Posted on: February 1, 2008
Power Down, Do-gooder
Saving energy is easy to do once you realize how much you waste unnecessarily. From leaving computers on to keeping your TV plugged in to the little things you’ve never thought of, find out how to cut your energy costs and reduce emissions.
By Jeff Schnaufer
CTW Features
Life sucks. Energy, that is.
From “vampire power” drained by home entertainment systems to outdated refrigerators that gobble up more than just your leftovers, American bank accounts are getting sucked dry by our wasteful energy habits.
“We estimate that in a typical household, if people did a range of things over time, they could save up to 40 percent of their total heating, cooling and electricity costs for things like lighting, appliances and electronics,” says Bill Prindle, deputy director for communications for the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (www.aceee.org), Washington, D.C.
Americans enjoy a high standard of living, which contributes to our gratuitous energy use. And it costs us: According to the Washington, D.C. based non-profit Alliance to Save Energy (www.ase.org), U.S. households are projected to spend close to $2,200 for home energy costs in 2008.
Cutting those costs takes less energy than you might expect. In fact, it can be as easy as flipping a switch when you leave the house.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, turning off just one 60-watt incandescent bulb that would otherwise burn eight hours a day can save about $15 per year. And replacing your five most frequently used light fixtures or the bulbs in them with ENERGY STAR qualified lights can save more than $65 a year in energy costs.
Consider another switch to save energy: from hot water to cold. The DOE says hot water heating accounts for about 90 percent of the energy used by your washing machine; yet only 10 percent goes to electricity used by the washer motor. Depending on the clothes and hardness of your water, many Americans can do laundry exclusively with cold water by using cold-water laundry detergents. Switching to cold water can save the average household more than $40 annually with an electric water heater, and more than $30 annually with a gas water heater.
Your dryer may have two features to help you save energy. The first is a moisture or humidity sensor that shuts off the heat when clothes are dry. If you don’t have this feature, try to match the cycle length to the size and weight of the load. A dryer that runs an extra 15 minutes per load can cost you up to $34 per year.
Lint traps on your dryer can also help you save energy. Just cleaning the lint trap before each and every load allows the dryer’s heated air to circulate more efficiently through wet clothes. This can save you up to $34 per year.
Then there’s the wasted energy you never even see.
“The other area that people don’t think about is the energy used by all the appliances we have plugged in,” Prindle says. “Even when they’re not in use, they consume phantom loads or vampire energy.”
This may include televisions that have active circuits that maintain internal clocks. It may also include CD and DVD players, stereos, and chargers for cell phones and laptops, as well as computers that run on “sleep” mode instead of shutting off completely.
Between five and 15 percent of your energy bill is estimated to be wasted on vampire power. That number may rise to as much as 20 percent by 2010. Yet the solution can also be as simple as flipping a switch.
“A lot of people use power supply strips to protect their appliances from voltage surges, but you can also use those power strips to turn off that whole bank of home entertainment products when they’re not being used,” Prindle says. “If you’re going to bed or leaving for work, why not turn it off?”
Flat screen televisions, for instance, can use more energy than a refrigerator. In a sign of how far technology has come, the modern refrigerator uses one quarter of the energy it used 30 years ago. An older model can cost, on average, $90 or more per year to operate, so consider buying an ENERGY STAR refrigerator, instead. More information on energy-saving appliances can be found at www.energystar.gov.
In places like Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia, 40 percent of all energy consumption in the average household is for heating. Ronnie J. Kweller, deputy director of communications for the Alliance to Save Energy, says this number can be slashed in a number of ways.
“If you have a guest room that is not in use, or you have a home office but you don’t use the rest of the house during the day, you may just want to use a space heater in the home office. Or close the guest room until you have a guest,” Kweller says. “And open the drapes or blinds on the sunny side of the house to heat up the house during the day, then close them at night.”
Consider, too, simply plugging air leaks to outside doors and windows by using foam sealants, caulking and weather stripping. This, combined with adequate insulation throughout the home, “can cut down your heating bills by as much as 20 percent and will make your home more comfortable because you wont have drafts,” Kweller says.
Kweller suggests checking out www.insulate.com and www.efficientwindows.org for more tips on cutting down on your heating bills.
Want more ideas how to power down? Tune into www.greenenergytv.com, a website that features videos uploaded by energy-conscious organizations, individuals, inventors and even celebrities.
“Ben Affleck has one on conserving energy by downloading music instead of buying CD’s,” says Craig Zamary, founder of GreenEnergyTV.com. “Then there’s a neat video from Ed Begley, Jr. about a wireless home energy management system. We have viewers from 120 different countries that have gone on to our site. I think a lot of people are interested in what’s going on around the world and ways they can conserve energy and what’s new in alternative energy.”
Because powering down not only can save us a little green, it helps keep our planet that way, too.
“With the growing awareness and concern about climate change, I think people want to know they are doing their part for future generations,” says Kweller. “With the less energy you use, that’s less pollution your are creating. It does end up benefiting your community, the nation and the planet.”
