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More Ways To Conserve Energy? 39

Posted by Cliff from the waste-not-want-not dept.
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?"
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More Ways To Conserve Energy? More

More Ways To Conserve Energy?

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  • Use a Laptop (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Recharge your laptop from your car. Make sure you drive four hours a day.

  • Turn Off Your Computer! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Instead of wasting electricity by sitting there reading Slashdot, turn it off and go outside.

    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.)

    ---

    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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Make sure your hot water lines are insulated. At your local hardware store, get some of those, ummm, whatchamacallit, plastic that you put over the windows and then blowdry to tighten. Though not very convenient, it works. Oh yeah, incandescent lamps are 95% efficient in the winter because you need the heat anyway. Because of that, it may appear that your heating bill went up. But in the summer the fluorescents really help.

  • Leaking power (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 28, 2001 @07:40AM (#475946)
    Many devices leak power (have standby power use). All those AC adapters (even when the gadget they power is off), your instant-on TV, the cable box, and your VCR use electricity even when they are "off". So, don't just turn it off, unplug it too!

    Ref: http://eetd.lbl.gov/Standby/Articles/Purdue.html [lbl.gov]

  • 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.

  • Here's a cool invention [oikos.com] for recovering heat from hot water going down the drain. Apparently the way water runs down the inside of a large-diameter sewer pipe is actually pretty good for heat exchange, so you don't need a complicated manifold to get good efficiency. Another good feature is that it reduces the size of the tank needed in the water heater, since peak loads like showers will also produce lots of recycled heat.

    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.
  • Most lights are near the ceiling, and the hot air generated stays up there. Try to encourage your downstairs neighbors to use incandescents.
  • Maybe he's draining the oil out and burning it.
  • I'm from California, and I can't really disagree with you, but I think the flip side of this deregulation is that PG&E is now bidding on *your* power, all over North America. That's how the wholesale market is supposed to operate. So when Bush says he "sees a ripple effect" that's idiot-speak for "your local power company is selling kilowatt-hours on ebay". After all, does your utility want to sell you power for 10 cents a kwh, or sell to PG&E for 30?

    Of course, the solution is to drill for more oil, not to conserve, according to President Clampett.
  • Move to a tiny mountain shack and send letters through the post office...

    Oops, that was already done.

  • Actually, I did buy a power inverter for my PowerBook, but only so that passengers can use the computer for longer than 2 hours when watching DVDs.

    Still, I could do that, although my PowerBook draws only about 50 watts at most.

    --Bernie
  • Funny.

    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
  • I understand that incandescents can be efficient (for heat) in winter, but not that efficient, as far as my apartment is concerned. I've seen no noticeable increase in temperature when using the incadescent lamps.

    I usually like to keep my living room constant at 20-22C.

    --Bernie
  • As a matter of interest, how is the slashdot crowd using/waisting enery. Can you please tell me how high your enery bill is (in MJ/kW/...), and how many rooms do you have? Just to get the picture of the different continents?

    Mark
  • I would say printed material use more power than reading stuff online, because of the cost involved in cutting the trees/moving the logs/making the paper/printing and folding the book/distibuting the book.

    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 ;)
  • 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.)

    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
  • 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? ).
    That guarantees that you will not be heating water during the off-peak hours in the evening (and especially late at night), while re-heating your water immediately after your shower in the morning (contributing to the morning demand surge). Further, you're mostly shifting your demand with the timer, not cutting it (assuming that you have insulated the water heater to cut conduction losses).

    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).
    --
    Knowledge is power
    Power corrupts
    Study hard

  • You wouldn't notice an increase if you're using the lights in the same room as the main thermostat. The main heat would just throttle back to keep the same temperature.

    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

  • Here in New Zealand where we have pretty cheap electricity solar water heaters pay for themselves off in a year or two in most places.
    Meanwhile, protest signs in California claim that hot showers have priced out of people's reach (after solar-energy subsidies going on and off back to the Carter administration). It is enough to make one doubt the sanity of soi-disant "consumer advocates" and "greens". Why on earth would they want power to be cheap, when this could be just the incentive that people need to do what they should have done 20 years ago? When California has a law requiring every home to have a solar hot-water heater within 5 years (and on all new construction and updates over a certain dollar value), I'll believe they're serious. When they are demanding that Oregon and Washington run their hydro reservoirs dry so they can avoid making productive use of the heat that goes wasted on their shingles every day, they're just proving that they deserve no better than they're getting.
    --
    Knowledge is power
    Power corrupts
    Study hard
  • These babies are saving me about $7/month (based on my local rate of .079/kWh)...
    You're using them 12 hours a day? They must be in your office.
    --
    Knowledge is power
    Power corrupts
    Study hard
  • We use one of those oil filled electric heaters rather than the central heat. It makes a big difference in the bill. It warms up the room slowly, but it's very comfortable once it gets up there.
  • I used to have halogens as well, until I discovered some great lights from Good Earth Lighting, Inc. I have about six of the G6555-NK-I (tall brushed nickel) around my house. They use a hugely powerful 55W fluorescent bulb from GE that easily puts out as much light as my old 300W halogens. They are dimmable as well, which is quite rare in fluorescents.

    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 .10/kWh)

    These babies are saving me about $7/month (based on my local rate of .079/kWh), which means each one will pay for itself in about 8 months.

  • Printed Material (Score:3)

    by bluelip ( 123578 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @01:51PM (#475965) Homepage Journal
    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),
  • Almost. It's the supply that's constant, demand is rising approximately 2% / yr.
  • I work for an electric utility in northern MN (I don't know where your 'cold north' is). Instead of kuldging a timer onto your water heater, many power companies up here offer "off-peak" programs where they will give you a discount on your electricity (in our case you heating power at 50% of our regular rate - which gives you a 2.9 cents/KWH rate) if you let them control your large loads, such as your water heater, slab/storage heat, and/or switch your main heat from electric to oil/gas when demand get high (usually late afternoon and early evening). We also have a program in the summer for air conditioning....It might be worth a call to your local utility to see if you can get cheaper electricity for shutting off your water heater during the day.

  • Power saving (fp too?) (Score:3)

    by FLaMeBoY ( 177281 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @03:50AM (#475968)
    Probably the biggest amount of energy could be saved by using a solar water heating setup. This of course might not be possible (say in apartments/rental property) but saves a huge amount of power. Here in New Zealand where we have pretty cheap electricity solar water heaters pay for themselves off in a year or two in most places. The initial cost can be a bit off putting but your local government/power board might offer incentives. Some of the newer ones here are pretty awesome and need absolutely stuff all maintaining (most use anodes inside them which need replacing every few years, depending on water quality/ plumbing/usage etc). If this is too much get some thermal wrapping for your existing hot water piping and adjust the thermometer. Hope this helps a bit. I studied efficient housing last year, and know people who install this stuff incase you are wondering.
  • Up north in Maine and areas around there, electric heating is a death wish - the bill would kill you. We get around that problem by uing boilers. They create a fire that uses heating oil and boils water within the pipes. Of course, you'd need to install radiators for this.

    They're very efficient and well worth the cost too...

    My karma's bigger than yours!

  • If you live in your own house in one of the colder parts of the world, the largest amount of energy is consumed for heating.
    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.
    • Read printed materials, aka: a book, newspaper, magizine.
    • Get some friends together and play basketball or tag football.
    • Go to your local museum.
    • Do chairty stuff.
    You can turn off lights/computers/etc and turn down your AC for all of the above activities and as an added bonus most will make you a better person.

    Leknor

  • Check out HomePower (Score:3)

    by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) on Sunday January 28, 2001 @08:00AM (#475972)
    It's a magazine and a website [homepower.com]. It's mostly about how to setup your own renewable (largely solar, some wind, a little "other") energy generation. But they've also got some tips/tools for reducing usage.
    --
    MailOne [openone.com]

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • The newscasters on TV are telling people to eat cold food (like sandwiches) and to use candles.

    I guess no one told them about irony in school.

  • Hey, Im from California and I'm with you. We in California should be looking into fuel cell tech and leaving the other states alone...
  • Fuel Cells, fuel cell... This technology needs to be brought to the attention of the American Public..
  • Look into fuel cells, its cheap, and abundant, but the energy monolpolies are trying to supress it. Fuel Cells, bring it to the attention of the American People....
  • yes and build open fires on your front lawn. Why should we live like third world countries? We can have all the energy we need if we would adopt the fuel cell as our primary source of energy. Each of us would make our own power and not pollute. Fuel cells.. Make the American people aware of it.
  • Wow, a lot of crack smoking out there. Heat your house with light bulbs? Insulate your pipes with window plastic? I bet your cave is nice and comfy. Compact fluorescents are a good idea, but Lights of America have a high failure rate. Phillips, GE, and Panasonic are more reliable brands. And they have warrantees on their bulbs. Concentrate on the biggest energy users in your place-- typically water heating, refrigeration and then things like lighting, small appliances, etc. To avoid ghost loads (from things like instant-on TV's, VCR's that have a cute clock on them), put your appliances on power strips. flip the switch and they are really off. Easier than plugging and unplugging everything. Insulate your water heater with an insulating blanket, whether it is gas or electric. Be careful to not hinder any air flow for gas water heaters. Insulate your pipes with the foam tubes, not window plastic. You can get them for about 6 ft/$1. Get as thick as possible. Concentrate on the hot pipes and the first 3-5 feet of the cold (coming from the water heater). Insulation in your attic is a good idea, but is a bigger expense. Put at least R-38 in your attic. Cellulose is good for most of the country, fiberglass more common. If you are doing it yourself, fiberglass is easier to install. Read magazines like Home Power, Home Energy, Solar Today. And turn your appliances off when you are not using them. One last thought-- hang up your laundry. If all Americans hung their laundry instead of using dryers, we could turn off all of the nuclear power plants in the US.
  • Get the dotcoms to own up to their energy waste.
    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?

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