More Ways To Conserve Energy? 39
berniecase asks: "I live up in the Pacific Northwest, and I'm trying to find more ways to conserve electricity. Thus far, I've installed compact fluorescent lights from Lights of America in the most heavily used fixtures in my apartment and I've tried to use less lighting and heat to keep the bills down, and keep the Californians with electricity. I'm curious as to what others are doing? What about LED lighting and such? Are there other things I can do to conserve electricity and what kinds of suggestions would /. readers have for me and others?"
Use a Laptop (Score:1)
Turn Off Your Computer! (Score:2)
Turn off the TV and watch a sunset.
Go to bed early. (Don't leave lights on.)
Don't cook your food. (Goes for either electric or gas stove - many power plants in CA and the like are natural gas fired. There is a shortage in natural gas, and that's driving up demand for it, making electricity expensive.)
Open your curtains. (So you don't have to turn on the lights.) (As a bonus, it's likely that the sun will warm up your house.)
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Above all, relax. It's not that big a deal. You won't be too bad off, no matter what the situation is.
Insulation (Score:2)
Leaking power (Score:4)
Ref: http://eetd.lbl.gov/Standby/Articles/Purdue.html [lbl.gov]
Easy ways to conserve energy : (Score:2)
Up here in the Cold North we're often told that the hot water heater is the single biggest user of electricity ( or gas, depending ).
Consequently we've become fairly proficient at saving hot water. Energy saving shower heads ( gives the same pressure with less water ), insulating blankets around the water tank, and even a timer to turn off the tank when you won't want any more hot water ( 8pm say ) and back on in time to have hot water for your shower ( 5am? ). You could be more clever with your own schedule, but these are all inexpensive and easy to do.
Counterflow heat exchange (Score:2)
You might also try just taking baths and letting the water cool in the tub before you drain it. I haven't calculated, but I suspect you could get back a lot of energy this way.
Washers and dryers also tend to waste a lot of heat by dumping hot stuff without recovering heat. There are some new designs for "heat pump dryers" (hint: put into search engine) which condense the evaporated water and pump the heat back into the clothes. You could also build a heat exchanger that would cool the dryer output and bring the heat indoors; you just need to handle the lint and runoff.
Re:Insulation (Score:2)
Re:Electric heaters (Score:2)
Re:Screw California! (Score:2)
Of course, the solution is to drill for more oil, not to conserve, according to President Clampett.
Move to the mountains (Score:2)
Oops, that was already done.
Re:Use a Laptop (Score:1)
Still, I could do that, although my PowerBook draws only about 50 watts at most.
--Bernie
Re:Screw California! (Score:1)
With increasing power costs I have to find ways to conserve more energy to keep from paying through the nose for electricity. My father says that my power bill, even after all of the rate increases Seattle City Light wants to implement, is still less than his in Connecticut. Ouch.
Using as much electricity is a good way to bring down the power grid (if everybody did it) and keep those Californians from getting any, but it'll cost you, and me.
--Bernie
Re:Insulation (Score:1)
I usually like to keep my living room constant at 20-22C.
--Bernie
Energy savings -- how much enery do you use (Score:1)
Mark
Re:Other ways to conserve power (Score:1)
One thing you forgot : sex ! It's great fun, generally as good as a sport session and can help you make great savings on heating
Re:Turn Off Your Computer! (Score:2)
Actually you are more likely to gain a power savings if you close your curtains. Currents can do an extraordinary amount to reduce drafts around windows (one of the leading causes of heat leakage from a house). They also add another layer of insulation between the rooms you are trying to keep warm and the heat conducting glass. In our old house closing the curtains at night, and when people were not in the room gave us a significant savings in our gas bill.
-OctaneZ
That's actually a way to aggravate the problem. (Score:1)
The big problem, in California at least, is the afternoon/evening demand peak; you could do more for availability by cutting usage or coasting on stored energy for those hours. If you can go for some time on the hot water still in the tank, it would help to shut the water heater off immediately after your morning shower (weekdays when nobody is home), use point-of-use heaters for cooking in the early evening (heat only the bare minimum amount of water), and turn the tank back on after 8 or 9 PM. If you put your washing machine (and dishwasher?) on an appliance timer to have it run at 2 AM, you could have the machine and all of its associated power consumption going during off-off-peak hours when availability is highest (and prices, at least at wholesale, are lowest).
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Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Lights as heaters (Score:1)
I've got 500 watts of quartz-halogen lamp in a room away from the thermostat. 500 watts is about 1700 BTU/hr, and my thermometer agrees with my personal perception: it does increase the temperature considerably, even with the door to that room open. I wish I had a reasonable fluorescent replacement for this lamp (I could save at least 375 watts) but nobody makes anything in that size. I'd rather be saving the juice and heating with natural gas instead, but the products on the market don't make that a viable alternative just yet.
--
Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Amen to that (Score:1)
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Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Re:Lights as heaters (Score:1)
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Knowledge is power
Power corrupts
Study hard
Electric heaters (Score:1)
Re:Lights as heaters (Score:1)
From the box:
You'll save $233 or more on electricity through the first bulb.
Coal saved: 2100 lbs
Greenhouse gases eliminated: 6,200 lbs
Acid Rain emission reduction: 82 lbs
(based on 10,000 hour life and
These babies are saving me about $7/month (based on my local rate of
Printed Material (Score:3)
Re:Gas shortage? (Score:2)
Re:Easy ways to conserve energy : (Score:1)
Power saving (fp too?) (Score:3)
Re:Electric heaters (Score:2)
They're very efficient and well worth the cost too...
My karma's bigger than yours!
Fluorescent ligthts emits less heat (Score:1)
If you switch to low-power fluorescent lighting, which emits less heat, you will raise the amount of energy needed for heating (a little).
Hence, you gain very little.
Other ways to conserve power (Score:2)
Leknor
Check out HomePower (Score:3)
--
MailOne [openone.com]
Re:Printed Material (Score:1)
Is reading printed material a true saving of energy? How much power is really saved? It seems that printing would use more energy(and resources)
Try the library. Just yesterday I went and gathered a collection of printed material dating back to 1950. Surely if you amortize the paper production cost over the past 51 years, the cost for my reading would be trivial compared to the power usage for the electric glow-box you're facing right now.
Re:Energy savings -- how much enery do you use (Score:1)
Can you please tell me how high your enery bill is (in MJ/kW/...)
Rent in my apartment building includes utilities (heat/power/water/gas), presumably because it would be too expensive to go in and install individual meters for everything. I guess the building was put up before people started worrying about where all the energy was going to come from.
It's nice on the one hand - I can leave my server running all the time, and take long showers when I feel the need - but on the other hand it sort of makes me feel guility. I've assuaged that by not using the air conditioning (gets pretty hot here in the summer) and using a combination of thick blinds and a box fan instead. I installed fluorescent bulbs in the kitchen, bathroom, and walk-in closets - but I found that for areas where I read, it's just not comfortable.
However, when I'm walk up to the building at night, I see things like windows open in the wintertime (and you just know they've got the heat on), air conditioners left on all day while the occupants are at work (so they don't have to wait those 10 minutes for it to cool down when they get home), and lights on in every room all the time. I suppose it's just too easy to abuse.
Re:Turn Off Your Computer! (Score:1)
I guess no one told them about irony in school.
Re:Screw California! (Score:1)
Re:Power saving (fp too?) (Score:1)
Re:Power saving (fp too?) (Score:1)
Re:Turn Off Your Computer! (Score:1)
conserving electricity (Score:2)
Get Yahoo! to shut off their stupid billboard! (Score:1)
While there are a lot of things that
we, as individuals, can do to conserve energy,
the biggest wasters are the companies that employ us.
Many businesses are doing things to conserve electricity -- such as certain grocery stores which have shut off lights in freezer and cooler sections (obviously, not Safeway). Why not other types of businesses?
Just look around you as you zip up and down 101 -- for instance, do we REALLY need the neon lights on the stupid Yahoo! billboard before the 6th or 4th St offramp in San Francisco? Let's not even talk about how much energy is wasted by the stupid double-sided Coca Cola billboard. While we're at it, let's talk about floodlights on billboards at night.
Or perhaps the ridiculous habit many companies have of shining floodlights on building exteriors. Especially where I lived in Mountain View -- hell, I could drive home without flipping on my headlights in some areas. Hello? Is the idea that we might accidentally walk or drive into these windowless cement monoliths?
Let's not even talk about the redundant lighting used around shopping malls. It gives me the heebs just thinking about it.
Who do we have to talk to at Yahoo! to encourage them to shut off all the damned neon on that billboard at night as a gesture of energy conservation?