How consistent is your energy usage/conservation?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by this thread, how consistent are you in your energy use/conservation.

I was wondering how many of the folk who were 100% LED lighting, drove Hummers, or had huge houses. Or if a high percentage of those folk drove Priuses. That kind of thing.

Me, I’m pretty middle of the road across the board. Our energy usage is always way below our neighborhood average. Our house isn’t overlarge, and we try to run the AC/furnace as little as possible. We both drive pretty small cars that get over 30 MPH - but most importantly, we just don’t drive that much. We try to group our errands, bike and walk when we can. And we don’t do a bunch of air travel. We only have 1 TV, which we don’t watch too often. I don’t even know how big it is, but it isn’t one of those wall-sized units.

But, as I said in that thread, we use 100% incandescent/flourescent lights. Heck, we even bought some new incandescent x-mas lights last year, b/c we didn’t like the look of the LEDs available.

How bout you? How much thought and effort do you put into conservation? Do you make isolated token efforts to conserve, or do you strive to be consistent across the board?

2

Actually I like reducing my fixed monthly expenses, like the electric bill, so I have more money available for other fun stuff!

3

Yeah, well my problem is that my energy usage is a tiny fraction of my income.

Sure, I save money when I can. Hell, I pick up pennies off the street. But my time/leisure is also valuable. So I’m circumspect about the lengths I’ll go to to save how much.

4

We’re good and bad.

My car gets crummy fuel economy, 17 city/25 highway. I drive it pretty hard (not around other cars), so my city mpg is probably worse than 17. Not only that, but it’s going through tires pretty fast.

Wife’s car isn’t much better, just 27 highway; this is the price we pay for the convenient carrying capacity of a small SUV.

I have a motorcycle. Apart from regular Sunday-afternoon jaunts, I occasionally take interstate trips with it, where I ride for the sake of riding; in the course of a 5-day voyage, I might rack up 2100 miles.

Our showerhead is some kind of legacy thing that spews great volumes of water. Our 40-gallon water heater was almost enough to get us through our evening showers; when it sprung a leak, I replaced it with a 50-gallon water heater, and instead of efficient, I bought cheap.

We have a 65" plasma TV. It runs for probably four hours per evening, contributing directly to our electricity bill, and also (in the summer) indirectly via increased air conditioning load.

OTOH…

Our house is mostly lit by CFLs, fluorescent tubes, and LED lights, so that’s good.

I generally don’t water our lawn unless it’s almost dead, and we use fertilizers and weed killer pretty sparingly. Our neighbors probably think we’re uncultured Neanderthals.

Last year we bought the most efficient furnace and air conditioner we could get.

With a programmable thermostat, we let the house temperature drift while we’re not there.

Our commutes are pretty short, just a few miles each way. I would take a bicycle in warm weather, but most mornings I have to take stuff to the post office and/or FedEx, so that wouldn’t work. Between the two of us, we only rack up about 10K miles per year (this is for all driving, not just commuting).

Our house itself is fairly big - about 1900 sqft - but it’s not what I would call a mansion. Browsing on Zillow we sometimes see houses in town with 3 bedrooms that are 3000 square feet or more.

5

I’m extremely energy efficient, but it’s mostly a by-product of my lifestyle rather than a lifestyle choice.

I don’t drive, so I travel almost everywhere by foot or public transportation. I have not been in a private car since April, when I last visited my parents.

I don’t cook, and eat mostly cold food, so I use almost no energy for meals, except to power the refrigerator. Occasionally I use the microwave or the toaster – combined maybe three or four times a week.

I live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, so my home energy usage is low. However, several years ago I decided that it just wasn’t worth it to me to be cold all the time, so I keep the temperature at around 70 degrees at night/when I’m not home, and at 75 degrees when I am home and awake (around 4 hours per day, more on weekends).

I usually take two round trip airline flights per year.

My landlord has replaced some light fixtures with energy efficient ones, but some still require older chandelier bulbs.

6

Not very consistent, I’m afraid.

We made several changes around the house, including CFLs, substantial additional insulation, isolating unused rooms, installing a window A/C* in our bedroom, and switching from tube TVs to flatscreens. We also only water when necessary for foundation security, not to keep the lawn green. Our electric bills have dropped noticeably in the last few years.

OTOH we bought a bigger boat that gets around 1.5 mpg. This mileage falls even further in the summertime since we run its generator to keep the A/C and entertainment operating down in the cabin. We seem to average about 100 gallons/month playing on the water. This probably negates all the house energy savings.

*We’re empty-nesters and have closed off all the empty bedrooms, our BR is the only room used upstairs now.

7

It depends, I suppose.

I think of myself as being consistent, but mainly because energy conservation is not a particularly high goal for me. I hate wasting energy, but it always comes down to a cost/benefit analysis for me, not some absolute ideal of reducing consumption.

So I use CFL almost everywhere in my house, but have not upgraded to LED. My car gets decent MPG, but isn’t electric or hybrid. I often heat or cool single rooms in the house rather than use the central system. I have a hot tub and a fish pond, which use a lot of electricity compared to the rest of my house, but they bring me a lot of enjoyment. That said, the pond uses efficient pumps that are about 25% less power than a different style of pump with the same capacity. When I do water changes or filter cleanings from the pond, I use it to water/fertilize my lawn. And the hot tub uses ozone to minimize the amount of chemicals I have to put into it.

So there you go: I’m consistently doing the things I enjoy and achieving a reasonable cost/benefit tradeoff to reduce waste.

8

My home in Hawaii is off-grid. My wife and I do not get an electric bill from the local power company. We have no reason to conserve electricity as much of the power that the solar panels produce and sends to the batteries is not used. When we first had the system installed, I would go out daily and check the batteries and inverter to make sure it was all running smoothly, but nothing was ever wrong, so I don’t check things as often now.

The trade winds keep the house cool, so we don’t have A/C. just fans.

The water heater has its own solar panels which keep the shower water nice and warm.

Our water comes from a 10,000 gallon catchment tank. A solar powered pump sends the water into the house. The area where our home is averages 200 inches of rain a year (mostly at night), so we don’t conserve water either. That feels weird coming from southern California.

9

Mangosteen, I’m impressed with your level of independence. But modern technology is providing much of what you have achieved. Technology, fortunately, doesn’t go backward so you are pretty much set. Let’s hope that the same technology can be applied to other, less abundant, locations. It would be good for many of us to achieve your level of conservation.

10

We’re pretty consistent, but we still use a lot of energy. Two cars (Prius and Volt) are low emissions and low fuel. We have replaced our two heat pumps with highest efficiency we could find, but it’s still a big house and uses a fair amount, especially in the winter. We buy all our power from the “Green Energy” program offered by our electric company, so that’s all solar, wind, or hydro. We have LED lighting, mostly. Our washers and dryers, and other appliances, are very efficient (or so they claim).

On the other hand, we have a boat. I use more gas every summer for the boat that I’ve used in my Volt since I bought it four years ago.

11

I live on a tropical Caribbean island yet have no A/C.
Lighting is all compact fluorescents.
A clothesline and sea breeze means no clothes dryer.
Compact water heater sized to meet our needs.

But I work on the far end of the island so it is nearly 50 miles round trip each working day and car mileage is not great, merely ok.
We have two refrigerators for three people. Easier to keep foods separate from the housemates’ that way.

12

In college I lived in an environmental demonstration house, and that was pretty neat:

Solar PV electric + solar thermal hot water on the roof. The thermal helped heat water in the high-efficiency water heater, and part of that was also circulated through baseboard copper pipes to provide ambient heat. Walls and attic were insulated with 6" recycled cellulose scraps and stayed very comfortable through the year (though it was a temperate climate to begin with). Some walls used insulated concrete forms for additional insulation (concrete poured in between styrofoam). Supplementary heat (rarely used) came from a high-efficiency wood stove and local firewood, and was due to be replaced with an air-sourced heat pump. Windows were double-paned vacuum-insulated with three-layered thermal curtains on top (mylar, cotton, moisture barrier). Gravity-fed rainwater catchment (but only for gardening, because that area was not particularly water-short). Sink and laundry water went to on-site graywater marsh, blackwater flowed to the local municipal natural sewage processing plant (a series of marshes and settling ponds that use plants to prefilter the water before finalizing it with a little bit of chlorine just to meet state regs). Food scraps were composted and veggies and fruits were grown on-site in a tiny permaculture garden. Most years it was net zero electricity use but not net zero energy (mainly because of the occasional use of firewood and natural gas heating for the water heater). We ate mostly vegetarian supplemented by local grass-fed livestock. Walked/biked everywhere.

Life after college as a renter is less cool :frowning: As soon as I moved into this new place shared with roommates, I switched 20+ bulbs to LED, some of the motion-sensitive. It’s nice moving through the hallways and just having lights come on and off after me. Got thermal curtains to regulate temperature and they’re working pretty well for now. Sadly, that’s all I really want to spend money on as a renter. I do work for a solar company, eat a 99% vegan diet, and bike as much as possible, though, but I still have the carbon footprint of like 10 people in India.

<tangential rant>
I feel like it’s less about conservation now and more just about spending: spend enough money, throw enough PV and solar thermal on your roof, buy an electric car, and you’re good to go. Doesn’t really change our consumption patterns or environmental awareness and perpetuates the “buy stuff to solve problems” mentality that so many people, me included, hold.

In the third world, this stuff is a lot more interesting. Village-scale microhydro, LED indicators for micro-grids that allow different houses in a village to take turns using the (very limited) electricity, high-efficiency rocket stoves whose design passively allows higher combustion temperatures and limits fuel use, passive earthern coolers, rainwater catchment wells, tanks, nets, etc. with slow sand filters… etc. When you can throw first-world money at environmental problems, most of them are easy to solve. That’s not going to be a solution for the other 7.5+ billion poorer people in the world that suffer the most from environmental issues.

These issues are much too big to be tackled at the household level, especially things like water conservation (mostly wasteful agriculture) and power generation (less than 1% of US electricity comes from solar, nevermind just the rooftop stuff) and transportation (needs electric cars + smart grid + renewables + nuclear). Unless we can solve the policy problems, the individual household stuff is sort of like trying to save endangered species through taxidermy…
</rant>

13

I commute by train and walk to/from the station, and I like to go downtown on Saturdays too, so I take my car out only one day in the typical week. Yes, I’m the [del]little old lady[/del] husky middle-aged man who only takes the car out on Sundays. :slight_smile: It’s a 1998 sedan, so my gas mileage is good but not great. Still, I go well over a month, and often two months, between fill-ups. :cool: I have no intention to replace my car until it gives up the ghost – hopefully not any time soon, knock on wood – and then I plan to buy a hybrid.

At home, I don’t run the (central) air-conditioning until it gets consistently in the high 80s, relying on open windows until then. Once I turn it on, the thermostat is set at 82 for the times I’m typically away or asleep and 78 otherwise. I keep the window shades closed during the day to cut down on solar gain. On the other hand, I have a two-bedroom condo, even though I live alone, and I don’t bother to close the door or vents to the spare bedroom. :smack:

I have one television, which I watch some days over 4 hours and other days not at all. I recently replaced an old 21-inch CRT (picture-tube) set – when it “died”, not just to upgrade – with a basic flat-screen. It was actually cheaper than the CRT set and I imagine uses a lot less electricity as it’s not also acting as a space heater. :slight_smile:

I haven’t gotten around to changing from incandescent bulbs, as I haven’t exhausted the modest supply I bought when I bought the condo in 2005. No, I did not stockpile incandescents like some people :rolleyes: and I’ll buy and use the modern bulbs once my last incandescent burns out.

As to water, I replaced my two toilets with low-flow models a few years back, with no problems. The washers & dryers are coin-ops down the hall, so I have no control over their water or electric usage except that I wait to do laundry until at least one of my two loads (lights & darks) is full. That’s as much laziness as conservation. :stuck_out_tongue: I also have no control over the water usage for the condo’s relatively modest lawns.

14

We burn a ton of gasoline. My Jeep Wrangler averages 20 mpg and is essentially a single person vehicle. We have a “farm truck” that gets 12 mpg. My gf’s Subaru gets better mileage, but she commutes an hour to & from work daily. Large lawns so we have two lawn tractors, a coupla push mowers and some weed whackers. Two chainsaws. Pontoon boat burns through 15 gallons each time we take it out which is often in the summer.

But, CFL bulbs throughout the house, barn, sheds. No AC in the house except for a window unit in the bedroom for the few nights it is unbearable.

15

I try to stay aware of it but don’t go to any great lengths to alter my lifestyle. I use minimum wattage in light bulbs that still provide me with what I need. I try to water and wash dishes efficiently and avoid unnecceary travel such as just cruising around for fun.

16

I have a Prius, live a mile from work, have a lot less apartment/home than my means, and don’t use the AC/heat very much. But I take lots of road trips and drive most places I go and rarely carpool (both across the country which probably uses more gas than flying, and also to work instead of walking usually, because it’s in Florida and it’s usually too hot.) I buy whichever lighting is best looking for the price.

17

We don’t drive much (a single 5-year-old car that has just over 15k miles on it), and commute by public transit, so the car basically gets used for weekend errands/excursions and the occasional road trip. OTOH the in-laws live 8 time zones away, so visiting them (which we do about every year and a half) burns a lot of fuel. And the car, though small, isn’t hybrid or electric, but that didn’t make economic sense for us given how little we drive.

As appliances have needed replacing, they have been replaced with energy- and water-efficient ones. Light bulbs are all CFLs at this point and now that LEDs are getting cheaper, will probably be replaced with that once we run out of CFLs.

We have a not-huge flat screen TV which we don’t watch much - the computers get used more than the TV.

We live in a condo, not a house. We do use central AC (with an ultraviolet & whole-house HEPA filter built into the system to help deal with my crappy allergic/asthmatic lungs). It’s set to 75 when we are home, and 85 when we are not, mostly for the sake of the cats.

The 4-unit condo building has a postage-stamp-sized lawn, which we water haphazardly.

If we ever buy a house, we will be at liberty to think about things like solar panels.

18

Eight time zones from Chicago would put you in Japan or Russia.

My car, a Honda Fit, is 9 years old and has about 27,000 km on it. Even before I retired, I never commuted with it. So we go to the grocery, to concerts and occasionally on a road trip. Because most of lights are either lamps with small shades or overhead lights in nearly airtight globe, I have stuck to incandescents. Our heat is electric (hydro-electric) when the temp is -12C or above and changes to oil heat below -12. We have no airconditioning, but do have fans. So we are moderately energy efficient.

19

Thanks ASGuy. The property never had a connection to the local power company. We were "$30,000 " away from the nearest electric pole. This is the amount the power company would have charged us to bring the electric lines on to our property. This happened to be the same amount it cost to install a solar panel system. Our choice was to have electric power lines blocking our view of the ocean and a monthly power bill vs. solar panels of the roof of the power shed and no monthly bill.

The same was true for the water company. An expensive hook up with treated water from the water company vs. catching water from the sky and treating it with our own filters.

20

The big things are often coincidental. We live in a dense urban area, walk to many stores and restaurants and don’t commute to work by car (I never have, regularly, in my life). Likewise our house is fairly small (mid 2000’s sq ft). But we didn’t make those choices, rather than say a distant commute to a McMansion, to save energy but for general lifestyle reasons.

And within that naturally relatively small (by US standards) energy footprint I tend to be cheap. I flip the lights or AC (modern system in old house, new efficient windows too) off on a given floor off if nobody’s there, to save money. Same reason I went with CFL light bulbs even before the incandescents disappeared from the stores (btw LED and CFL energy consumption aren’t much different, we’re phasing in LED’s as CFL’s burn out, but mainly because they’re supposed to save you more by their longer life, as well as hassle of changing them). Our car gets 26 mpg in our mix of driving, but <6k mi/yr in our own car. OTOH last year we drove a rental car ~6k mi in just a few weeks flying to the west coast of the US and back around/across back to the east coast. If we decide to go on a vacation with lots of driving or flying we just do it, we don’t concern ourselves that much with the gas or aviation fuel consumption per se. But I don’t like foreign travel particularly; my wife does it more with sisters/friends and sometimes I get dragged along, not huge travelers overall.