I just read through this blog post about halving your electrical consumption, which made me think that it would be worthwhile starting a list of simple, cheap, and easy ways of reducing your energy consumption. Here is a list of some of the things he did (in Australia)

  • Conduct an Energy Audit to sniff out the culprits. Many surprises here, both good and bad.
  • Used a Floatron to dramatically lower pool energy requirements.
  • Switching off at the wall standby power loads at night, like TVs and PCs. Grumble. I wish there was a box that could do this for me, or that beeped in my kids ears when they forget.
  • Swapped out nasty incandescent light bulbs for compact fluorescent (CFLs).
  • Swapped out nasty halogen downlights for LED downlights.
  • Encouraged the use of laptops (20W) rather than desktops (90W).
  • Where possible use my laptop on mains rather than battery power, as I have read the charging/discharge cycle is only about 50% efficient
  • Placed my home office equipment on a separate power board than can be switched off at night, while leaving my server running. Previously I just left everything on.
  • Promised my 9 year old son an extra $1/week if he remembers to switch his PC off at the wall every day. Good training, teaches him “the value of energy”. I figure that energy efficiency is going to be a much bigger issue in his life than mine.
He also sorted out his insulation, and changed the glass in his windows to a better insulating glass. Also have a look at the results of his energy audit - it may be illuminating.

In my mind we are in the middle of an energy crisis that the government is powerless to do anything about. Social change is required. Each of us need to change. Think about - make a few small changes, have electricity at all hours of the day. It makes a lot of sense. So start changing now. Do it for yourself.

Please add your energy saving tips to this list.