Read more
Economist
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Every country has resources—people, land, raw materials, capital, and machinery—and economists study how those resources are distributed to create the goods that people buy, and the services people need or want. In their studies, economists monitor economic trends and collect data on things like energy costs, inflation, interest rates, exchange rates, business cycles, taxes, and employment levels. Based on their analysis of this data, they develop forecasts of economic activity so… Read more
Sustainability Specialist
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Are you passionate about the environment? Do you like developing and implementing new ideas? Do you enjoy talking with people about how humans impact nature? If these things are true about you, then you may be the ideal candidate for a job as a sustainability specialist. Sustainability specialists work in large and small corporations and universities to design and execute energy and resource conservation programs that reduce their employers' impact on the environment. This is a great career for… Read more
Power Distributor & Dispatcher
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Think of all the things in your home or school that use electricity, like the lights, TV, refrigerator, washer, microwave, music players, computer, and electronic devices. Now think of how you feel when the power goes out, even for just a moment. Power plant distributors and dispatchers have an important job—they work to keep electricity flowing to homes and businesses by carefully watching and planning for problems like big storms that could damage transmission lines, heat waves that… Read more

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General citation information is provided here. Be sure to check the formatting, including capitalization, for the method you are using and update your citation, as needed.

MLA Style

Science Buddies Staff. "What Electric Bills Can Tell You About Energy Use." Science Buddies, 22 June 2021, https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Energy_p017/energy-power/what-electric-bills-can-tell-you-about-energy-use. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.

APA Style

Science Buddies Staff. (2021, June 22). What Electric Bills Can Tell You About Energy Use. Retrieved from https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/Energy_p017/energy-power/what-electric-bills-can-tell-you-about-energy-use


Last edit date: 2021-06-22

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