There could be worse obsessions.
Consumption
After I installed my solar panels I was feeling quite autonomous, thinking that I was producing most of the energy that I was consuming in my home. Then I got curious about how much natural gas I was using and I found I was not quite as self-sufficient as I'd thought. Turns out that about 70% of my home energy use is gas, not electric. 
At first I was a bit disappointed, but then I realized a couple of things:
1. Gas is cheaper than electricity and only accounted for 47% of my home energy costs (back when I paid for electricity)
2. A gas power plant burns about 3 kWh of natural gas to produce 1 kWh of electricity (not taking into account losses in transmission, which are much higher for electricity than for gas).
So environmentally and economically, cutting back on electrical consumption has a lot more bang for the buck.
Converting kWh to kBTU and dividing by the square footage of my home gives an average consumption of 32.8 kBTU/ft2 per year (not factoring in what I'm producing). Nationally the average is 45.5 per household, but if you disaggregate the data for homes built between 2000 and 2009 the average is 37.1.
Some interesting trends in average home energy consumption:
- Smaller sized homes use less energy per person, but more per square foot
- Increasing the people per home decreases the energy used per person and per square foot
- As household income increases, energy use per person increases, but decreases per square foot
- Owned homes use 1.5 times more energy per person than rented homes do, but 1.3 times less per square foot
- For renters, paying their own utilities (rather than having it included in the rent) slightly increases the energy use per person, but drastically decreases consumption per square foot
Production
There's been plenty of sun in Nevada. As of the end of January, I've produced 14,787 kWh. Here are some nice sinusoidal graphs of my solar production so far (the little gap on the daily graph is what happens when your children get a hold of your monitoring device).
In 2012, my production was 145% of my consumption. Unfortunately I don't get paid for the excess, but I do build up credits. I figure that eventually I'll replace my gas stove and water heater with electric ones (when they need replacing anyway), but I don't know if I'll ever reach the point when I'm consuming more than I produce. Maybe when I have teenagers. If not, I'll have to get an electric car.
Comments
I'd guess owners use more electricity than renters simply because they are richer. They use less per square foot because they have larger homes than renters.
For why renters who pay their own utilities use less energy, I'd guess the answer has to do with the type of home that includes utilities in rent. I'm guessing those units/homes that include utilities are larger on average than those where utilities are not included.
Of course, this explanation falls apart if these numbers a created controlling for house size.
Owners use more per person but less per square foot because owners have larger homes than renters. It takes more energy to run a larger home, regardless of how many people are living in it, thus they use more energy. But some energy use is based on the number of people in the house (electronics/cooking, etc.) and so, again because they have larger homes, they use less electricity per square foot.
Here's the kicker: Why doe owners have larger house than the renter? One reasons could be they just make more money. Another reason is, you can deduct your mortgage payment, allowing the same person to have a larger house when he owns as opposed to rents.
Wait, I think I got this backwards. This seeming contradiction can be resolved if we assume smaller homes/apartments are more likely to have utilities included in rent. That also comports more with my experience.
Thus, "renters, paying their own utilities (rather than having it included in the rent) slightly increases the energy use per person" makes sense, because people paying their own utilities probably live in larger homes, and so have more square footage, raising the per-person energy use, albeit slightly.
A larger-home renters paying their own utilities also explains why "renters, paying their own utilities . . . drastically decreases consumption per square foot." Fewer people in less square footage decreases the per-square foot usage. Plus there is the incentive effect of having usage tied to your own bill.
Again, this analysis falls apart if they have controlled for house size. But I doubt it.
Actually, the one that doesn't make sense to me is this one:
"Increasing the people per home decreases the energy used per person and per square foot"
The same home with more people in it is going to increase the per square foot usage. So, they obviously can't be controlling for house size.
But even without controlling for house size, the only way the second part can make sense, is that house size grows disproportionately faster than family size. Otherwise, per-square foot energy usage should increase as family size increases? Possible, but doesn't seem that likely to me.
I'm confused.
You can look at the spreadsheet that I was using here http://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2009/index.cfm?view=consumption
Click on Summary Statistics and choose the first spreadsheet (CE1.1).
Taking a second look at the data, I'm not sure why I included the bullet that "Increasing the people per home decreases the energy used per person and per square foot."
Running a quick linear regression of the six data points given in the spreadsheet shows a slight upward trend of .5971 kBTU/square foot per person (which is pretty flat considering an average of about 46 kBTU) with a correlation coefficient of 0.6362. So there's really not much there.
It looks like they are looking at each variable independently. It would be more interesting to see a multivariate regression. I'm sure someone has done it, but there are a billion spreadsheets on EIA's website and it can be a little hard to find what you are looking for.
I'm guessing overall sales would start to take off as well at these levels.