Saving Energy

In these times, it is very important for all of us to conserve energy resources. Here's a little food for thought. If you run a 100 watt incandescant bulb four hours a day every day and your electricity costs $0.10 per kilowatt hour, you'll spend $14.40 a year on electricity just to light that one bulb! And if your incandescant bulbs last about 750 hours and cost $0.60 each, you'll need two per year, bringing tha total anual coat of running the light to $15.60 and that's just one light, think how many lights are in the average home! Now, if you were to get rid of the incandescant bulb and replace it with a compact fluorescent bulb, you would reduce the light's electricity consumption by 74% while still getting the same amount of light. The electricity to light the compact fluorescent bulb wuuld cost only $3.74 per year and if the bulb lasted about 15,000 hours and costed $5.00, it would last about 10 years, costing only $0.50 a year for bulb replacement. The grand total cost per year with the compact fluorescent light would be only $4.24 or about 27% the cost of the incandescant bulb. Buying more efficient light bulbs is by no means the only way to save energy. Another way we could save termendous amounts of energy is to drive less. According to The World Almanac, the average American vehicle gets about 17 miles per gallon and the average American driver drives 15,000 miles a year, consuming 882.4 gallons of fuel. At a price of $4.00 a gallon, that's $3,529.60 a year! If the average American reduced their driving by 10% per year, they'd save over 88 gallons of fuel anually and more than $350. And if they reduced their driving by a third, they'd save more than 294 gallons of fuel and $1,176 a year. If the average vehicle got 30 miles per gallon, instead of 17, the amount of fuel needed by the average driver would decline by 382.4 gallons a year without any reduction in driving. We all need to do our part and if we all save a little, in total we will save a lot.

You're right Gordon. Change starts with us. Thanks for doing the math btw!

Two years ago I drove 200+ miles a week. Today, I go maybe 50 miles every other week. (not counting the trip for hay) I have really cut back on my driving! Of course, I am no longer in the work force, either. Am I making up for someone else?

In all seriousness, you are right Gordon. Every little bit does help when you add them up.

My recent trip got me a bit upset. Actually, a lot upset.

There is this pantry door off the kitchen where the light comes on when the door is opened. Problem is: the door is always standing open, and yes, the light is on most of the time. After spending much time closing the pantry door, going into my grandchildren's bedrooms and turning off the lights, I finally decided that grandfather must do what grandfather's are supposed to do. After my little lecture on saving energy, my instructions were observed for approximately 2 hours. Then a recap of previous instructions became necessary.
Progress was made, however I fear that there will be some backsliding since I left.
There are so many things that stare us in the face everyday and most are blind to them. Simply turning off lights when not needed can save countless millions around the world. And, it begins with us.
I have sent an email reminder about the lights. I don't intend to let it go.

Good for you Abe! Grandfathers do carry a lot of weight. If not with their own children, with the grandchildren. I hope your follow up emails help.

Abe, you'll be remembered for your persistence about the lights, and that's what counts.
Drying laundry on a line is another area to save a ton of energy; I know sometimes it's not convenient to hang things on the line, and you have to be organized to have a system that works. It helps that I work from home most of the time so that I can keep things moving regularly. Line drying instead of using a dryer just makes sense (and cents too). I have heard where some neighbourhood have actually banned clothes lines because of how they look, like it ruins the neighbourhood somehow. I am quite happy to be somewhere that everyone else has a line; it also gives me a chance to chat with my neighbours frequently because we're all doing it. Except today, because it's drizzling and wet. Humph.

I'll skip the line drying and yes here in our little neighborhood it is frowned on. I had six kids and a dryer was my companion for a number of years!

Abe, when my children were growing up in the seventies and eighties, for a period of time one child would be charge of energy for a month and anything saved from the previous month went to that person.

However, my oldest son always wanted to put all the lights on when his father came home, since with the airlines he would be gone for days at a time, but sometimes his father would complain about this welcome waste of energy.

I love to go places and am not a homebody. But we're trying to make fewer trips out in the car. Even our small SUV gets over 20 miles to the gallon, and our other car gets about 27 when we go the speed limit!

Our houses are efficient, with out northern cabin made up of energy efficient thick styrofoam panels, with windows placed appropriately for additional solar heat.

I really do like light outside at night. It makes a neighborhood so much friendlier.

Carol

Another way to save energy, unplug chargers and electronics when not in use, especially if you don't plan on using them for a considerable amount of time, as these devices draw power even when turned off. If we all turned off the lights when no one's in the room and turned off the TV when on one's watching (there isn't anything worth watching on 90% of the time) and unplugged unused chargers and electronics, we'd save a whole lot of energy. Now if we combined that with everyone switching to compact flourescent bulbs and everyone driving 10%-30% less, we could dramatically cut our energy consumption.

I could certainly do something about the chargers. I realize right now the computer charger, phone chargers, and even my husband's mechanical screw driver are plugged in charging nothing and wasting energy!!

Carol

You could plug all the chargers into a power strip with a switch, that way you could easily turn them on and off.

Pam,
where I live there are very few who own a dryer. Those who do generally have a good reason. Certainly a dryer is a convenience but it is not a necessity. We don't own one.
There was a time when I would have adjusted my lifestyle to suit the neighborhood but those days are gone. Keeping up with the Joneses has placed many familes in needless debt. I've just read an interesting article where it is now considered fashionable to drive a fuel-efficient car. Fashionable or not, it makes sense to be frugal. Waste in all forms is still waste.
Concerning outside lights at night. There are lights available that absorb solar power during the day and then glow at night.
Burning outside night lights for security reasons are valid. Buring for beauty sake, in my view, is wasteful.

Abe F. March wrote:

Pam,
where I live there are very few who own a dryer. Those who do generally have a good reason. Certainly a dryer is a convenience but it is not a necessity. We don't own one.
There was a time when I would have adjusted my lifestyle to suit the neighborhood but those days are gone. Keeping up with the Joneses has placed many familes in needless debt. I've just read an interesting article where it is now considered fashionable to drive a fuel-efficient car. Fashionable or not, it makes sense to be frugal. Waste in all forms is still waste.
Concerning outside lights at night. There are lights available that absorb solar power during the day and then glow at night.
Burning outside night lights for security reasons are valid. Buring for beauty sake, in my view, is wasteful.

People spend way too much money (and energy) keeping up appearences. Some people seem to think that they need to have as much or more than their neighbor, no matter how deep into debt they have to go to get it. This "keeping up with the Joneses" seems very childish to me.

Fashionalbe to drive a fuel efficient car--that's funny, and since it works, well that is a good thing too. I'd be hesitant to give up my dryer entirely Abe -- drying clothes in the dead of winter and hanging them in the house takes a long time, although I do actually dry quite a bit of it on two drying racks that are in the same room as our wood stove.
Last week there was a fellow on the news talking about how messed up the robins seem to be. The theory is that there is so much streetlight at night that it is actually throwing the birds natural rhythm off. As a result, in urban areas the little sweeties are chirping until 2 and 3 in the morning and then they start again just before sunrise, at about 5.
I think maybe their late night song is more along the lines of "hey you idiot humans, turn the lights off! We're trying to get the young chicks settled down over here!!"

I got up in the night and heard birds chirping, and realized I had left the porch door open. Okay, not so many outside lights on. We really need dryers here. Our clothes would all freeze solid in the winter. There are many solar panels along the highways for lights.

In Wisconsin we have a 100 year old private river management company, not government run, which has done a great job with hydroelectric energy along the whole Wisconsin River system. Of course, since the floods there have been many questions about over-managing the river where more natural flood plains are needed. We live above a hydroelectric dam and the river here is kept at a constant level so there is always water for energy, but that meant all the water that should have stayed here went down and is now flooding the Mississippi.

Carol

Like anyone else, I love that warm feeling of clothes coming out of a hot dryer especially in winter. I also like the softness and fragrance of the clothes from those clothes softners.
Having to place clothes drying racks in my cozy room with the woodstove is an inconvenience, however since the drying cycle is enhanced by the hot oven, it drys overnight. A side benefit is that the wet clothes provides needed moisture in the room.

Yes, I've become old-fashioned. The things I'm doing now was a natural process when I was young. For those much younger, I'm sure the things I'm discussing must sound terribly inconvenient, and some of them are. But in keeping with conservation, I mention these things only as ideas. Practicing conservation also saves money and that is also important - at least to some of us. It is not how much one earns but how much one keeps from what they earn that is important.
I've met many wealthy people and most of them were extremely frugal. I've met many poor people and most of them were spendthrifts. Gorden can work out the math on that.

Carol Troestler wrote:

I got up in the night and heard birds chirping, and realized I had left the porch door open. Okay, not so many outside lights on. We really need dryers here. Our clothes would all freeze solid in the winter. There are many solar panels along the highways for lights.

In Wisconsin we have a 100 year old private river management company, not government run, which has done a great job with hydroelectric energy along the whole Wisconsin River system. Of course, since the floods there have been many questions about over-managing the river where more natural flood plains are needed. We live above a hydroelectric dam and the river here is kept at a constant level so there is always water for energy, but that meant all the water that should have stayed here went down and is now flooding the Mississippi.

Carol

Where I live, virtually all the electricity is generated by hydroelectric dams. The city of Crystal Falls, where I live owns and operates a more than 110 year old dam that still provides about a third of the city's electricity. The city buys the remaining electricity from the Wisconsin Electric Power Company, which uses several dams in the area to generate electricity.

Abe F. March wrote:

Like anyone else, I love that warm feeling of clothes coming out of a hot dryer especially in winter. I also like the softness and fragrance of the clothes from those clothes softners.
Having to place clothes drying racks in my cozy room with the woodstove is an inconvenience, however since the drying cycle is enhanced by the hot oven, it drys overnight. A side benefit is that the wet clothes provides needed moisture in the room.

Yes, I've become old-fashioned. The things I'm doing now was a natural process when I was young. For those much younger, I'm sure the things I'm discussing must sound terribly inconvenient, and some of them are. But in keeping with conservation, I mention these things only as ideas. Practicing conservation also saves money and that is also important - at least to some of us. It is not how much one earns but how much one keeps from what they earn that is important.
I've met many wealthy people and most of them were extremely frugal. I've met many poor people and most of them were spendthrifts. Gorden can work out the math on that.

If we conserve resources and use resources as efficiently as we can, it'll help bring about a better life for all of us. Conserving energy and resources means spending less money, which means having more money left over to buy things we want (not that we should be extravigantly wasteful). Conserving resources means less demand, which should equate to lower prices if supply remanis constant, but unfortunately, the greedy corporations and cartels would probably cut supply to keep the prices and their profits up.

Gordon,

It looks a lot like our dam. Our dam is very old and I went to a fascinating talk on how it was built. What a project back about 100 years ago, having to build a railroad to get the equipment out, and then the whole project being washed away by a flood and having to start over. The whole system brings in a lot of good energy. I hope they have been storing up the latest excess.

There is a small dam on our lake 200 miles north of here connected to the whole system. Many of the dams are now run by computers which can be a scary thought sometimes. There have been many travelers down the Dam Road since the floods began, checking to see the heavily flowing water.

Carol

Thankfully, our dam is still run by human beings not computers!

Don't think I would have been brave enough to stand in front of the flood gate Gordon...just in case...

Great thread!

There is a big siren that goes off at our dam before they let water out. There are people that come up from Chicago without knowledge of how the whole thing works and camp out on islands and sand bars that disappear when the dam is open. It is a dangerous river down there and one to be taken seriously.

Carol

Pam wrote:

Don't think I would have been brave enough to stand in front of the flood gate Gordon...just in case...

Great thread!

The picture of me in front of the gate was taken during the summer and normally, the only time they open the gates is during the spring runoff. There's also a siren and a strobe light that goes off when they're about to open the gate. Normally, they let the water flow over the wall next to the gates before opening the gates and when the water is flowing over the wall, it is impossible to get out in front of the gates (unless you want to get really, really wet).

Mr. Kennedy, you're a wealth of information. And the photos are quite good as well.

We line dry sometimes, but with our weather it is not the best of options. Usually, we end up hanging things over the backs of chairs over night, or using the dryer. The summer months are when we use the line the most.

I remember trying to line dry my daughter's diapers in January down Alabama way. They would freeze to the line, and I would have to iron them to get them completely dry. Of course, our laundry got done in the kitchen sink, then hung out to dry, since we couldn't afford the laundromat. Army pay for the grunts left much to be desired, especially when you had kids and bills.

In Az. it was a snap. One load was dry by the time I could get the next batch wrung out!! Boy, those were the good old days!

LOL Zada--I just watched my neighbour hanging diapers and in the humidity today, and can see them getting ironed too!

In 1962, when my husband left in a jet loaded with sidewinder missiles with the reality of war looming large, especially on the base where we lived a third of the mile from the runway with the constant drone of planes taking off for 48 hours, I was alone with not quite two-year-old twins and a six-week-old baby. I know, I missed that section of my college bio major classes. Anyway, I had a washer, thank goodness, but not a dryer and diapers from three babies were always being hung to dry. And energy efficient I was. The day before my husband left, his knowing he would as he had been in Key West on the hot pad ready to take off to fight MiGs and had seen the photos of the missiles, we got our Nash Rambler station wagon filled with gas and loaded the pantry and freezer with groceries. When he returned two months later I still had a half a tank of gas in the car. All that will be read someday in my successful Cuba book, along with lots of history, I hope.

Love, Carol