Grand Meadow Wind Farm in Mower County, MN
This morning I signed up for Windsource at Xcel Energy. As soon as they throw the switch we will be getting our electricity from The Grand Meadow Wind Farm(pdf). Before making the switch I wanted to figure out how much we now pay. I also wanted to see how many Kilowatt Hours(KWH) we use per month.
Being an environmentally conscious person, some time ago I signed up for paperless billing. XcelEnergy uses the third-party service provider, MyCheckFree.com. Thing is there’s no way to view energy consumption on this site, just the date of payment and the amount of the bill. I now use USBank’s online bill payment service. It keeps all of my bill payment history in one place.
For my energy consumption history, I needed to call Xcel directly and ask that they email it to me. I still haven’t received it yet. May have to call them back.
I’m considering installing the TED5000 to accurately track my home’s energy usage. Ed Kohler over at theDeets.com has had one installed for a few months now and he tells me that he is currently saving $15 per month. If I see similar results, the device will pay for itself and then pay for the extra in WindSource fee.
My families carbon footprint just got a little smaller.
