This is basically a continuation of my earlier post, which you can find here:   http://activerain.com/blogsview/471789/Honey-Turn-something-OFF . 

For those of you who don't know yet, Juneau is serviced by a hydro-electric plant south of Juneau.  This morning around 4AM there was a catastrophic avalanche that took out over a mile of power line and several substations.

Juneau is now operating on diesel generators.  We are also a few thousand miles from the closest refinery.  It takes weeks to get a fuel shipment here.  It's possible the community will run out of fuel completely before another shipment arrives.  Everyone has been asked to do their part in reducing the demand.

So we've shut down almost everything we don't consider necessary.  The empty rooms have their doors closed and nothing plugged in.  Tomorrow I will clean out our second freezer and unplug it.  My husband and I agreed we will indulge ourselves with the hot tub for another day before we shut everything down because we need to be able to monitor it while we drain it completely.

We discussed having dinner by candlelight from now on, or at least until this crisis is behind us.  When the oven is on, it will be used for more than one item at a time (throw potatoes in there if nothing else).

He's even opened up to the idea of a few solar panels on the roof, although this is a rain forest and it's kind of dark and dreary most of the time.

One of my clients has promised to send me some energy saving tips, but for now, we are just turning off those things we can live without.  It feels strange to think that eventually we may be camping in our own home.  If you have energy saving tips that don't involve tearing the house apart or replacing appliances, we are listening!

Thank God this didn't happen in winter.  We are probably more able to adapt than the single parent working 2 or 3 jobs just to put food on the table, but it's a little frightening.

A 500% increase in rate per kilowatt hour will hopefully be countered by a significant decrease in use.  If I can keep our dollar output equal, I will accomplish my goals.