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Save Electricity and Save Money!

By: Larry D. Barr

As the price of energy of all types keeps rising (along with the cost of almost everything else), it's only natural that folks in every walk of life are looking for ways to lower their energy usage. In this article, we'll explore various ways to do just that. Some of the methods will require a change in hardware – you'll need to make some changes in your home – while others will require a change in mindset. You'll need to make some changes in your habits. Either way, the results are worth it. You'll see the savings immediately.

We'll be talking about electricity in this article, since there are so many ways to reduce the number of Kilowatt Hours (kWh) we use each month and by so doing, reduce our bill. Those folks who are considering living off-grid in the future will soon be living by these precepts for “Conservation is the key to self-sufficiency.” Those living off-grid always have to remember that “Every watt saved is a watt that doesn't have to be generated.”

There is only one way to reduce your electric bill and that is to use less electricity. But there are two ways to use less – eliminate/reduce the use of a device or find a device which uses energy more efficiently to do the same task. We'll discuss both of these in this article, because I want to give you all the tools I can to save your hard-earned money.

Some of the methods for saving electricity are so glaringly obvious that we should never forget them, but we do on occasion. Let's remind ourselves of a few of them:

-- Turn off lights when you leave the room
That seems obvious, but how many times do we forget? And it's not just inside lights. Do you leave the porch light on when you go out for dinner and a movie? Over the long run, you'll save money by installing a motion sensor to turn the light on when you come home. Timers are also available to replace switches, so that the lights will go off after a preset time.

-- Turn off devices that you're not using
There really aren't many electrical devices in a home that need to be left on 24/7. In my own case, just the fridge and when I'm home the scanner and my 2 meter ham rig stay on all the time. That's about it.

-- Don't heat or cool to extremes
No matter how much you hate the heat (or cold), you'll save a lot of money if you keep your house around 78° - 80° in the summer and about 65° or so in the winter. I keep my house right at 80° during the summer and 60° - 65° (a much more pleasant temperature) in the winter. If you don't feel comfortable at those economical temperatures, adapt your clothing. It's your house, you can wear cut-offs or a sweatshirt if you like. And you'll love the money you save.

-- Add more insulation to your home
One of the most effective energy-saving things you can do. You're paying a lot of money to get the temperature in your house the way you want it. More insulation will help you keep it that way. The majority of heat loss or gain is through the attic, so add there first. Then consider walls and double-pane windows. Don't forget good weatherstripping around doors as well.

-- Lower water heater temperature
You'll save energy by lowering the temperature of your water heater. Many times the heater runs just to maintain a tankful of water at a temperature much higher than you'll ever use.

-- Put electric water heater on a timer
You will be amazed at the money you save if you install a timer on your electric water heater. Set the timer to only turn the heater on when hot water will be used. For most families, that's in the morning and the evening. So, typical “ON” times would be from 0500-0900 and from 1700-2200. No need in running the heater when everyone's asleep or at work or school.

-- Install an insulating blanket around your water heater
This is the same principle as more insulation in your house. You're paying to heat that water. No point in letting it give up heat to the rest of the house. Keep the heat in the water.

Now let's discuss some ways to use electricity more efficiently. A few more hardware changes here for most folks.

First off, if you're not using Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs), you should be. They use about 25% of the energy that incandescent lamps do, last ten or more times longer, generate a fraction of the heat and have equal light quality. If you tried them when they first came out and weren't happy, give them another try. The new generation of CFLs is exponentially better than the first ones. I have CFLs in every fixture in my house, except for the fridge, oven, microwave and two fluorescent tube fixtures that are built in.

Use task lighting instead of area lighting. If you're doing something at a fixed location, such as your desk or workbench, you don't need to have the entire room brightly lit. Use an LED task light, one of the excellent units by LittLite®, or some similar small fixture to put light only where you need it. A 25 or 40 watt CFL can provide ambient light in the room, and you 'll reap the savings.

Use appliances that are efficient and no larger than needed to do the job. For many cooking tasks, a microwave oven will do what you want to do and save a lot of energy doing it. Same with a CrockPot® or toaster oven. If all you're doing is heating up some fish sticks, don't heat the huge oven in your range, just use the toaster oven. Save heating that big space for something that won't fit in the toaster oven. Like a meatloaf or two. It saves money to make two and freeze one for later. You can save even more money by not preheating your oven, just let the food bake a little longer.

A CrockPot® can save you a lot of energy (money) over firing up a cooktop burner on your range. Using my small CrockPot® last night, I made a pot of beans and used less than one kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. That's less than twenty cents to cook food for at least two meals. That CrockPot® draws only 85 watts maximum and cost me about eight bucks at WalMart. It will run off my PV panels and battery bank through an inverter in the event of a grid failure. Also, a small single burner electric hotplate will use less energy then the cooktop burner on your range.

You'll use a lot less energy in the winter if you put a programmable thermostat on your heater and let the temperature in the house drop quite a bit at night. If you prefer, an electric blanket isn't as heavy on you as blankets and quilts. The thermostat brings the temp up in the morning so you don't have to get up into a cold room. Comfort and savings at the same time.

You might give some thought to a “solar clothes dryer” like Grandma used to use. It's low maintenance, no moving parts and the sheets flapping in the breeze give the puppy something to play with. It's not for everybody, but if you don't mind going back a few years, the initial cost is lower and the energy use much less than an electric or gas dryer. Doesn't work well on rainy days though.

Are you using “power hog” appliances and devices when there are smaller, more energy efficient units that will do the job. An example. I used to have a small sound reinforcement business. I'd work gigs in small venues up to 500 seats or so. When I didn't have a gig, I'd use part of my concert sound system as a home stereo. Nothing huge, you know. Just a couple of speaker cabinets about four feet high, two and a half feet wide and eighteen inches deep – with a one thousand watt amplifier for each one. No way I could use all that power in an apartment, so it sat there idling, drawing much more current than the sound level it produced and causing all the lights in the apartment to dim for a moment when I turned it on. Great sound, but at what cost? Nowadays I use a car stereo that runs off the 12 VDC power supply for my ham rigs and scanner. Or off the PV panels. Much more energy efficient. And at the low sound levels in the house, it's hard to notice a difference in quality.

One last thing you must do to save money on your electric bill is to eliminate phantom loads. What, you ask, is a phantom load? A phantom load is any device that is consuming energy when you think you've turned it off. It all started with “instant on” televisions back in the vacuum tube days. When you “turned off” the TV, the tube filaments still had power applied to them, and were costing you money. When you turned the TV “on”, you were only turning on the high voltage and the warm tubes went to work instantly.

It's even worse today. Anything that has a remote control is a phantom load. Think about it. There has to be a circuit inside there waiting to get the wake-up call from the remote control. The clocks on VCRs, ranges, microwaves and other gadgets are all phantom loads. And they are costing you money.

Computer peripherals that are left on when the computer is turned off are phantom loads. When you turn your computer off, the display goes dark, but it's not off, it's just sleeping -- waiting for the computer to wake it back up. The printer, router, DSL modem – all phantom loads. Twenty-four hour night lights and plug-in air fresheners (a dubious invention), both phantom loads. Just look around your house, I'm sure you'll find more.

The way to cure phantom loads is to put the devices on a switched outlet or a power strip. Or simply unplug them. You may find that you're not willing to deal with the effects of completely dropping power to some of your devices. For example, you may have to reprogram some of your gear each time. If that's a problem for you, pick your battles. One of the really nice aspects of energy conservation is that you get to choose how much you want to save. It's up to you which, if any, phantom load devices you leave connected when you're not using them. Just balance convenience against savings. Your call.

You now possess the knowledge to cut your monthly electric bill by 30% or so. No, I didn't make that number up. A friend of mine, living in an apartment at the time, followed these same recommendations and saw a 30% reduction in his bill the first full month. It can be done. And you can do it.

Renewable & Alternative Energy Resources: http://www.alternativeenergybase.com

Larry D. Barr is the owner of Rebel Wolf Energy Systems in North Central Texas. An amateur radio operator (K5WLF), he has been active in the renewable energy movement since the 70s, during which he lived off-grid for almost two years. For design or consulting services on RE systems, or for custom fabrication of portable or mobile RE systems, visit www.rebelwolf.com/ or email ldb@rebelwolf.com.


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