Minimize Electricity Consumption

Here are some loose thoughts on minimizing energy consumption. First, you can save money with efficient appliances; this is almost a false argument because you must purchase the energy efficient appliance in the first place! Modern refrigerators consume much less power than their predecessors. The newest LED bulbs merely sip power, compared to their incandescent brethren. Use sunlight in the daytime to brighten up a room and to see things as opposed to producing light with energy. Live in the day instead of the night to keep from needing extra light and the energy it takes to produce it. Put a timer on your refrigerator to shut it off for a couple of hours every night, perhaps 1 AM to 4AM? Get timers and power strips between those vampire loads, like cable TV boxes and cell phone chargers. Our cell phones get plugged into their chargers at night, and at midnight, the timer comes on, charges the phones, and shuts off at 3:00 AM.

Here’s an energy lesson we learned: We put a flag pole in the front yard and in keeping with flag traditions, illuminate it at night. However, in my zeal, I used three flood lights – Looks Great! Our next power bill doubled, so we now have only one floodlight, and it is an outdoor LED flood.

Don’t use electricity to generate heat because is the least efficient way to make heat with one exception: overproducing electricity from the wind turbine must be burned off. So, wind turbine systems often use a large resistor, called a “dump load”, to burn off the excess power by converting it to heat. If you have such a system, consider getting an electric water heater, and letting the dump load be the heating element.