Do You Know Where The Power Goes?

Simple Question – you might think that your electricity bill is high, but where does that every go? I mean, in a house it is split between cooking and computers, lighting, hot water and more. In a business there might be machines, Air Conditioning, heating and more.

A friend of mine was describing now he now turns his TV & DVD combo off at the wall to save energy, as he felt that standby energy made a huge impact on his bill. Following some careful questions, I found out that what he was doing was saving about $0.01 per device per day, if that. What he did not realize was that these particular devices, despite some publicity campaigns to the contrary, actually used almost no energy when they were turned off. The problem is that the advice he had been given was wrong.

So, how did I know? Well, firstly I found that the equipment was fairly new. That is s a good indicator by itself, as there are Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) for most home entertainment devices on the market. That was just an indicator. The most important thing I did was ask if he heard a small click when the devices were turned on. This click is an almost universal indicator that the device consumes less than 2W on standby.

I heard about people on low incomes turning off their off peak hot water systems two out of three days to save money. What they did not realize is that generally Hot Water Systems are fairly well insulated, meaning that remarkably little energy is lost when it is not being used. And most of this energy that is lost needs to be put back in when the unit is turned back on. The savings from turning hot water systems off like this are going to be minimal.

The thing is that we all generally have perceptions on where the energy is going, but we really do not know. Determining where the energy goes requires someone who actually knows what they are talking about to look at the site as a whole, and then use evidence to make recommendations. Without the evidence, anything that is done would be a guess.

Some things are easy to locate – like replacing halogen down lights with LED. Finding energy inefficient appliances can be hit and miss. But whatever you do, look at the payback period of anything you do. Sometimes it is actually better to wait a year or two for prices to come down when replacing devices. An example of this is a friend with vision problems. They have a large Plasma TV, and it consumes a heap of energy, and they want to replace it. I looked at the prices of a new LED TV, also looking energy savings and how TV set prices have been dropping, and worked out that if they can wait a year they would save a heap of money. This is not always the case, but it is more common than you would think.

The big thing to do is to look at your energy consumption critically, and go from there.

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Darryl Smith is CEO of Redshift Wireless. They produce a device that helps companies and institutions save energy by managing their individual split system air conditioners over the Internet.