What’s The Average Natural Gas Consumption Of A Georgia Household?
Saving money on natural gas means working out which natural gas plan is cheapest. This isn’t always easy to do. Natural gas providers give you a price “per therm” of natural gas you use. The cheaper a therm is, the less you pay. But how many therms do you use? Will switching to a cheap natural gas plan save you hundreds of dollars, or just a few pennies? Here’s what you need to know about typical natural gas consumption in different households.
What Is A Therm, Anyway?
Before we dive into therm consumption, let’s quickly cover what a therm actually is. It’s used to represent the energy you consume at home. It takes burning around 100 cubic feet of natural gas to produce 1 therm of energy. However, natural gas burns hotter or cooler depending on its precise chemical makeup. As a result, natural gas providers use an adjustment called the “therm factor” to calculate how much energy you’re using.
Your natural gas meter will tell them how much gas you’ve used, and they’ll know how much energy this gas releases when it’s burned. Therefore, you could burn a lot of natural gas but if it burns relatively cold, you’ll release fewer therms. That means you’re only paying for the energy you use, not just the amount of natural gas you burn.
Typical Household Therm Consumption
In Georgia, residential natural gas consumption rises during winter. This is because Georgia homes use more natural gas to heat their homes than other states do. You can see this effect in the data the Georgia Public Services Commission provides. Annual natural gas consumption in Georgia is around 717 therms per household. However, the typical number of therms consumed in December is 134; more than a sixth of the annual amount.
How Many Therms Does Your Household Use?
The average annual therm consumption figure of 717 hides a huge range of variance. About 48% of Georgia homes use electric heating. As we’ve seen, heating contributes about 30% of your total annual energy usage. That means if you have a natural gas stove but you don’t have a gas furnace, you probably use less than the average amount of therms. Heating is such a huge contributor to household natural gas consumption, that if you do have a gas furnace, you probably use more than the average and have to pay high natural gas bills in AGL.
The size of your home also plays a large part in therm consumption. If you have more space to heat, then it’ll take more therms to keep warm. Georgia homes are some of the largest in the USA; Atlanta homes are, on average, larger than any other city’s except Houston, TX. New homes are also much larger, too. The median home size in Atlanta is 1,914 square feet, but the typical new home in 2018 covered 2,318 square feet. This continues a trend of American homes growing much larger in the past few decades.
How Can I Use Fewer Natural Gas Therms?
We’ve seen that the biggest factor driving natural gas consumption in Georgia is heating. So, to use fewer therms, you need to heat your home more efficiently. That means investing in thermal insulation for your home. Sealing and insulating your attic are extremely effective at reducing heat loss. Check the recommended insulation for Georgia homes, which is expressed in “R Values”. EnergyStar recommends insulation between R30 and R60 for Georgia properties. By keeping warm air in you can burn fewer therms to stay warm. That means lower natural gas bills. Combine this with a deal on cheap natural gas in Georgia, and you save plenty of money every year.