How Much Energy Does it Take to Dry America’s Clothes?

Monday, March 16th, 2009

How Much Energy Does it Take to Dry America’s Clothes? For those of you in energy conservation mode – or would like to be – here’s an interesting information tid-bit from Kilowatt Ours. Question: How much energy does it take to dry Americans clothes per year? Answer:    Eleven (11) power plants worth! Please join me [...]

Solar Energy on a Limited Budget

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

Solar Energy on a Limited Budget How do you afford the purchase and installation of a solar energy system in these economic times? I certainly want to but I am limited by financial constraints. To make solar more affordable, we are limiting our current home energy consumption. The thinking goes like this: the less energy [...]

Home Energy Reduction Progress

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

Image by thingermejig via Flickr Our Home Energy Reduction 2008 Progress This week I paid my last electric utility bill for 2008. As mentioned in Monday’s post we went off our “energy diet” during the holidays, so the monthly bill was higher than usual. Still, in spite of our holiday energy binge, we used fewer [...]

Programmable Thermostats for Home Energy Conservation

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Image via Wikipedia Programmable Thermostats for Home Energy Conservation On this solar energy journey, one of the most helpful gadgets to help reduce home energy consumption and thereby reducing the size of the solar energy system required, is a programmable thermostat. The Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) estimates a programmable thermostat can save the average [...]

How Much Energy Does Your Freezer Use?

Thursday, September 18th, 2008

How Much Energy Does Your Freezer Use? Reducing energy consumption begins by knowing how much energy you consume in the first place. Having acquired our electric power monitor, a Kill-A-Watt meter, we are learning where the high-energy consumers are in our home. First, we plugged our refrigerator into the monitor. The results were posted Tuesday, [...]

Home Energy Efficiency and Major Appliances

Monday, September 15th, 2008

Image via Wikipedia Home Energy Efficiency and Major Appliances Eventually, I want a net ZEH , a house that produces as much energy as it uses. We are taking the small steps toward that end goal. Our initial goal is to reduce our energy consumption by 25%. For us that means reducing energy use to [...]