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Lilac Hill Homestead Unplugged
In this age of
rising fuel costs, many people’s thoughts have turned to conserving energy.
We combine errands to save gas. We
turn down the thermostat to save oil. But,
when was the last time you thought of your electric bill?
Electricity needs to be produced and we do that in a number of different
ways depending on where you live. In
order of prevalence, your electricity comes from burning coal, nuclear fission,
natural gas, hydro-electric or petroleum. It doesn’t stop there because each
of these items needs to be produced as well.
Production uses more of our valuable resources and causes more pollution.
So you’re wondering where this is all leading.
You already turn off the lights when you leave the room (or maybe you
don’t). What more can you really do to conserve electricity?
Have you ever heard of phantom loads? A phantom load is also called
standby power. Some appliances
continue to draw electricity even when you shut them off.
The electricity from these types of appliances is being used to power a
clock, remember channels or programming, keep an LED light lit, keep an
appliance in standby mode, etc. Take a look at your VCR or DVD player or how about
your microwave. Even if your VCR is
not on, a small bit of electricity is still being used to keep that clock lit.
The same is true for microwaves, stoves, DVD players, televisions,
anything with a remote control, power adaptors, that coffee maker with a clock
on it, etc. They all continue to
draw electricity even when you aren’t using them. Yes, the amount may be small
but think of what it all adds up to! The only real way to stop a phantom load is to unplug the appliance from the wall. My husband and I put the plugs for our TV, DVD player, VCR, etc. into a power strip with a switch on it. When we are watching TV, we turn the strip on & when we aren’t, the strip is off. None of these are drawing phantom power when not in use but when we want them, they are only a switch away. If you want to see how much electricity something is using, try a Kill-A-Watt: Well that was pretty easy. Are you ready for something a little more difficult? Once I
took care of the phantom loads, I started looking around the house to see how
else I could save electricity and get that electric bill down. Take a look
around your house to see just what you have that’s drawing electricity.
A few of the larger draws are electric clothes dryers, water bed heaters,
air conditioners, hot tubs, and water heaters. Can you use these less or not at
all? The only one on this list that we had to worry about was the clothes dryer.
I haven’t used ours in two years. During the summer, clothes get hung outside
on a line. During the colder
months, clothes get hung on racks near the woodstove, over a heating vent or
next to the oven when I bake bread.
Maybe you’ve already taken care of these?
Here are a few more ways to lower that electric bill.
An average light bulb uses 60 watts of electricity.
You can switch to compact fluorescent bulbs that use about 13 watts of
electricity to get the same amount of light.
Or if you’re ready for something that uses less electricity, you can
try LED lights. This strip of
lights uses about 11 watts of electricity and provides as much light as your
average light bulb. My favorite source of these is: http://www.green-trust.org/products/ Are you looking for something a little bit more
radical? Take a look around your house at everything that uses electricity and
ask yourself how else you could get the job done. Do you really need an electric toothbrush? Can you do the
same job with a manual toothbrush? Do
you need to have an electric eggbeater? Can
you get the job done using a manual one? Will you wake up just as well to a wind
up clock as a digital radio alarm clock? Do
you need a cordless telephone or will a standard phone with a cord work just as
well? Everything you eliminate will bring your electric bill lower and lower. Maybe this seems overwhelming to you? You don’t
need to take every step in the article and you don’t need to do it all at
once. Choose one small step each
day or each week until you feel comfortable with that change.
Then it’s time for you to move onto the next step. Who knows, maybe if
you get your electricity usage down low enough, you’ll decide to check out
solar power & get all your electricity for free!
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