Panama City Real Estate | Saving Electricity By Switching Standby Off For Good

Posted on July 13, 2010
Filed Under For buyers, Seller Tips | No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome

Here’s a helpful post on saving electricity by my friend Lou Lynch…

The expenses for homeowners today are never ending. In addition to paying for cable and Internet services every month, most people are paying even more money to their electricity company than they need to. Why? Well, it is not a mistake on the energy supplier’s part but rather on yours. As long as TVs, computers and other electronic devices are plugged in and on standby they are costing you money.

According to Energy Star, standby energy consumption, or vampire consumption as it is more aptly known, actually costs you on average $100 extra on your electricity every year. However, you could save a good percentage of that cash by forming new proactive habits and regulating your energy consumption the simple way.

First of all, buy a portable energy meter for your home. This will not only allow you to identify the appliances that consume the most energy in your home but also those that are hidden and you would not necessarily have thought about otherwise. A portable energy meter will cost you between $25 and $100, with good models readily available from online retailers like Amazon and so can be delivered straight to your home.

Portable energy meters are designed to measure three elements of energy consumption in your home – electricity consumption, voltage and cost. As such, you can literally check exactly how much energy your TV, computer, oven and refrigerator use and how much that costs you quickly and easily. You can measure consumption when each device is working and when it is on standby and you are guaranteed to be surprised at the results you get.

The second point to help you save electricity is to proactively manage standby consumption. As soon as you know how much energy you are consuming, you can take action by unplugging devices and appliances as soon as they are not in use. It will soon become habit, especially if you make sure that devices are plugged in as close to each other as possible.

Proactive management of energy use can also be aided by the use of smart-power strips, which tend to cost between $20 and $40 if you buy them online. Smart-power strips work by automatically shutting down peripherals that are related to a primary device when it is powered down. For example, a primary device may be a computer with a printer, scanner and screen being the peripherals. You can choose to have certain devices on all the time if you so wish but using this sort of device will save you a lot of cash in a short period of time because it removes the temptation that standby holds and saves energy immediately.

Another point is to use energy to charge devices like cell phones for only as long as necessary. Do not charge them overnight but instead do so in the day to prevent wasting hours of energy. After all, the average cell phone only requires 90 minutes to fully charge.

Although saving electricity through reducing your use of the standby facility on household appliances will not help you to amass a fortune, it will make your household budget that little bit easier. In addition to saving money by eliminating vampire consumption in your home, you are also helping the environment and that in itself is worth the effort.

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Author : loulynch - Posts:1

Let Taft Street Realty be your professional guide to Hudson Valley real estate. Check www.taftstreetrealty.com to view all the Ulster County community listings, including real estate in Stone Ridge NY.

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