After five months with the InPower PowerView system, a software / hardware application that monitors our energy consumption and the production of our solar array on a minute by minute basis, I finally understand a comment Yvon Chouinard made at the Rocky Mountain Institute 25th Anniversary panel discussion. He was asked what was one thing we could all do to reduce our consumption and his response was, “Wash our clothes less.” At the time it struck me, that of all the things he could have said, washing clothing seems pretty benign. However, now that I can see our household energy consumption in real time, his comment resonates. Our clothing drier is by far the most aggressive energy hog in our house. I can look through the data and identify exactly when our drier was running. Our resting consumption is just under 1 kW per hour (refrigerator, etc), but when the drier is running it spikes to over 5 kW per hour. Now that I understand the energy impact, I am trying to wash clothing less often. Other energy hogs at our house include the convection oven, humidifier, and of course the air conditioners. I know, I know, AC is a complete luxury in Colorado but I’m not willing to give it up just yet. Hopefully by next year we will be able to upgrade from the pathetic 10 SEER units in place now to 21 SEER heat pumps. It’s an ongoing process but one that has become much more top-of-mind now because of the reporting system.