8 Easy Projects for Instant Energy Savings
(Page 2 of 9)
February/March 2008
By Gary Reysa
Prioritizing the Projects
RELATED CONTENT
The U.S. Department of Energy's work with the city of Greensburg, Kan., over the past year is beari...
. . . ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES...... ENERGY FLASHES. . . September/October 1982 POPEYE W...
A new study predicts we could have one quarter of our energy needs from renewable sources by 2025, ...
Which renewable energy technology has the best potential to combat global warming and power our fut...
Missouri creates a stronger market for renewable energy by passing a clean energy initiative....
When you start looking at any group of energy saving projects, you’ll likely find a huge difference in the bang for the buck. In our case, it was the simple things — such as controlling the amount of power that our computers use or basic insulating projects — that had especially good paybacks. On the other end of the spectrum, the solar photovoltaic project we intend to do in the future will cost as much as all 22 of our other projects put together, yet will only account for 2.5 percent of the total energy reduction!
Why was the total payback on our projects so good? The keys to our success were:
- We did quite a bit of homework before we got started. We evaluated each project for what it would cost and what it would save, and threw out the ones that wouldn’t pay well.
- Some projects cost almost nothing, but have big savings — you can see on the chart above that several paid for themselves many times over within the first year. These tend to bring up the average return of the overall effort.
- We are do-it-yourselfers — this can make a huge difference in the costs involved in some projects.
- Another bonus is that some of our energy improvements qualified for rebates or tax credits that further increased the money we saved.
Electricity and Greenhouse Gas
There’s another reason to do these projects. Cutting down on electricity use is very effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, in the United States, most of our electricity comes from inefficient coal plants. Coal is a high carbon fuel, and compared to other energy sources, coal-fired plants produce a lot of carbon dioxide relative to the amount of energy they produce.
If we’re concerned about climate change, we should be shutting down coal plants. Instead we are on course to build more of them — many more. To me, this argues for doing an especially aggressive job of trimming your electricity use. If you want to reduce your contribution to greenhouse gases, most people will be able to find many hundreds of kilowatt hours that can be saved easily and cheaply with minimal lifestyle change. We get our electricity from a coal-fired plant, so all the projects we did significantly reduced the amount of greenhouse gas we produce. Notice that the projects that save electricity reduce greenhouse gases by about 2 pounds of carbon dioxide per 1 kWh of energy saved. For example, putting our two home computers on a power diet saved nearly 1,800 kWh per year and 3,500 pounds of greenhouse gas!
1. Personal Computer Power Management
Computers and all their related equipment, such as printers and wireless routers, consume a lot of power. Together, our two computers and related equipment used 270 watts whenever they were switched on, but we found there was an easy way to reduce this amount. We put all the computer junk on a power strip, so that at night we could turn off everything with one flip of the power strip switch. We also started using the energy saving settings on our computers. During the day, we have the computers set to hibernate if they are inactive for 15 minutes so that the computer stops consuming power. This saves a total of 1,780 kWh per year, 3,560 pounds of greenhouse gas, and $178 per year! Recently, we also started using a new gadget called the Mini Power Minder that automatically powers down all our peripherals when the computer goes into hibernate. At only $15, it’s a bargain.
Page:
<< Previous 1 | 2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Next >>
