Quick Tips To Reduce Your Energy Use

Since it’s Earth Hour tomorrow, here are four quick tips to save money. These are by no means the best tips but these are things you can do in your home right now. Yes, buying an EnergyStar rated machine does save you money on the electricity bill, it also doesn’t make sense if you already have a perfectly good washer or fridge at home. So here’s some stuff you can do to save energy but at a low price.

1. Buy a power bar and plug in your electronics. In our house, pretty much every gadget is plugged into a power bar. Why? Because of vampire power. Even if your TV or PS3 isn’t on, it’s drawing a minute current which can add up. We have our LCD TV, Xbox 360, and PS3 plugged into a single power bar, and when we’re done blowing away bad guys, we just hit the power bar switch to cut off the current consumption. The next item I’d suggest putting on a power bar is your microwave. Honestly, unless your a frozen meal fiend, your microwave isn’t used very often. The microwave can use a lot of standby power because it’s powering the clock. And before you complain that you need a clock, you likely have quite a few clocks around you right now including on your phone, computer, and stove.

2. Unplug your chargers. Again, chargers have a low current draw even when they’re not charging something, so pull them out of the wall. If you have lots of gadgets to charge, try plugging them into a power bar and that’ll save you from multiple unpluggings.  Also, when your cellphone or laptop is done charging, unplug it. It’s just trickle charging and it doesn’t make your battery any more full. I know it’s convenient to charge them overnight but try charging them during the day (perhaps at work) or in the evening when you get home from work so you can keep an eye on the meter.

3. Download options on your console. There is something fascinating about watching the progress bar as you download the latest demo. But there really isn’t an excuse to leave your console on all night to download the latest firmware or demo. This current console generation has a feature to turn off after finishing downloading. So go poking around in the user options to find and enable it. As mentioned above, the console will still be drawing current because the power bar you plugged it into is still on, but it’s better than having your console sitting there doing nothing but still sucking up juice.

4. Fill up your freezer. If you live alone or don’t fill the freezer up, your fridge has to use more energy to keep the area cool. By having more pizza pops, ice cream, and vodka, the freezer can use less energy to cool down the icebox. If you don’t feel inclined to go on a shopping spree, bottles of water will also do the trick. Find some empty 2L pop bottles and fill them up. Make sure they’re not too full because water expands when it is frozen. Then just stick them in and check on them occasionally because the water does eventually evaporate.

Enjoy Earth Hour!