So continuing my cleaning and shredding.. I have compiled all of my natural gas bills since 1996.

A few interesting trends and observations – Total cost over 20 years was just shy of $20,000. If all of that gas was converted to electricity (with no loss) that represents a bit over 500 Megawatt hours… which would be the output of a good size nuclear reactor for an hour.

You can see where in the first two houses I had an electric water heater, but in the third the gas water heater adds a baseline all year long.

Size matters – Not surprising in a simple thermodynamic system like this. When we did the addition on our house and switched from a heat pump to dual gas furnaces it made a huge jump. You can also see how the colder than average winter in Dec 2016 compared to previous years.

The cost per therm is interesting as there is an obvious trend upward in the early years, and a mostly flat if downward trend in the later years. This represents the actual cost of the gas including all the taxes and meter fees, so the high peaks are in months with very little usage where the base meter fee is most of the bill.

1.8 Billion BTUs would boil ~1.6 million gallons of water.

Also interesting that heating the house was only 3 times the cost of garbage collection.