Home Energy Conservsation Challenge
Welcome to the Home Energy Conservation Challenge 2009
Click here for Week 1
Click here for Week 2
Click here for Week 3
Click here for Week 4
Click here for Week 5
Click here for Week 6
Click here for Challenge Follow-Up
Each week on Wednesday, I post simple steps of an energy conservation strategy. Please note the focus of these weekly posts will be on home energy conservation. Although energy conservation while driving, traveling, shopping, eating, etc, are important, our focal point will be energy used in the home.
Conventional energy sources used for the average American home are electricity, gas, and oil. Depending on where you live, your electric energy usually originates from the burning of fossil fuels: coal or oil. This energy is measured in kilowatt-hours. Natural gas is also measured in kilowatt-hours. Heating oil, propane, and kerosene are measured in gallons.
Energy use per home varies. For the purposes of this challenge, the size of your home does not matter. You are never required to share your location, the size of your home, the amount of your utility bill, how many gallons of heating fuel (oil, propane, kerosene, etc) or how many kilowatt-hours you use.
If you voluntarily share this information, be assured there are NO CARBON FOOTPRINT POLICE here to wag a green thumb in your face or slap you with a “carbon offset” fee.
The purpose of the challenge is to help and encourage anyone who wants to learn energy conservation strategies, reduce their carbon footprint, or just reduce their monthly utility bill. Your progress can only be measured and compared to your past energy consumption, no one else’s.
Here’s how the challenge will work. I will post the weekly conservation challenge on the Simple Home Solar Energy Wednesday blog page. I will provide information, action steps, and when appropriate, resources. Information and action steps can be implemented quickly, usually in less than 30 minutes.
Participants are welcome to share their conservation frustrations, failures, successes, and questions in the comments. The idea is to share what we learn with one another, so we all get better at energy conservation.
Since the idea is to share what you learn, invite others to join us here. If you have your own blog, share what you are learning with your readers to help and encourage them. Then come back to the conservation challenge page and leave your web address in the comments. That way, the people you meet here can stop by and visit you.
Also remember to link back from your blog to our challenge here at Simple Home Solar Energy!
Of course, you are welcome to participate without interaction or conversation with others, but I hope you will join the conversation. You may know or discover something that would benefit the rest of us.
How the Home Energy Conservation Challenge Began
My husband and I want to go solar. But the cost of solar panels gives us pause. To make solar energy more affordable we are reducing our electric energy consumption to a minimum.
Not in an extreme way, but to an acceptable level of comfort without extreme wastefulness. The less energy we require, the fewer solar panels we will need, the less a solar energy system will cost.
While researching this topic, a source I can’t recall, asked an interesting question:
Would you do your grocery shopping every week not knowing how much you’re paying for your groceries? Then at the end of the month you’d receive a bill from the store telling you how much you owe for the food you ate the previous week?
Of course not! I am a careful grocery shopper, shopping within self-imposed parameters. Although I am no purist, as a rule my food purchases must:
• Have nutritional value – contain no empty calories
• Be seasonal
• Locally grown when I have a choice
• Fit my grocery budget
This analogy comparing grocery shopping to energy shopping empowered me to take control of our home energy use.
No self-imposed parameters had ever applied to our home energy consumption! Nope. We were indiscriminate energy consumers. The bill came at the end of the month. I paid it. I might complain when the dollar about went up, but complain was all.
We have been working on our home energy “diet “about five (5) months now, applying energy saving tips and strategies and tracking our kilowatt-hour use.
Comparing January 2009 with January 2008, our energy use is down 39%. That translates to $98 in savings. If I saved $98 every month, I would be one happy energy dieter!
But I’m thinking we could do even better with a little help from a community of friends on the same journey.
You know, the way a diet works better if you’re dieting with someone else. Besides having an accountability partner, you share diet tips, recipes, good food finds, etc. Both parties help each other stay on track.
That’s how the Home Energy Challenge came about. We would love to continue this journey in the company of other energy dieters, or want-to-be dieters.
Whether you want to reduce your carbon footprint, be energy independent, or just reduce your monthly energy bill, you are invited to join the Energy Conservation Challenge.
How to participate in the Energy Conservation Challenge.
1. Stop by the weekly Conservation Challenge blog post for information and ACTION item
2. Take ACTION by doing or implementing the activity in the post
3. Share your conservation questions, frustrations, ideas, and/or successes in the comments.
4. Blog your conservation activities and progress (if you have a blog)
5. Come back to this post and leave a comment with your web address in it so people can visit and see what you have done.
6. The full guidelines for the challenge are at the top of this page
NOTE: Of course, you are welcome to participate without interaction or conversation with others, but I hope you will join the conversation. You may know or discover something that would benefit the rest of us.