Think you know the single best thing you can do to save energy? A recent survey shows that most people don’t. The single best thing you can do to conserve energy and save money on your power bill is to swap out all of your light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. While you can certainly save money by vigilantly turning off lights around your house, you get much bigger savings by actually using CFL bulbs. If you think about it, it kind of makes sense. While you might save some money only using a 60 watt bulb 75% as long, you can save much more by using 15 watt bulbs a 100% of the time. Second on the list is to weatherize your home. Here’s a great list of things that you can do to save money from Environmentmagazine.org:
Very good information, quite comprehensive. People can can save a fairly significant amount of money by simply paying attention to energy efficient practices. When quantified, it can be well into the hundreds of dollars annually.
I have read how a low flow shower head can produce significant savings, over $100 annually.
Another way to save us by choosing energy efficient options when making hone improvements. There are some pretty good tax credits available, though many expire at the end of 2010 (better hurry!).
This doesn’t make sense and I don’t agree.
In a given year (in the Southern US), my home uses and average of 2000 kW per month (or about $2500 for power bill). My gas bill is probably about $800- $1000 per year.
My gasoline bill is about $3000/yr for 2 vehicles.
Thus, we spend about over $6000 per year on energy for cars and house.
To decrease usage for cars, we would need to decrease usage (by buying more fuel economy cars or by net reducing number of trips).
On the house, however; there is NO WAY that the best thing that most average homeowners can do is change light bulbs. Your light bill only consitutes probably like 5-7% of your total electric usage. So, reducing this signifantly only changes things by about 2% (of the 2000 kW). Not to mention if one of those new light bulbs breaks it will spill mercury all over the place, which will have to be abated.
I would bet the two things that can make the house more efficient is making sure the attic is insulated well and is breathing properly (allowing enough heat to escape). Also, making sure the air conditioner is running right (sized properly, enough freon, duct work is lined up right, etc.). Most of summer BTUs (or kW) are used on air conditioning the home (50% for the 4 extreme heat of summer months, temps >90F).
My 2 cents, but as an engr I cannont support the argument of this article.