Control the Change

I am going to suggest something here to you, my dear reader; the suggestion is that with some thinking, initial steps and planning, you can be on your way to a better future, reduce you environmental footprint and not really impact your lifestyle too much. I know, it sounds like a quick fix, snake oil and all; well that is not what I am suggesting at all. What I am suggesting is rethinking what you want to be happy, need to live and rework your life over the coming months to help start that movement.

So, what am I talking about? I am talking about some very easy steps to start you on your way:

1. Look at one area of your life (be it your house and it’s energy/heat usage or your food); for the sake of this article, let us look at your house and energy usage.
2. With step #1 done, I would suggest looking around your house, not only at how you use your power; but what you have turned on, when and why. Do you have all your lights using on incandescent bulbs, do you leave your cellphone charger pulled in and your TV plugged directly into the wall? If you do any of these, you should look to change it, here’s how:
   i. Put your TV, VCR/DVD Player and stereo systems on to a powerbar; the reason here is that not only will it make it easier to shut them all off with the flip of the powerbar’s on/off switch (and making sure they early are off); but data from numerous sources suggest that placing them on to a powerbar helps to actually reduce the amount of power used cumulatively by all the items. I know, seems crazy, I don’t know why; but I suspect it maybe related to electrical resistance required.
   ii. Any items that you only use once in a while (your cellphone charger, your MP3 player’s charger, your Blackberry’s one), place them likewise on a powerbar and turn the powerbar’s switch off when not in use. You’ll be surprised how quickly doing this and the bit above about the TV, VCR/DVD Player, et al., will add up and show on your electricity bill as a savings. For me, doing this helped to quickly show a savings on a monthly basis of probably 5% or more on my bill.
   iii. A helpful tool to get an idea on how much it costs you to keep that unused chargers plugged in or the TV and DVD/VCR player, instead of placing them on powerbars and turning them off when not in use (by flipping the powerbar’s switch), can be figured out by an relatively inexpensive Kill-a-Watt type meter (I got mine at Canadian Tire, a UPM 100, which is simple to setup and very handy). I tested everything around my house, except the oven ( I even tested the dryer as it is gas powered) and was surprised by how much power was used. We (my wife and I) thought we were fairly good with turning things off; but the energy meter told us otherwise. For instance, we have two 13 watt CFL floor lamps in the sitting room, well with the energy meter, each on their own used 11 watts. Put them on a powerbar and then test them… Well, surprised to see a combined total of not 22 watts; but 19 watts used. I thought this wrong, so I retested, and it still stood the new test.
   The Kill-a-Watt or whatever the name of the one you get, will help you determine your energy usage and where you might be able to start looking to save.
3. The third step I did was just over a year ago, when my wife and I changed our electricity provider (see Waste and Recovery for more details) to BullFrogPower. Doing this has helped us improve our energy usage (electricity in this case) dramatically; the highest daily average month was December ‘06, when we used about 16.2Kwh/day; fast forward to May ‘08, and for the past 3 months straight, our daily average each month (February through April and most of May too) has been 8.5Kwh. We’ve not stopped using electricity; we just started to use it more wisely (and turning off the TV/DVD player when not in use (using a digital timer from Canadian Time (made by Noma), this has made it easier to manage things).

All this cost my was about $75 Canadian to get the energy meter and two of the digital timers as well as a couple of hours doing the math; the hardest part was the paperwork to move from Toronto Hydro to BullFrogPower, though the actual process was easy (BullFrogPower has a great online process to handle this). Technically the cost per Kwh of electricity with BullFrog is a couple of cents more; but since that is going to support and re-invest in other wind, solar and alternate energy sources, I don’t mind. Also, my bill is about the same as it was formerly (if not abit less) with Toronto Hydro.

For additional information, see both my other posts on Waste and Recovery and the Quick Solutions Book Review, specifically at Paul Scheckel’s “The Home Energy Diet”.

Cheers,

BlackMacX