This is the first part of a series of articles about energy efficiency- How small changes can make a big impact. The following 4 paragraphs will pretty much model how small changes in behavior can trigger a big impact, in a year’s time.
Turn off the TV when not in use. About 60% of the time a TV is on, in most households, nobody is watching it. On average a TV consumes about 200 Watts. A house that uses a TV for 20 hours per day consumes 2 KWH kilowatt hours per day. At a rate of 14 cents per KWH, this number can become over a hundred dollars per year. And the waste is about $61 dollars per family. In a city like New York City, we are talking about a savings of $613 million dollars or 4.3 Giga Watts…
Cable Boxes and direct TV receivers are always consuming power. Unplugging them will save you a little energy. If you, all the readers of this article, and your acquaintances take this measure, you have an effect as follows:
Suppose this article is read by 1000 readers. Each reader recommends this measure to 5 people and each person has 2 boxes at home. If they unplug the cable box for 16 hours per household. We are talking about 1.1 Megawatts if the cable box is rated at 40W.
Plastic Bags. Under the same premises, if 20,000 households use paper bags or reusable ones when they can (assuming there is a reduction of just 3 plastic bags per day per family), we are talking about a net reduction of plastic-equivalent consumption of almost 1000 pounds of raw plastic.
Temperature Control.
Follow these three steps:
Select an efficient air conditioner with the right rating for the space to be conditioned. The dimensions of the area .vs. the BTU rating.
Buy an efficient air conditioner of at least 8 BTU per watt.
Setup the thermostat to a comfortable temperature.
Turn it up or set it up to run as a fan when the tempeture outside is the same temperature as desired.
This will reduce to about 30% the consumption of electricity per room.
For example, for a typical 5000 BTU air conditioner to cool down a 10X15 room from 80 degrees to 70 degrees, takes about 50 minutes. To maintain the temperature, it would be on 25% of the time. If the thermostat is not setup properly, even a few degree can make the air conditioner work all the time, even though the room is already conditioned. We are talking about 50% of 500 Watts. Almost enough energy to power 3 TVs.
I really like the idea about recommending to 5 other people. Just like pyramid selling except it’s good for the environment and you won’t lose any friends
well i know that the things that are listed are very important, but do ever think about the trash that is going to the waste lands?!? also to try to concern people about driving to places…to reduce the polution…