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Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A tech columnist looked around his home and wondered, 'All these TVs and cable boxes and computers and computer gear and chargers for various adapters have to be sucking up a lot of power, right?' So WSJ.com's Jason Fry bought a power meter to find the biggest power hogs in his home. They weren't his newfangled gadgets: 'The heavily used agglomeration of PC / two monitors / printer / hard drive / speakers in my downstairs study costs a bit more than $10 a month. The PC in our bedroom costs about $6 a month. The upstairs laptop? Less than $1 — a bit more than other always-on gadgets such as the router, cable modem, wireless repeater and Airport Express. So what were our apartment's power hogs? The lights and the dryer. I estimate our lights cost us around $30 a month, nearly a third of that from a chandelier with eight bulbs. Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"
He owns a PC and a hard drive. The Wall Street Journal must be paying rather well, nowadays.
Time to get those compact fluorescents. I have them in all but a few of the sockets in my house, and I estimate they save me big $$ given how much we have the lights on (there's almost always someone home, and I'm a night owl).
This isn't a suprise at all. Residential energy use is well documented in the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The DOE runs these once every 4 or 5 years. Heating > A/C > Lights/Fridge/Cook/Clothes > gadgets.
Things might change as people consume their 8h/day TV on 60" plasma space heaters.
You need a wife. As my Daddy used to say, "A wife is an appliance you screw on the bed to get the housework done."
I'm about done with replacing the light bulbs (that I can) from incandescent to fluorescent, but we have a smaller chandelier that's hooked up to a dimmer. I generally keep it at 75% of full power. The light bulbs also last longer because (hearsay warning!) apparently, the fact that the lights don't flip on/off immediately helps the bulbs not burn out as quickly.
Anyways, somewhat on topic, I hear that in California all new development and remodeling requires fluorescent lighting. Is that true?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I fail to see this article's relevance to the Slashdot userbase. Being nocturnal, underground dwellers we have no need of light other than the soft glow of our displays and diagnostics. As for the rest of our energy needs, we tap into the power grid of the mysterious beings that dwell above us. They provide us with nourishment and also manage the laundry.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Yes, but they're still working out kinks with the measurements. For instance I bought a dishwasher that was world's better than the competitors on the energuide/energy star scale. Turns out that my dishwasher has a sensor that measures how dirty the water is, automatically (and significantly) shortening the cycle for small/null loads. Turned out that the energy test the government ran did a cycle with nothing in it at all, making a best case.
While the sensor will definitely help, it certainly won't to the degree demonstrated in the artificial benchmark.
There's really no other way to cook (if you like to cook) than to use gas stovetop. Electric burners suck....just no heat control there.
I've always been curious why more people don't use gas. Is it not readily available across the nation? I've lived in the SE and deep south mostly....and have pretty much refused to even rent from the few places that didn't have gas, tho, I rarely rent in apt. complexes...mostly I rent houses or lived in a part of a house built as a double (common in NOLA). This worked out for me in Katrina...we had 7ft of water at my place, the neighbors downstairs were totally washed out, but, I had the top floor, and nothing happened to my stuff...I was more worried about it getting looted, but, was lucky and got my stuff all moved out before they got to it...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I live in Bellevue, Washington, a large suburb between Seattle & Redmond (the land of Evil).
0 03482933_stormmainbar18m.html
Almost the entire city, plus the environs, has been without power for the past 4
days.
Ref:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2
Thus we are major leaders in energy savings!
That's better than a 26% per year ROI. The 100 Watt equivalents are about than $2.70 each when purchased in 3 packs at Walmart. I replaced every bulb that didn't have an occlusion due to a light fixture (about 30) in my home for around $80.
It's a better investment than the stock market any day.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I've spent time thinking about this recently.
Assuming that you're spending money heating your house in the winter, isn't it effectively impossible to "waste" electricity? Any electricity you consume is going to end up as heat (minus an irrelevant amount as light and kinetic energy), which you want anyway.
Of course, if your main heat source is not electricity (e.g. gas), electricity might be slightly more expensive. But I think the basic idea holds.
Actually it was probably that and the fact that where I lived, the gas companies were de-regulated and that was a clusterF*K of mess right there.
/ gasderegfaq.asp
You had to pay for the use of gas which was cheaper wholesale (which benefited business that pushed for deregulation) but marked up well over the original prices for residential customers and you had to pay for the billing of gas from the gas marketer which was a new charge.
The deregulation was sold as cheaper gas for all but it ended up costing way more than they imagined, Natural gas prices rose insanely on top of that, and people that couldn't pay for the increase of both had to freeze in the winter.
http://www.psc.state.ga.us/consumer_corner/cc_gas
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
Safety is definitely the concern with natural gas. My brother is both an EMS first responder and part-time firefighter.
Blah blah blah. I'm the Fire Marshal of a small town in PA. Most fires (not just in my town) are caused by cooking, and have nothing to do with the fuel used. It has little to do with the exact method of heating, its just that its hot. It's normally because of carelessness (especially including lack of maintenence). This includes crappy old gas stoves with no thermocoulpes that aren't properly mainteined. It includes overloaded elctgrical circuits. It includes filty ranges that have dirt and buildup catch fire during normal usage. It includes imporperly installed applicnces that don't vent correctly. It includes decrepit electrical wiring in the wall supplying a 30 amp 240v circuit.
Don't kid yourself that gas is a higher risk. Improperly installed, improperly mainteained, and imporperly used are the real risks.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
And Americans fondly imagine they live in a free country.
Watch this Heartland Institute video