A Prize to Encourage Energy Efficiency
(Electricity) Among Barrie Residents
LivingGreen / Environmental Action Barrie is mounting a campaign to encourage Barrie residents to use less electricity.
One part of this campaign is a series of energy-saving tips, another part is advice on choosing energy-saving appliances.
To encourage participation, we are offering monthly prizes to households who record the largest percentage reduction in electricity consumption compared to the same billing period in the previous year.
The prize will be a $100 voucher for dinner at a Barrie restaurant. The prize will be awarded every month by Mayor Jeff Lehman at a City Council meeting, naming the winners and the restaurant to the public and to the television audience. Winners and sponsor restaurants will also be featured on our website, www.LivingGreen.info
The winners will be chosen by a team from LivingGreen/EAB based on PowerStream bills contestants submit. (The bills list average daily electricity consumption for the current billing period, and the previous year, simplifying selection.)
We are asking the restaurants we approach, in consideration of the contest’s positive publicity, to donate or discount these vouchers. The donation will allow us to continue offering the prizes (funded by an initial donation) for a longer period of time.
Inexpensive Energy-Saving (Electricity) Tips
These energy-saving tips are directed to people entering LivingGreen Barrie’s Energy Saving Contest.
Ontario’s electricity rates are likely to continue rising. This is not political as some politicians are claiming. It is not because we chose to close coal-fired generation. It is due entirely to the unavoidable fact that most of Ontario’s electricity generating plants are old and need replacement soon.
Most of Ontario’s generation equipment was built at a time when a couple could enjoy a nice restaurant dinner & expect change from a $20 bill! Labour, concrete & steel were – in dollars – far cheaper 30-40 years ago than they are now. The price of electricity depends heavily on generating plant construction cost. The price of nuclear, wind & solar electricity is almost entirely due to their capital cost (fuel & maintenance cost little or nothing)! On the other hand, for coal, oil & gas-fired plants, fuel is a major factor in the price of their electricity output.
The inevitable rise in electricity cost means that reducing your hydro consumption is well worth doing, and is a very effective way to improve family prosperity. The money you don’t pay for electricity remains in your pocket, like tax-free income!
Ontarians must be wary of politicians who offer to subsidise electricity. I prefer to pay for my electricity on my utility bill – not my tax bill! I can “avoid” paying for electricity by using less. I have no (legal) way to avoid taxes!
1) Refrigerator/Freezer: Find the condenser coils on your refrigerator (either underneath, or at the back of the unit) and clean them. The condenser coils consist of a long loop of thin tubing with fins or wires welded to it, usually painted black. They are beautifully designed to catch dust bunnies and the refrigerators in most houses have a blanket of dust covering them. The dust prevents the condenser coils from losing heat, making the refrigerator work harder and longer – wasting electricity.
If you have a separate freezer, find and clean its condenser coils too. If possible, re-locate your freezer to the basement where – in cool surroundings – it not work as hard and use less electricity.
If you have a “beer fridge” – often an old unit retired from the kitchen 10-20 years ago – throw it out! These old refrigerators are usually energy hogs (poor insulation, failed door seals, inefficient defrost cycle, etc). They may use over $400 per year of electricity – enough to fill them with beer several times over!
1a) A very simple refrigeration tip: If you are defrosting something, do it the night before you need it. Allow the frozen food to defrost in the refrigerator overnight. Putting the ice-cold food in your refrigerator cools it, so it will work less hard for several hours! If you have a basement, keep your beer supplies cool there and replenish your refrigerator with pre-cooled bottles!
1b) Don’t “browse” the refrigerator! Many teenagers stand in front of an open refrigerator examining the contents and mentally assembling a snack. This lets cold air out of the refrigerator (You can feel the cold draft around your ankles!), and warm air in. Persuade your teenagers to plan their menu before they open the door.
2) Learn where the light switch is. Use it! Install energy efficient lighting. Why leave the lights on when there is nobody in the room. Make the effort to turn off the lights as you leave.
If there are lights you want to leave on – to welcome visitors, or for security – replace these with compact fluorescents or LEDs. Some of these may produce an unflattering or unpleasant colour of light, but this will not matter on your entrance porch or driveway.
Interior hall lights are often left on for long periods of time. These should be compact fluorescents. Choose “warm white” instead of “daylight” or “cool white” for a more flattering colour. The latter two cast a bluish light which makes faces look “unhealthy”. In time, LED lights will also be available in “warm white”. LEDs are slightly more energy efficient than compact fluorescents, but last 3-4 times as long.
3) Furnace Fan: Some people leave the furnace fan on continuously. Even a highly efficient, variable-speed, direct current furnace fan uses ~200watts on its low speed. These very efficient units still consume ~$175 of power if operated continuously at their low setting! Of course, their power use at higher settings must be added to this to get a full year’s electricity cost.
If your furnace fan is “ordinary”, leaving it on continuously may cost you $400 – $500 per year!
If you want to keep the air inside “fresh”, open your windows for at least an hour or two when the temperature outside is reasonable, and turn on the fan only when this is not practical.
4) “Parasites” (parasite loads): Modern homes contain many “parasite loads”. These electrical appliances continue to use power even when they are “off”. Some use as much or even more power when “off” than when “on”!
I own a 25-watt halogen desk lamp. When “on”, is uses 25 watts, however, when “off” it still draws 3 watts. (Current flows constantly through the voltage dropping transformer.) If I sit at the desk for 2 hours, it uses 0.05kilowatt-hours. However, turned off for 22 hours it uses 0.66kilowatt-hours – 30% more than when not in use! In a year, this parasite load costs $24! Another similar halogen lamp draws no current when it is “off”. The current draw depends on the position of the switch. In the first lamp, the switch is between the light bulb and the transformer. In the other lamp the switch cuts off the transformer itself.
Other parasite loads include dust busters, cordless phones, battery chargers of all types (including cell phones), televisions, satellite receivers and decoders, cable TV decoders, internet modems, etc. My home heating furnace uses 17 watts when “off” – costing about $15 for the year. My fax/printer combination is a parasite load. There is a simple way to identify most parasite loads. After the device has been “off” for an hour, touch it. If the device is warm, it is drawing current. If it is cool to the touch, it is not drawing any current – or too little to matter.
4a) Buy a Power Bar or two! Parasite loads tend to be in clusters. Your modem, WiFi & computer may be in the same place. Connect them to a power bar with a switch. When not in use, switch off the power bar. You may also buy a cheap ($10.00) timer to turn off the power bar at (say) midnight, and on again at (say) 5:00pm. (Bonus: These timers can operate burglar-deterring lighting when you are away on holiday.)
The television, cable (or satellite) unit and DVD player are another cluster which can be switched off with a power bar when not in use. Cable or satellite decoders are often power hungry devices. One satellite decoder was rated at 29 watts when “off”, and 32 watts when “on” – a parasite load worth about $25/year!
5) Air Conditioner: Older air conditioners tend to be less efficient than new ones. Window units are usually less efficient than central A/C, but being considerably larger they (of course) use more juice. But these “tips” are not about buying appliances!
The very best way to make your air conditioner more efficient is to install additional roof-space insulation. Even if your house is relatively new, the roof insulation has probably “settled”. Originally 20cm (8”) deep, after 8-10 years it is may be less than 15cm (6”) deep. In my house, it had “settled” to about 10cm (4”). I had a contractor blow in extra insulation 12 years ago. He asked how much I wanted. I replied “Make it as deep as you can!” Insulation is mostly air, the $400 (then) was for the two men and equipment – not for the modest weight of fibreglass.
This reduced my average (the decade before vs the decade since) electricity consumption by 4% because my A/C now works less than it did. Before the new insulation I could “feel” heat entering my house from the roof space, but not afterwards! (Gas consumption also went down because my house now loses less heat into the roof space.)
This may not be a fair comparison with most houses because my A/C unit has a water-cooled condenser and uses about 20% of the power most units with an air-to-air condenser unit in the garden. Blowing in additional roof insulation will probably have a larger effect on your electricity bill than in my case.
Make certain that the condenser unit is clean – free of leaves and crass clippings. A weather-proof unit cover should be used in winter to help keep dirt (and corrosion) out. If the manufacturer’s instructions do not forbid this, rinse the condenser unit’s fins with a hose every summer.
Last, but definitely not least, make certain the condenser part of your A/C unit is in the shade, particularly in the afternoon. If it is in the sun, it will have to work harder (use more electricity) to lose heat. Create shade for the unit. You can build shade inexpensively by erecting a trellis on the sunny side and planting an ivy or vine to cover this. However, make sure not to obstruct air flow around the unit.
6) Need less A/C: Changing behaviour can save on A/C use. In Barrie’s summer, it is often cool at night. Open your windows and use a fan to blow in cool air from a window or exhaust warm inside air. A cheap window-mounted fan can help. Leave the windows open late into the morning – until the outside is warmer than your house.
Do not cook spaghetti on hot humid days. The steam from the boiling water will make your house more humid and feel hotter than. If you own a BBQ, cook outside on hot days. This avoids adding heat to your house – heat which your A/C must remove.
Close the blinds (or curtains) in sunny windows to reflect the sun’s radiant heat back out of the house. Plant a deciduous tree in your garden to shade your sunny windows in summer. The leaves will provide cool shade in summer, but the bare tree allows the winter sun in – to help warm your house.
Another way to reduce the A/C/ load is to install awnings above south-facing windows. Properly positioned, these will keep direct sunlight out in summer, but allow the winter sun in – so you continue to “win” passive solar heating when you need it.
7) Take Advantage of “off peak electricity”: This tip will not save electricity, but will save you money. If the night is hot and humid, opening your windows may not cool your house appreciably, plus it will bring humidity in, making your A/C work harder the next day to condense it out of the air.
So, if you expect tomorrow will be hot, run your A/C at night instead. This will cool your house, and the tonnes of drywall it contains, ensuring the living space will stay cool longer the following day. B est of all, you will be doing this on “off-peak” electricity.
7) Drying Clothes – the solar-powered clothes drier: Get a “solar powered” drier – hang up a clothes line in your garden. (Beware! If you have birds which perch on the clothes line, they may force you to rewash many items! This was my problem, and we abandoned the clothes line many years ago.)
In winter, all houses become dry. Some people install humidifiers. Another way to raise the humidity in your house is – if you have space – to hand up your clothes to dry inside. In our home, the basement is very dry so we hang the clothing there. The furnace fan then distributes the humidity around the house.
If there is no space to hang clothes inside, consider diverting your drier’s exhaust into the house for the winter. (Diverters are available at many hardware stores at modest cost.) You paid to warm the wet clothing and evaporate its water – why exhaust that warm moist air to the outdoors when your house needs both heat and humidity?
Beware!! Do not do this if your drier is in a small, poorly ventilated space. If it is, diverting the warm, moist air to this space may cause condensation which could breed mould – not a good exchange for the energy conservation! You may be able to put a fan into this space to distribute the air to the rest of the house, but beware of condensation.
8) Hot Water: Most hot water tanks are set too hot. Unless you have a large family which showers at the same time of day, set your hot water tank to the coolest temperature you can live with. Hot water tanks lose heat to their surroundings, despite insulation. Lowering the temperature reduces heat loss & reduces the likelihood of scalding!
Give your hot water tank a “blanket”; an insulating cover for your hot water tank reduces heat loss. Check for instructions online or with the manufacturer as to what parts of the tank must remain uncovered. This is different for electric or gas water tanks.
If your basement hot water plumbing is accessible, insulate as much of it as you can with insulation (from all hardware stores. This will reduce heat loss from the copper piping to your basement.
9) Draft-Proofing: Cold air entering your living quarters can create a cold draft which causes you to turn up your thermostat, causing you to use more gas and more electricity for your furnace fan.
All houses allow air to enter the house. This air usually enters the basement where the cold draft will not chill you. Locate the “official” entry point for outside air and ensure it is clear. Then identify other drafts and block them with weather stripping or caulking. These drafts may be more easily found with the help of a candle whose flame will waver in a draft. Electrical outlets and switches in outside walls may be a source of drafts. Special inserts are available to block these at quite low cost.
Check the trap door to your roof space. This is often poorly draft-proofed – and not obvious since the loss of warm air is to the outside! Install weather stripping around this opening. Make certain that the trap door is itself insulated. If it is not, cut a rectangle of polystyrene foam to fit the door and glue it in place. While you are checking the trap door, check the depth of roof insulation and make certain it is at least 20cm deep.
10) Miscellaneous: If you have a Hot Tub, do you need to heat it continuously? If you keep it hot, it will lose heat continuously too. Heat it before you wish to use it and turn it off afterwards!
Check that your porch lights are not on day and night. If this happens repeatedly, buy a light-sensitive switch for the fixture(s) to turn them on at dusk and off at dawn.
Turn off the television if nobody is watching. Many people keep the TV on all day, playing to an empty room!
Turn off the computer if it is not in use. Some computers “hibernate” when they have not been used for (say) 10 minutes, but others glow at you continuously, even if you are nowhere near! You can also download free software at http://edison.en.softonic.com/ that will turn your computer off if you’re not using it, then turn it on almost instantly when you return.
On a cold day, a block heater can dramatically cut fuel consumption for your first kilometer of driving. Depending on the vehicle, $0.05 of electricity may save you $1.00 of gasoline!
If you warm your car in winter with a block heater, put it on a timer. All you need is 2 hours of heat to warm the engine. If you leave it plugged in for 10 hours, it will be no warmer, but it will have used about 150 watts for 8 hours – only $0.12 of electricity, but if you use it for (say) 3 months this will add up to around $10.