We got out first water bill in two months yesterday. I’m proud to say our water use has plummeted dramatically. Our last bill, covering August through September, was $103 and our October-November bill is $65. That’s a drop of almost 40 percent!
I wish the city offered more frequent billing updates. Now that meters can be read electronically it shouldn’t be that expensive to read them more frequently.
Also, I’d like to see water bills be made available online. Your credit card and bank statements are available online. Your telephone and electricity utilities provide your statements online. Why should your water service be the odd man out?
Putting the bills online would allow citizens to check up on their conservation efforts, too, providing graphs of usage and letting one compare her usage patterns to the year before. I believe it would foster wiser water use.
The city could also save money by not generating and mailing paper bills every other month. That’s an important consideration now that the big water bills are shrinking with the lake levels: the cost of billing is the same no matter the amount of the bill.
Are you listening, Rodger Koopman?
I’d be pretty surprised if more than 50% of Durham residents have access to a networked computer. If my neighborhood is any indication, anyway.
Speaking of online monitoring of utilities … 3 days ago we finally got our online solar monitors working … now I can see how much power the solar panels generated during the day (today: 6.55 kWh) … I can monitor how much power it made per hour … right now the monitor says “your system is currently sleeping” … it also keeps track by month (more power was generated yesterday than today) and year … I must check in on it 10 times a day (the novelty hasn’t worn off yet).
That’s really cool, Matt! We’ve whittled down our electricity use so that 6.5 KWh would go a long way.
Send me a picture of your setup when you get a chance.