My aunt sent me this article. It was really interesting and had some really good ideas that we can actually use to lower our monthly electricity and heating costs. You always hear "turn down your thermostat to 68 (in the winter) and the water heater to 120", but this article had many more helpful examples. It's a bit of a long read, but worth while.
(From
Debt Proof Living)
Monday, December 01, 2008
Mr. Janke’s science class takes on the power company
The least you need to know
By by Ray Janke
As a toddler, an electrifying encounter with a light socket taught me to respect the power of electricity. As a teen, I learned to respect the high cost of electricity when my father would fine me five bucks every time I left a room without turning out the lights. But it was during my service in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Silversides that I became passionate about electricity.
After completing my stint in the Navy and becoming an electrical instructor with Technical Careers Institute, I was introduced to a phenomenon known as the phantom electrical load. Phantom loads are electrical devices that draw electrical power even when they are turned off! With my curiosity piqued, I set out to disengage every single phantom load in my home. My motivation was driven by the desire to stop paying for electricity that was not benefiting me in any way.
Upon receiving my Master’s of Education degree I started a new career as a high school science teacher. My love for science and making complex scientific theories understandable opened many students’ minds to the possibilities of science. One of my more philosophical students challenged me to show the application of the scientific principles in ways that the students could participate.
At the time, I was in the process of buying my first home. It seemed like the perfect idea to involve the students in experiments to see how much we could reduce my new home’s electricity consumption by applying sound scientific methods.
The house experiment was successful on many fronts, especially to the many students who made the connection that scientific principles have the power to affect changes in their own lives, in their homes, and in the communities of the world.
During the first year of the house experiment, we purchased Energy Star rated appliances
(energystar.gov). Although Energy Star products can cost more initially, my wife, who is an electrical engineer, understood that the difference in price would be quickly recouped in reduced electricity consumption, making them more cost efficient over time.
We decided to do nothing more than switch to the Energy Star appliances for a few months so we could get an average monthly kilowatt-hour use baseline. This would allow us to accurately measure the cost-cutting efforts we would be making. Our average monthly electricity bill was $120.
Soon we adddressed our heating and hot water energy consumption. We noticed that the furnace ran constantly in cold weather, and six-foot-long icicles hung from the roofline to the ground after the first snowfall. These observations told us that our heated air was escaping, causing the furnace to work overtime and the snow on the roof to melt. I quickly discovered the problem: More than half of the attic insulation was missing. With new insulation in place, we determined we were using 1,200 gallons of fuel oil per year.
Switching from incandescent to fluorescent light bulbs became our next challenge. Making the decision to switch was easy. Finding the money to cover the high initial cost of fluorescent bulbs was the difficult part. I made a deal with my wife that I would initially replace the incandescent light bulbs that were on for long periods of time each day. Through a smaller monthly electric bill and the use of electric company-sponsored sales and rebates for fluorescent light bulbs, I was able to save enough money each month to buy more bulbs. Once we achieved a complete conversion to fluorescents, our electricity bill dropped below $100 a month.
We have frequent electrical surges and lightning strikes in western Massachusetts, which can zap sensitive electronics causing them to stop working. I purchased Tripp-Lite and Belkin surge protected power strips to protect phone equipment and other electronic devices.
That’s when it dawned on me that power strips could also help us deal with all the phantom electrical loads lurking in the house.
Remembering to crawl under tables or behind furniture to unplug electrical cords to stop the phantom loads had not proven to be practical or convenient. We needed an easy way to unplug all the devices that were producing these pesky phantom loads. Power strips became the perfect solution. With everything plugged into a handy power strip, all we have to do is push the rocker switch to the off position to disconnect every item plugged into that power source.
Not all phantom electrical loads are bad. My automatic coffee maker stays plugged in on standby so it’s ready to make coffee each morning. I am grateful to pay for the power required to keep it in ready mode. Some phantom electrical loads are less obvious like chargers for cell phones, Game Boys and laptop computers. Once the device is charged, leaving the power-sucking charger plugged in serves no purpose.
A handy device like the Kill-A-Watt meter (see sidebar) lets you determine what devices in your home are guzzling electricity needlessly. Once you know, you decide whether to keep it plugged in and drawing power, or attaching it to a power strip that you turn off when you are not using it.
By eliminating offending phantom electrical loads, we were able to get our average monthly electricity bill below $40. We would soon learn, however, that conserving electricity can have its problems.
As I involved my ninth grade science class in my home energy experiments, the power company decided to test our electric meter for possible tampering issues. They knew my wife was an electrical engineer, which only added to their suspicions.
The company insisted that our energy use was way below what is required to run a 2,200 square foot home. They removed the old meter and sent it in for testing. To their surprise, it was working properly. That’s when they contacted us to find out what we were doing to use so little electricity. We were glad to share with them our conservation efforts. Thankfully, that lifted the cloud of suspicion. Hopefully, such a thing will not happen to you, but if you do get audited or your electric meter is checked by your power provider, consider it a compliment for your efforts in electricity conservation.
In the years that followed, we tested other methods to conserve electricity. Having three years of data helped us to determine within a month or two if the variable change was working to reduce our electricity and energy expenses.
We tackled the heating oil consumption by getting the furnace repaired and cleaned so it would function at peak efficiency. We turned the hot water heater down to 120 F, a temperature that minimizes accidental scalding but is hot enough to kill germs in the laundry. We installed low flow shower heads and have limited our showers to fewer than five minutes.
We covered all accessible hot water pipes with foam insulation tubes to minimize heat loss. We sealed the foundation of the house, including every hole we could find and all the seams around the windows and doorways with caulk. These combined efforts reduced our heating oil consumption to below 1,000 gallons per year.
To further reduce our heating oil consumption, we installed programmable thermostats to regulate our heating system around our work and weekend schedule. We also insulated the basement ceiling and wall joists. This reduced our heating oil consumption below
800 gallons a year.
We found great success in customizing the temperature using the start and stop times on our programmable thermostats. They are now programmed so the heat comes on half an hour before we get up for work and stays on for thirty minutes (66 F upstairs and 68 F downstairs). Both programmable thermostats are set to 60 F for the rest of the day, until they are set to come back on half an hour before we arrive home from work. At 10 p.m., both thermostats are set back to 60 F for the rest of the night. On weekends we program the thermostats to accommodate a slightly different schedule.
Many people have asked why we set the upstairs temperature two degrees cooler than the downstairs temperature. Simply put, heat rises so we count on heat from the downstairs moving upward to help warm the upstairs. We have found that the two-degree temperature difference works well with our home and is well tolerated by friends and family.
Another variable that proved successful was purchasing an Energy Star (Maytag) front-loading washing machine. Not only did we reduce the amount of hot and cold water used per load, we have cleaner clothes. My wife loves her front-loading washing machine and wonders why we didn’t do this sooner.
Most recently, we added an additional layer of R-19 insulation to the attic of our home. We are now averaging less than 150 kilowatt-hours of electrical use per month and our heating oil consumption has dropped below 700 gallons a year. Even with soaring energy prices, our average electricity bill is less than $45.
People often ask my wife how we find the money to implement energy conservation changes. What works for us is to initially reduce our energy costs by doing free or low-cost energy conservation measures. As we spend less on the electricity bill, we use the difference to seed energy conservation upgrades for our home. Then these new upgrades begin to seed future energy conservation projects.
Within the next year or two, we plan to install a solar panel array that will produce three to four kilowatts of energy which we will sell back to the electric company. Our goal is to reduce our electricity and heating oil costs to a net sum of zero—a challenging goal, but one
we are confident we’ll be able to achieve.
