Prepare Your Home For Winter

Prepare Your Home For Winter
As the days get shorter and the nights get cooler, it’s time to prepare your home for the cold winter months ahead.
One of the easiest Do-It-Yourself projects to complete, is sealing the air leaks in your home. This project also has great financial paybacks – saving you more money in a [...]

HDTV Settings Equals Cheaper Electrical Bill

HDTV Settings = Cheaper Electrical Bill
Make a couple of simple menu changes to your HDTV’s picture settings  and you can save you up to $50 a year on your power bill, according to the A/V experts at THX.
A survey by THX  took more than a dozen plasma and LCD HDTVs and compared their pre- and post-calibration energy consumption.
THX discovered that [...]

What is Your Best Energy Saving Tip

What is the Best Energy Saving Tip
We have presented several simple energy saving tips over the years. What item to you find, works the best for you? Some of my favorites include:
Use a clothesline – cost very little to install and nothing to use, once in place.
Use CFL or LED lights- these replacement light bulbs [...]

Energy Saving Tips

Energy Saving Tips
 
Heating and Cooling Tips

set the temp back a couple of degrees when heating and up a couple of degrees when cooling. You’ll adjust to the new temperatures over a couple of days.
keep blinds, shades and drapes closed to keep heat out in the summer. Open during daylight hours in winter… then close once [...]

Typical Monthly Electricity Usage

Typical Monthly Electricity Usage
The following table shows the typical electricity usage, in kilowatt hours, for a home in Ontario. You will notice there are no numbers for heating, other than the cost to run a furnace fan, as the primary home heating source in Ontario is natural gas or fuel oil . As well, your air conditioning numbers could [...]

Google.org Powermeter – electrical usage info in your hands

Google.org Powermeter – electrical usage info in your hands
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. So Google is going to make it easy for you to measure and see,  just what your household electrical usage looks like. 
Google PowerMeter, now in prototype, will receive information from utility smart meters and energy management devices and [...]

Economics of a Lightbulb

Economics of a Lightbulb
Forget about saving the world for a moment and let’s just look at putting some money in your pocket.

Incandescent vs CFL

DETAILS
Incandescent
CFL

Typical cost of bulb
$0.40
$2.60

Average life in hours
1,000
10,000

Cost of electricity $/kwh
$0.10
$0.10

Power of bulb in watts
60
15

Cost for 10,000 hours
$60.00
$15.00

Purchase + usage cost
$64.00
$17.60

SAVINGS per CFL
$46.40
 

 
EVERY incandescent lightbulb your replace with a compact fluorescent light (CFL), [...]

Waking up from The American Dream

Waking up from The American Dream
Continuing to consume excessively, as a way of life, is neither desirable nor possible. It’s time to create a more moderate, more enjoyable, less frantic, American lifestyle.
No more “keeping up with the Jones”. It’s time to measure our wealth in terms of our family, friends, health, free time and volunteer [...]