Turning Over a New Leaf - Going Green in Blue Island

by Anna Stange

Reduce Electricity Usage

Part 1

Over the past few years, most of us have seen our electric bills rise. Deregulation and increased demand have driven up the cost. There are many ways to reduce your energy consumption and thereby reduce your electric bill.

Turn off the lights! Your mother was right; turning off the lights when you are not using them can make a big difference in your electricity bill. For incandescent bulbs, turn off the light if you’ll be gone for more than 5 minutes. If you’re using florescent bulbs, turn them off if you’ll be gone for more than 15 minutes. The difference is due to the amount of electricity needed to turn on the bulb.

When needed, replace burnt out light bulbs with energy efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). The price has come way down, and they last years longer than incandescent bulbs. We’ve had some bulbs for well over 10 years! The USEPA estimates that if every American home replaced just one incandescent bulb with a CFL, we’d save over $600 million per year and reduce annual carbon emissions equivalent to more than 800,000 cars.

Next, unplug appliances and chargers when not in use. You may have heard of “phantom power”, more properly called “standby power”.

That’s the power that appliances and chargers draw, even when they are turned off! If the appliance has a digital clock display, “ready” light, remote start, quick start, or charger (phone & other appliances), it is drawing electricity 24 hours a day, even if the appliance is fully charged! We have our computer and all its attachments plugged into a power socket—we can turn the whole works off with one switch.

A typical cell phone will fully charge in about 2 hours. Some research shows that only 5% of the power used by phone chargers actually charges the phone—the other 95% is used when the charger is left plugged in. I’ve tried to be more conscientious about charging my phone in the car—it turns out that charging the phone (and any other unit) while the car is running has a negligible impact on gas mileage.

Since I mentioned the computer, if you’re considering purchasing or replacing your computer, you should know that a laptop uses less energy than a desktop. The laptop is smaller and designed to be more energy efficient. The added bonus is that, with a simple adapter, you can charge it in your car!

I’ll be back with more electricity and money-saving tips next time!