Here's another plug for the TED 5000 and Google's PowerMeter that I posted about here...
We got our utilities bill today... we saved $60 this month... which means more $$ to spend on furnishing our still empty living room and dining room. :) Definitely recommend you check it out.
for the power meter and ted 5000, you can check what draws the most power around your house. these are some things we did...
- replace light bulbs that draw too much power with light bulbs that draw less power (CFLs) - test all the appliances in our house to see which ones draw most energy... and then try and use the ones that draw a lot of energy less (for example, run w/d less) - keep lights that draw a lot of energy off as often as possible...unless you need them. For example, one of the sets of lights in our bathroom draws tons of energy. the other 2 sets don't, so we try not to use that set unless we absolutely have to. - turn heat off when we are gone for an entire day (or more than 3-4 hours)- we can do that in Cali... you probably can't in Utah bc pipes will freeze :) - if there are 3 sets of lights on, turn 1-2 sets off unless you need them - using the data, we set a reasonable goal for how much energy we wanted to use each day and then we tried to stick to it (much easier when you can see it) - when we go out of town we unplug the appliances that draw a lot of energy (that don't need to be plugged in), tv, printer, whatever. - we also did the basic things like turn off lights whenever we leave a room
when you have a bigger house, it is amazing how much more energy you use without realizing it. i think those were most of the things we did
2 comments:
Hey, how exactly did you save so much money? Did you just monitor it more closely and turn more things off?
for the power meter and ted 5000, you can check what draws the most power around your house. these are some things we did...
- replace light bulbs that draw too much power with light bulbs that draw less power (CFLs)
- test all the appliances in our house to see which ones draw most energy... and then try and use the ones that draw a lot of energy less (for example, run w/d less)
- keep lights that draw a lot of energy off as often as possible...unless you need them. For example, one of the sets of lights in our bathroom draws tons of energy. the other 2 sets don't, so we try not to use that set unless we absolutely have to.
- turn heat off when we are gone for an entire day (or more than 3-4 hours)- we can do that in Cali... you probably can't in Utah bc pipes will freeze :)
- if there are 3 sets of lights on, turn 1-2 sets off unless you need them
- using the data, we set a reasonable goal for how much energy we wanted to use each day and then we tried to stick to it (much easier when you can see it)
- when we go out of town we unplug the appliances that draw a lot of energy (that don't need to be plugged in), tv, printer, whatever.
- we also did the basic things like turn off lights whenever we leave a room
when you have a bigger house, it is amazing how much more energy you use without realizing it. i think those were most of the things we did
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