04th Mar 2008 by Mark Turansky
Who Saved Watt?!
Filed under Misc. My family uses compact flourescent light bulbs. Our next cars will be hybrids. We’d love to go solar when the price per watt for the panels comes down, and I support net metering to allow people to reduce their monthly bills by putting energy back onto the grid . We recycle religiously. We’re green or at least we’re trying to be.
So I made the Who Saved Watt?! site to a) encourage people to switch to CFs and learn other little conservation habits and b) add their saved watts to the aggregate total. I’d love to make the total interactive somehow, like a Google Map showing all the energy saved by locale. That’s for a future version.
Here’s my eco-friendly merit badge:
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I saved 1147.5 watts! |
| www.whosavedwatt.com | |
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Thanks! Cool idea. It’s pretty amazing that in a moderate-size house (by American standards), you can save almost a kW by just swapping out light bulbs. We’re saving ~850W according to your site.
Changing to CFs is a great idea. Another good power saving tip is to *unplug* as many of your appliances as possible. This is easy if you put all your appliances on powerstrips that have power switches.
Why? Because even when your TV is “off” it’s still using up electricity so that you can turn it on with that remote control. Same goes for pretty much anything that is remote controlled. Other things that are not remote controlled are also on while idle. Take, for example, my toaster. This sucker is on just so that it can show its little cylon-like temperature led. My coffee maker sucks up juice just to power a clock I can’t even see because it’s covered with coffee grounds. So I put all those guys on power strips and when I’m done using them or watching TV I just flip the switch. Turn off your monitor, don’t let it enter power safe mode; it’s still using energy. Avoid screen savers too! They just keep your monitor consuming power.
Turning off our appliances when we are not using has cut a third from our electricity bill … I’ll have to get back to you on the exact amount. I live with my wife in a small house in LA, so our power needs are very small. The percentage off your bill will vary based on the size of your house and the number of people in it, so the impact may not seem as large to you, but it’s still a good thing to do because every little bit helps.