Saving Energy

Energy conservation efforts will benefit everyone and even if you feel that you can’t do much to conserve energy on a planet wide scale, then think about saving some of your hard-eared money each month. When you look at the different areas in the home that consume huge amounts of energy and make changes, there will be a significant drop In your monthly energy bill.

Lights

You immediately conserve energy by changing from incandescent lights to florescent lights. Florescent lights are not only much brighter than incandescent ones, but they also last up to ten times longer. Florescent lights bring about huge energy conservation as it only uses ¼ of the electricity that is consumed by incandescent lights. Florescent lights are great for hallways, bathrooms, stairways and kitchens and will bring about a drastic reduction in your electricity bill.

Heating and hot water

Two energy guzzlers in all homes are the heating system and the hot water heater and you can address both of these together in your energy conservation efforts. The answer to conserve energy is to install timers for both your heating system and your hot water heater. You do not need the heat turned up when you sleep and neither do you need hot water. By installing timers that will shut these down a certain time after bedtime and switch them back on just before everyone gets up in the morning saves tons of money. Do the same for when everyone has left for the day; the timers switch the heat and hot water off and back on just before everyone returns home. This is a double-barrel energy conservation effort that has a truly huge impact on your energy bill.

Latent consumption

A staggering 73% of the electricity consumption of typical households goes on what is termed latent consumption. This is when you are not using appliances and have switched them off, but have left them plugged into the wall sockets. The typical list of appliances where you can hugely conserve energy by unplugging them are those that have digital displays such as microwave ovens clock radios and coffee makers. Also appliances that use remote controls such as DVD players, TVs and stereo equipment and all LED power indicators such as hand-held game chargers, cell phone chargers and battery chargers. For convenience, use power strips where you can flip a single switch to shut off several appliances and then unplug only one plug.

Energy vampires

The appliances that literally suck up electricity the fastest are clothes dryers, vacuum cleaners and irons. So restrict the dryer use to the minimum, use a broom on hardwood floors and only vacuum carpets. Look at clothes labels for fabric blends that need less ironing, you save elbow grease and electricity at the same time.