Mark's Home Electricity Conservation Efforts
Wondering what you can do at home -- and most importantly, how much this will help lower your bill? The following is a catalogue of what we've done at home, little bit at a time, and the results.
There are also items we've done to trim gas consumption, but that's another story.
Notice that none of the items took a great deal of effort or money to implement, just a judicious dollup of common sense. I'm not even getting into the best way to conserve, which would be to build a house with proper energy conservation consideration. The tasks listed could be implemented by any homeowner could on any home.
An interesting source of CO2 emissions calculators and references to home energy links is Household Energy Tracker (Thanks to AD).
Results to date:
- Average consumption (current compared to the same billing periods for the previous two years since we started making changes) is down at least 10%. Current monthly consumption is now near or under 1000 kWh. (I'll post the exact figures at some point).
- Since Toronto Hydro bills us on a bi-monthly basis, and the all-in cost per kWh of electricity is roughly 10 cents, this adds up to roughly a $20 savings per bill ($10/month, $120/year).
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Dwelling:
- Approximately 1800 sq. ft. detached residential dwelling for a small family (and added in summer 2003, a live-out nanny)
- Built in the early 50s, windows replaced in 80s.
- Gas-fired furnace and hot water tank
- 2 fridges and 1 deep freezer
- Electric oven, washer, drier
Activities:
- Replace 2 150w external flood lights on a timer with 1 16w weather-resistant CFLs
- Replace 1 150w external flood light with 1 16w domed CFL
- Replace 4 75w chandelier-style lights in a bathroom light fixture with 2 7w CFLs
- Replace 11 other frequently used incandescents, ranging from 60 to 100w bulbs with 12 or 16w CFLs
- Insert a powerbar (left off when the devices are not in use) ahead of a TV and VCR+DVD unit. Also applied this technique to the stereo unit.
- Turn off a rarely used colour inkjet printer
- Turn off a UPS used for a desktop computer (usually off) when the computer is not in use
- Ensure laptops are set to hibernate when not in use for more than 30 minutes
- The obvious one: use the heat pump as an A/C less frequently when external ventilation suffices to cool the house.
- Replace the furnance air filter on a monthly basis (to ensure the A/C doesn't have to work extra-hard to circulate cool air trapped in a dirty filter)
- Keep upstairs southern-facing blinds closed on sunny and hot days
- Keep main floor southern-facing windows covered as much as possible using shear drapes (Provides privacy yet does not block all light for convenience)
Still on my list:
- Check all my timers to see if they're as crummy as the one I just realized on Oct 9/04 that can draw up to 1250W of power -- and replace them!. I realized something was fishy when our microwave kept tripping the circuit breaker, and the only thing I could think of that was different was that I plugged a lamp into the timer the previous evening, even though the lamp was off. I'm hoping the timer wasn't drawing its fully-rated 1250W capacity, but there's no way it was only pulling the 15W the CFL required and just a touch more for itself -- the device was rather warm to the touch.
- Attach our deep-freezer to a timer and intermittently shut off power overnight (Our relatively new freezer kept meat frozen solid despite being off for just over 24 hours during the Aug 2003 blackout).
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