Easy Solar Savings

The electricity bill finally came!! Yay! Why should I be so excited you ask? Let me rephrase that…”Why should Spark E. be so excited?” I imagine some imaginary reader would ask. I am excited because I have managed to cut my electricity bill by a whopping 43% over last year.

I have to give most of the credit to Ikea for making so many energy saving lighting systems and hackable solar lighting thingies.

I’m not an eco-maniac or anything. Well, maybe. I dunno. I just don’t like to be reliant on limited natural resources. I don’t really like to be reliant on anything. I also don’t like wasting anything. The City of Tacoma gives us these great big bins for yard waste and recyclables which are free. We only have to pay for garbage. You pay by the size of the bin and even though I have the smallest size, I still only use it every other week at best. When you consider that the recycle bin will take all manner of plastics, aluminum, glass and non-food-soiled paper goods and the yard waste bin can be used for food scraps and food soiled paper goods (like pizza boxes) the only thing I really need the trash bin for is cat litter, tin cans, milk cartons and the occasional tea bag. Have you (the imaginary reader) ever been to a landfill and seen all the stuff that goes in there? It’s a huge waste. Okay, time for a new paragraph of rant:

So these huge companies mow down (for lack of a better term) huge tracks of land with equipment that guzzles petrol like I guzzle coffee and spews tons of crap into the air like I spew ummm ranting words on a blog page. They do this to dig up metal ore, harvest wood, extract more crude oil which in turn gets turned into products and containers that get used once. Then they are tossed into a trash bin which gets emptied eventually to a concentrated location. IE. Landfill. Where we just fill it in and pretend that it doesn’t exist.

To simplify, we spend enormous amounts of energy destroying the environment to gather tiny bits of material from all over the world only to use it once, concentrate it, bury it and pretend it doesn’t exist so we need more, lather, rinse, repeat.

WTF?

Why the f___ are we not mining the landfills? Please someone tell me why?

Fun, now back to the subject of saving energy. Not that I have any keen insight to saving energy, just some tangible results from the following steps:

1) Incandescent bulbs have been replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs.

2) Wherever possible, use L.E.D. lighting instead of CFL or incandescents.

3) Wherever possible replace all the above with solar powered L.E.D. lighting. Ikea sells a whole bunch of solar powered outdoor lighting like mini Chinese lantern strings that can be used indoors. The solar collector and battery module gets set in the window and turns on after dark. I like to have enough lite on so I don’t fall on my face (it has happened) walking to the can in the middle of the night. The solar lighting is perfect for this.

4) Use motion sensor lighting controls to turn lights on when you enter an area then auto shut off when you leave.

5) Use outlet strips with big on/off switches to control groups of appliances that draw power even when turned off. That would be “vampire devices” like wall-warts, home entertainment equip like TVs, subwoofers, computers and monitors. Etc.

6) Timers and light sensors. I live in Tacoma, WA. It’s not exactly the kind of city where you can leave your doors open and car unlocked. Security lighting is a must. I have a fluorescent low watt flood on a dusk-till-dawn light sensor over my parked vehicle. I have certain items that need to be on when I am home, like cell chargers, wifi router, etc. Things that are a pain to turn on everyday manually. It’s just as easy to plug them into an outlet strip with a timer that turns them on during the hours I am normally home.

7) Turn off lights when you leave the room.

8) Heat or cool only the room you are going to be in if possible. This means space heaters, window air conditioners.

Forty-three percent cut in electricity usage is a pretty cool result both ecologically and economically.

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4 Responses to Easy Solar Savings

  1. Kellie says:

    Right on, 43% is pretty impressive. I've been trying to cut down on energy waste at my place too, mostly because I'm gearing up for my August power bill (it's a doozy every year). Been playing with the idea of getting solar panels on my roof, since I only get a handful of cloudy days a year.

  2. Spark E says:

    Hi Kellie! I suppose in Vegas you have air conditioning bills up the wazzoo. Rooftop solar would be a smart investment there. Especially if you planned on owning the house for a while. I love my house but I am hooked on getting something smaller (Minimalist bug) and within walking distance to more stuff.

  3. KT says:

    Hey Sparky,

    Hows about a hobbit hole? Models optional. ;)

    Click