Five Percent: Conserve Energy

If every one of the 110 Million households in the USA changed just one light bulb to CFL, this would reduce the total output of CO₂ emissions in the United States by around 2.6%. Do I have my math right? What assumptions are going into this. It seemed kind of implausible, to be honest. But I think the numbers check out. Have I made an error? (more…)

Carter, our 10-year-old son, had a great idea a few nights ago: give Compact Fluorescent (CFL) Bulbs back to grown-ups who hand out candy this Halloween. We were talking about costumes, and Carter wanted to be a cactus, then a man dressed in duct-tape clothing (he can make anything out of duct tape!), but then … a wind turbine Halloween costume! Hmmm, we thought — a wind turbine would be a great, simple and really fun Halloween costume. We talked about other alternative energy costumes (solar panels, hydro-electric plants, etc.). but the wind turbine is now in progress. I’ll post a picture when it’s all done.

But then came the idea about giving each neighbor a CFL in exchange for the candy (more…)

I just watched an episode of Living with Ed which plays on HGTV (Home and Garden TV, I guess?). I learned a few things. For example, it hadn’t occurred to me that compact fluorescent lights produce less heat, which is good in the summer, and just a lousy way to heat your house in the winter.

Or, if you have a pool, you don’t need to clean it as much, and you can use ozone instead of chlorine. I don’t have a pool, but if I did, I would have been able to make a simple change: reset the timer.

It’s a good show — funny, light hearted, and useful. And, it’s set outside of Hollywood, so there are always friends who just happen to be movie stars showing up. Give it a look. (more…)

We started our conservation efforts in late September 2005, about the time I started this blog. Using data from our electricity bills, which report the number of Kilowatt Hours (KwH) used in each billing cycle, transferred the data to Excel and made the chart below.

Bottom line: we have reduced our total consumption of electricity by more than 40% on average. A little better than my 5%, eh? (more…)

We have had some pretty surprising successes in our efforts to reduce energy consumption. But there are a number of things we have tried that don’t work as well as we want. (more…)

Last year around this time I tried a dimmable R-40 floodlight that didn’t really work. On the advice of a commenter on that post, I ordered some Greenlite R40 23W dimmable floods and they are a very good replacement for our incandescent R40 floodlights. (more…)

Environmental Defense has the slogan “Finding the Ways that Work” which is exactly what we’re trying to do. They have a campaign going asking a simple thing: pledge to change a light bulb to a Compact Fluorescent (CF). It’s simple and think hard: isn’t there one light you could replace?

Our experience with CF has been great. We now have them in (more…)

April 2005: 993 Kwh, April 2006: 623 Kwh

A 37% reduction and almost all of it from (more…)

In my recent post on Dimmable Compact Fluorescent floodlights I said I would try two new bulbs; both floodlights.

First the not so good. (more…)

Update, 2009: Dimmable CFLs are still useful in limited cases

We have a bunch of lights on dimmers — our original motivation was to improve room ambiance. Who knew this was also a good way to save electricity. But now that we’re trying compact fluorescent (CF) bulbs we thought we wouldn’t be able to replace any of these.

Phillips to the rescue. They seem to have lead the way in dimmable CF bulbs, even including floodlight and recessed bulbs. I just placed an order from bulbs.com for several to try them out. A couple will go in the living room which has recessed ceiling floods. I also got a non-dimmable outdoor-rated floodlight. (more…)