RE 'fifty little things' - thanks for the added info, this is making a lot more sense to me now. I've broken up and re-arranged your post so I can comment on common groups of items:
How many kw do you use daily? The average U.S. I think is around 30, we have ours down to ~15, just by chipping away at the kw each month or so. ...
You also have to keep in mind we were above similar homes at 40 kw per day when we started, ....
I'm at about 25 kWh/day, in a neighborhood of largish homes. We use A/C maybe 20-30 days of the year total (really varies, that's a guess, we hold off until some combo of heat/humidity and lack of cooling breezes call for it, we try to be conservative, but I HATE heat and humidity), and maybe 7 months of heating (NG heat, but blower fan is ~ 800watts) . Unfortunately, we don't have smart meters, and I only get some very rough comparative data from the utility. But we are just above the middle of the
lowest quintile of active users (I guess they filter out unoccupied homes?), and
about half of the average neighbor. They don't show the other quintiles, so I don't know how I compare to the 'energy hogs', but if it is a roughly symmetrical distribution, I'm probably ~ 1/4 some of my neighbors (but those might be the few with pools/pumps/filters). Insulation is probably just average, not great, and not a lot of shade.
So, I'm guessing that if you were starting above the average, and there was a lot of 'low hanging fruit'. My point in taking this as far as I have is I think it's important to provide some perspective when suggesting that XYZ is going to save someone money - it really 'depends'. Plus, it motivates me to take an closer look at my own usage, and I might find a few things I could improve that I missed before. Anyway...
The single biggest thing I did was use drying racks instead of the electric dryer. ...
Yep, electric dryers are resistance heaters, they suck LOTS of juice (just look at the cord!), and are probably drawing conditioned air from the house and exhausting it - that air needs to be made up and conditioned). I probably should have switched to an NG dryer years ago, but I thought (maybe mistakenly - that electric element gets cherry-red like a toaster, that might be as much a fire hazard as an NG flame?) that electric was safer than NG for a dryer (dryer lint fires are a big % of home fires). But now we do less washing/drying with kids out of the house, and if we replace the washer with a front load, the dryer won't run as much - and it works!
So OK, this might qualify as a 'little thing' in terms of how much work it is, but it is affecting a big draw item, so I see it differently from a lot of the things you mentioned, like thermal insulated cookers, etc.
Other than that we weather stripped, unplugged a spare mini fridge,
...bought draft stoppers for the doors, ... and we open the windows when it is cool in at night and mornings and then close them when it starts to get hot.
OK, those can be affecting some large draw items (A.C), and fridges use a fair amount - and most mini-fridge are inefficient, they might use as much/more than full sized one). But again, to me these are different from 'little things' like thermal cookers.
got better at turning out lights,
It always make sense to do this, but I never understood why anyone wouldn't be doing this from the start. But unless you were really crazy about leaving many lights on for long times, it's just not going to add up to much. Ten 60W old-bulbs left on for 4 extra hours a day is 2.4 kWh/day, which would be ~ 6% of your starting kWh, and that's a pretty extreme example. And if like most people who are trying to save money, most of those are probably already switched to CFLs, which would take that down less than 2%?
replaced an actual fan for an iTunes fan song for white noise, bought the small appliances previously mentioned,
OK, if you measured/calculated these, I think you'd find them to be tiny differences. It still probably makes sense to some of them (if the upfront cost is low/zero), but I'm just trying to add some perspective.
are switching over to LED lights,
At your high rates, these (or CFLs if they fit your needs - they are cheaper, similar savings, but the light may not be to your liking) probably make good sense
in high use sockets. But if you are conservative with lighting, it's still going to be pretty small when measured against a 2/3rds reduction.
bought a lot of Mr. Beams LED lights that run on rechargeable batteries that can be charged with a solar charger,
put solar lights on the patio, solar Christmas lights, ...
These I really need to 'challenge'. Even at high $kWh, it's unlikely that small solar lights are going to be cost effective, on an apples-apples basis (similar light output, both using LEDs), unless it avoids running wires. Those rechargeable batteries will need to be replaced after a few years. Holiday lights aren't used enough to pay back the solar panel, and are actually an
environmental negative (when a solar panel is placed optimally, and used all day, all year round, it takes ~ 2 years to offset the electricity used to make it. So a part-time use solar panel is an energy/environmental suck, not a savings at all).
Some solar light math: If it has a typical 800mAH, 1.2V battery, and stays lit for 6 hours into the night, that is .8*1.2*6*365 = 2.1 kWh annually, ~ 70 cents of electricity a year at your $0.34 rate. Replacing the battery occasionally will likely wipe out any savings, or at least minimize it to pennies a year. I have some, but to avoid running wires.
unplugged some Bose stereo speaker when not in use, eliminated one DVR,
I've heard DVRs can suck a fair amount of 'phantom' juice. Our daughters cheap shelf stereo used as much when it was 'OFF' as when it was on (kill-a-watt to the rescue!). It can make good sense to shut these off when you can, but I bet it is still pretty small potatoes against a 40kWh budget. Newer ones are probably better in this regard, but worth checking.
I think we changed the settings on the TVs. The store setting are extra bright and use more electricity.
I have noticed this with the kila-watt on our older TVs, and due to this thread I checked our newer 55" TV. I was kinda surprised that it didn't seem to make a huge difference, and the 'off' wattage was less than a watt (yeah!). But this is worth checking as it could vary quite a bit unit-unit and your settings prefs.
I heat water for tea and coffee in an electric kettle that heats water to the boiling point in one minute, and I only put inside the amount of water I need to use, no more.
Again, this is fine, but even a less efficient method won't amount to much overall. I know people like those pots for the convenience/speed, a little energy savings is a plus, but it's a little.
Do you get graphs on energy use from your utility? We get hour by hour ones. We looked at the spikes. We also looked at overnight. The baseline when no one is up and the heat or air are not on is something we really looked hard at because those are things that go 24 X 7. If your overnight is 2 kw per hour, not counting heat or AC, there's a 24 kw daily baseline right away before you even get out of bed and turn on the PC and put toast in the toaster. ....
I talked about this a little at the start, and unfortunately I only get a very crude comparison from the utility. I'll need to call, but I think we are years away from getting smart meter updates.
I'd love to get hour-by-hour. I probably would have detected an underground leak much earlier (my well pump ended up running close to 24*7 and I saw some surface water before I detected it). The well pump running a high duty cycle at night would have shown up in an hourly report.
So all I've been able to do is go out and read my meter at various times, and try to catch some things. Based on some rough estimates, I seem to be at about .6 kWh baseline, but the water softener runs every third day, and that triggers the well pump for several cycles, so that's a rough number. It's not a lot of fun to go out and read the meter before bed and early AM a bunch of times to get a good average. I've looked at some of the add-on monitors (they detect the spinning disk with an optical detector), and IIRC they were ~ $30 and flaky according to reviews (my meter 'window' is pretty cloudy).
Whew!!!! Sorry to go on so long, but this stuff interests me, and the discussion does motivate me to take a closer look at my own usage. And as I said, I just dislike 'broad brush' statements, and I like to get to specific items that can help people, with proper caveats if needed.
But congrats on getting your bill down! Like they say, a penny saved is more than a penny earned (due to taxes, deductions, etc). Just be careful that you aren't spending too much to chase some small savings.
-ERD50