Satya,
I have no idea how much energy I use but I do know that compared to neighbors we use much less. 30 years ago I got rid of the central air and heating. I put a small 25,000 BTU gas heater on the fireplace hearth and this heats the familyroom and kitchen where we spend most of our time. I put in a 10,000 BTU window air conditioner and that cools the same space in the summer. Ceiling fans in the bedrooms make it comfortable to sleep at night and we usually leave the front and back doors open all night (we lock the screen doors) to allow the cool night air to circulate through the house.
I changed out the water heater to a Rinnai tankless. It's wonderful. It only heats the water as we use it and we can take a shower, do laundry, and wash dishes all at the same time. I also noticed a drop in the gas bill of about $10 per month. There are several brands and all are equally good: Rinnai, Takagi, and Noritz are all highly rated. All of these are gas so if you only have electric available you are out of luck as far as a whole house unit is concerned. In our back bathroom we use a small electric instant water heater. It's very small at about 6"Hx10"Lx2" thick. If I didn't have gas I'd put one of these at every place I needed hot water (laundry, kitchen, and one for each bathroom)
My wife cooks a lot as she has a large family and we entertain 40 to 50 people several times a year. I put in an electric double oven and this made a huge difference in reducing the temperature in the kitchen compared to the old gas oven. I also changed out the regular gas cook top to a couple of Induction Hobs (see picture). These things are amazing. The burner never gets hot - it only heats the pan. You can even spread newspaper over the top of the cooking element and put your pan right on top and cook through the newpaper to catch all the drips and splatters. Then just wad up the newpaper when you're done and throw it away. The burners (or hobs) are rated to use a lot of energy, however we almost never use it. Rather than starting things on HIGH as we did in the past, we now start on MEDUM (50%) and do most of the long term cooking at 25% or less. The HIGH settings allow you to do things you could never do on a standard electric or gas burner. We use the HIGH setting when my wife makes a traditional Grape syrup. We have an 8 gallon pot where she boils 5 gallons of fresh grape juice down to about 1 gallon of syrup. On one of the Induction hobs we can bring 5 gallons to a full rolling boil in about 30 minutes. My wife would never go back to normal gas or electric.
Hope this give some inspiration,
Lex
