Energy consumption

[Umfriend]

So close to a year ago I became energy-concious and decided to decrease our (family of 5, wife works at home some 14 hrs a week) footprint.

Wrt electricity, we're down 1.6% to 6721KWhr. I'm somewhat dissapointed by this, guess quiting CPDN and switching from classic lightbulbs to "savingslamps" did not make a whole lot of difference. It did make a large differnece in that in some places the bulbs would break within 3 to 4 months while these savingslamps just go on and on and on We did make a large shift to night tariff: about 7% of our electricity use was shifted from day to night/weekends.
Anyway, will have to start changing some halogen lamps to LED I guess, bit I can;t find a store where I can actually see those in action wrt. light colour, yield, dispersion etc...

Wrt gas (natural, used for cooking, heating and bathing/showering/hot water) we're down 11.3%!! Now at 1664m^3. Rather dependant on the weather of course but I do not think there has been a big difference between the winter of 2006 and 2007. We set the timers and temp.level parameters just a tad bit tighter and, presto!

I do wish to stress however, I'm in this for the money and for the money only.

So how are you guys all doing?

[Fat Tone]

I'm using GU10 replacement LEDs for accent lighting in my kitchen. While they do that job brilliantly, sadly they couldn't hope to replace the 4 50W haolgen bulbs in my 4m * 3m conservatory (used as a dining room).

Our usage of energy varies a lot according to work patterns and weather, so I don't think we could ever compare. If I work at home for a day (average 1-2 days/week) I save 30 miles of petrol costs (~£5!) but then I'm running the home heating and two quad core machines all day.

I'm constantly switching things off that the rest of the family leave on - usually I can find 3-4 lights that aren't needed, Luke is frequently going off leaving his PC and lamp on (so I kill power at the wall - if he loses something, tough!), a lot of things are on standby that don't need to be (a couple of LCD TVs, the kettle - it has blue/red led lighting,- phone chargers etc etc) but there's loads more that could be turned off. We just got a new quad set of cordless phones, so thats 4 more chargers on constantly.

You have motivated me to do something more. I have a plug board that is controlled by a 12V signal from the PC to switch off peripherals when it is off. I never put it back in when building the quad, so I'll do it today.

[Umfriend]

Well, I don;t really compare on a day-to-day basis either. But year-on-year, does your average lifestyle between years vary that much?

[Fat Tone]

Yes, massively while the children are growing up.

11 years ago we both worked full time, 1 car, no kids.

10 years ago, 1 car, 1 kid, 1 full time worker, 1 in various degrees of part time working.

6.5 years ago, 2 cars, 2 full time workers, house twice as large

5 years ago, 2 cars, 2 kids, 1 full and 1 part-time worker

In the last couple of years my wife has been training to be a teacher. Her hours teaching/studying vary massively from month to month. One month she can be home 4 days a week, yet at the moment its less than 1 day per week. After Christmas its looking more like 4 again.

I'm also working two jobs, the second mainly from home in the evenings which means a lot more late nights.

Hopefully we'll settle in to some sort of routine for next September.

[dZeus]

So close to a year ago I became energy-concious and decided to decrease our (family of 5, wife works at home some 14 hrs a week) footprint.

Wrt electricity, we're down 1.6% to 6721KWhr. I'm somewhat dissapointed by this, guess quiting CPDN and switching from classic lightbulbs to "savingslamps" did not make a whole lot of difference. It did make a large differnece in that in some places the bulbs would break within 3 to 4 months while these savingslamps just go on and on and on We did make a large shift to night tariff: about 7% of our electricity use was shifted from day to night/weekends.
Anyway, will have to start changing some halogen lamps to LED I guess, bit I can;t find a store where I can actually see those in action wrt. light colour, yield, dispersion etc...

Wrt gas (natural, used for cooking, heating and bathing/showering/hot water) we're down 11.3%!! Now at 1664m^3. Rather dependant on the weather of course but I do not think there has been a big difference between the winter of 2006 and 2007. We set the timers and temp.level parameters just a tad bit tighter and, presto!

I do wish to stress however, I'm in this for the money and for the money only.

So how are you guys all doing?

Some things I try to stick to myself:
- try to adjust your metabolism to lower environmental temperatures by slowly lowering the temperature inside your house during the winter. I can do everything fine at 15C but I guess other people might need 17-19C.
- dress for winter in the winter (wear warm clothing even inside)
- don't heat all the rooms in your house, make sure you turn off the radiator when you leave a room and try to be in the same room with others
- don't use heating during the night (some people seem to think this is normal use?)
- make sure your PC's standby mode is S3 (not S1) and set it to go into S3 after like ~30 mins of idle time. While your HDD might wear out slightly faster, it saves a lot of power
- don't use CFLs (that's spaarlampen for you, umfriend) for rooms where you switch on the light only for a brief time (toilet?), as I think that starting it uses as much energy as X mins of regular light-bulb burning time, and regular bulbs withstand on/off cycles better than CFLs (at least, in my experience).
- don't buy electronics that eat energy? like Plasma screens, etc.
- get one of those power usage meters, so you can monitor usage at the wall. You can 'rent' them for free for a week or 2 in the netherlands, through some website (search google).
With one of those, I found out that a VCR with just showing the clock was using 15W constantly for example.

[Umfriend]

AFAIK, the CFLs are somewhat different in their starting-mechanism compared to old TL-tubes (dZeus will know what they are called in proper English :d). They do not use a lot of energy but take time to reach max. efficiency (about 90% output after 30 secs).
They tend to have a long life between 5k and 9k hrs or so but yes, that is under "favourable" conditions wrt on/off switching.

Given that I had a few spots where the lights would not be used for long, the toilets for instance, where the bulbs would self-destruct within 3 to 4 months, I thought I'd give it a try. So in my specific case, the CFLs withstand powerup/powerdown far better.

I guess the only sensible reasons not to use CFLs are:
- If you need a lot of light instantly; or,
- If you use the light very rarely so that the power savings will take centuries to make up for the increased initial cost of CFLs compared to classical bulbs.

With heating: we're coming down from 20-21 to 19 in winter and as said indeed less heating in morning and evening (used not to have at night already). Anyway, I don;t think we were big users compared to our countrymen but that is not enough. I want to use far less. Money Money Money!

[Fat Tone]

On the subject of large start-up energies in flourescent lamps, Mythbusters addressed this and came to the conclusion that the break-even point was 11 seconds. I'd like to see some better maths though. That does make me switch off, say, my garage light, which I used to leave on all evening on the off-chance I would go out again in the next few hours.

[GT98]

I wish I could find a way to keep my electric bill in the summer down, my Central AC unit is killing me...I can have bills in the $250-300 range (normally 80-100 during the non-summer months) depending how hot it is outside and I'm keeping my AC set at 78 with 2 ceiling fans going full blast. I guess I could replace the windows next in my place to see if that helps, since the HVAC unit was just replaced last summer.

[Umfriend]

Is the use of ceiling fans sensible when you're running an AC?

[WxDude]

I would think the use of ceiling fans would be worthwhile even with the AC on.
The ceiling fan will help to evenly mix the air in the room. This means a quicker
time for the AC to reach the set temperature.

[Umfriend]

I live in a mild climate so few (although more and more) have AC at home so I would not actually know but I would guess fans are a bad idea because:
1. The device itself generates warmth
2. Warmer air would be near the ceiling, now mixing with cooler air below where you would be at, increasing the experienced ambient temp
3. Although I'm sure this depends on the isolation characteristics of the ceiling, walls, windows etc, my guess is that given that it is hot oustide, all these things would tend te be leaking heat into your room. With increased airflow within, you'd actually facilitate the absorption of this.