Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets 688
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A tech columnist looked around his home and wondered, 'All these TVs and cable boxes and computers and computer gear and chargers for various adapters have to be sucking up a lot of power, right?' So WSJ.com's Jason Fry bought a power meter to find the biggest power hogs in his home. They weren't his newfangled gadgets: 'The heavily used agglomeration of PC / two monitors / printer / hard drive / speakers in my downstairs study costs a bit more than $10 a month. The PC in our bedroom costs about $6 a month. The upstairs laptop? Less than $1 — a bit more than other always-on gadgets such as the router, cable modem, wireless repeater and Airport Express. So what were our apartment's power hogs? The lights and the dryer. I estimate our lights cost us around $30 a month, nearly a third of that from a chandelier with eight bulbs. Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"
Dual Use Tech (Score:3, Funny)
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Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:5, Interesting)
There's really no other way to cook (if you like to cook) than to use gas stovetop. Electric burners suck....just no heat control there.
I've always been curious why more people don't use gas. Is it not readily available across the nation? I've lived in the SE and deep south mostly....and have pretty much refused to even rent from the few places that didn't have gas, tho, I rarely rent in apt. complexes...mostly I rent houses or lived in a part of a house built as a double (common in NOLA). This worked out for me in Katrina...we had 7ft of water at my place, the neighbors downstairs were totally washed out, but, I had the top floor, and nothing happened to my stuff...I was more worried about it getting looted, but, was lucky and got my stuff all moved out before they got to it...
Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:4, Informative)
Have you tried an induction cooker? I used to think the same way as you, until I first tried one. To my surprise, it is even more responsive than the gas burner I previously had (I don't know how that works, but it does).
I've always been curious why more people don't use gas.
I think safety issues are the prime concern, these days. Cooking on an open flame just seems risky.
Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:4, Interesting)
Safety is definitely the concern with natural gas. My brother is both an EMS first responder and part-time firefighter. He has pictures of what can happen when your house fills with gas. There was an elderly couple who were killed recently (unfortunately they died after much suffering from the burns, weeks later) when their house filled with natural gas-- the old man happened to be working on his dryer at the time. He finished, plugged it in, and BANG. They found their front door about 50 yards from the building, and all of the condo units in the building ended up being condemned-- the explosion actually cracked the foundation of the building. The fire was so intense that the firefighters spent most of their time putting out the blaze on the building next door which was caused from the heat of the original building. It was a real tragedy.
Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:5, Informative)
Blah blah blah. I'm the Fire Marshal of a small town in PA. Most fires (not just in my town) are caused by cooking, and have nothing to do with the fuel used. It has little to do with the exact method of heating, its just that its hot. It's normally because of carelessness (especially including lack of maintenence). This includes crappy old gas stoves with no thermocoulpes that aren't properly mainteined. It includes overloaded elctgrical circuits. It includes filty ranges that have dirt and buildup catch fire during normal usage. It includes imporperly installed applicnces that don't vent correctly. It includes decrepit electrical wiring in the wall supplying a 30 amp 240v circuit.
Don't kid yourself that gas is a higher risk. Improperly installed, improperly mainteained, and imporperly used are the real risks.
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Man, whatever happened to letting kids get hurt every now and again? Guaranteed he'll never touch a burner with his bare hand again.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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And you still have heat control, it just isn't instant.
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I had gas heat and a gas stovetop and my highest gas bill for the month was over $400 and that was for a small 1800sqft house. The year before and cooler, it was no more than $150.
The gas companies were looking for handouts for people to pay for the people who couldn't afford to pay their bill.
I prefer NG over eletric for heat but that really
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Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:5, Informative)
You had to pay for the use of gas which was cheaper wholesale (which benefited business that pushed for deregulation) but marked up well over the original prices for residential customers and you had to pay for the billing of gas from the gas marketer which was a new charge.
The deregulation was sold as cheaper gas for all but it ended up costing way more than they imagined, Natural gas prices rose insanely on top of that, and people that couldn't pay for the increase of both had to freeze in the winter.
http://www.psc.state.ga.us/consumer_corner/cc_gas
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Re:Dual Use Tech (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. In a typical apartment complex with 16 units per building, all fire risks are multiplied 16x, because a single tenant can burn down all 16 tenants' apartments. So anything that significantly lowers the fire risk gives a bigger payoff.
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Where electric really suc
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If you work out how many amps of current at 240V that would be, it will surprise you -- You'd need to run awg 3 or 4 wire to your stove to get that kind of heat from electricity (without heating up the wires to the point of setting your house on fire).
For those interested in the numbers, it's 109.875 amps at 240V to get you to
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Trust me, they exist. They're also idiotic. It's even worse when the labeling is inconsistent (HI-2-3-LO-WM-OFF) and the buttons are placed over the rear burners.
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You'd be much better off to have one of those solar cookers most of the year- they can hit over 300 degrees in sub-optimal light.
Maybe when solar drops by an order of magnitude in price.
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Actually, quite the opposite. Power was out a couple days after a tropical storm. I could still cook quite easily...the electric gas stove starters didn't work, but, matches did just fine.
"Oh, and I call BS on the "can't really cook on an electric stove" thing. You do have hea
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Yet another reason to upgrade, multiple uses! "Hey dude! You're laptop gets hot!" "Yeah, I disabled the fans so I could dry my clothes and cook my food with it, now I only need it, a washer and a dishwasher and I've got everything I need!"
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Turns out that Life, the Universe and Everything still means something mysterious, but it doubtless means a lot of laundry.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
He owns a PC and a hard drive. The Wall Street Journal must be paying rather well, nowadays.
Lights? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lights? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lights? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lights? (Score:5, Informative)
also, someone up above made a comment about LED lights and got moderated troll. he is correct, LEDs are the next thing in lighting, as soon as the cost comes down. considerably more efficient than CFs.
last note. i put CFs in my current house when i moved in 4 years ago. i havent had to replace a single one yet. and i too am a night owl.
Re:Lights? (Score:5, Informative)
It is a misconception that LED fixtures are more power efficient than CF or other traditional "hot wire" light sources. Compared to your typical compact fluorescent bulb at the magical "100 watt incandescent" equivalent light output, they are in fact about the same. Fluorescent tubes are quite a bit better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy [wikipedia.org]
There are however some new high-flux LED's in development that are cracking the previous 100 lumen/watt ceiling, but they still have a *long* way to go until they are cost competitive with any other light source.
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Ultimately, I gave up,
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It makes a dramatic difference to how painted walls look.
Green under "warm" vs "Mint green" under "blue".
I have a wide variety of CFL's in my house and have at least 4 different shades from a very reddish light to a very blue/white light (like a reveal bulb).
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The best looking light (in terms of the light it puts out) I've ever owned is a full-spectrum flourescent desk lamp I bought at a craft store, that has all the usual benefits (in terms of low power consumption : output, long tube life) of flourescent bulbs over incadescent bulbs. It was expensive, which is why most CFLs aren't the same, but IMO most CFLs are about as good as avage incadescents (halogens last longer and look better than normal i
Oops (Score:2)
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I've converted most of my house - but I keep wondering what's going to happen to all that mercury once they do eventually wear out. I'm not aware of any place in my town that will recycle them.
Depends on where you live, but usually you want to call the people that run your local dump. They will be able to tell you the correct way to dispose of hazardous waste in your area.
My wife switched us completely to compact flourescents a few years ago. It has saved a bunch of money.
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What I want to know, is it possible to make CFLs that oscillate above 60Hz? Fluorescent lights flicker too much for my tastes.
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It is theoretically possible that electronic ballasts generate flicker. After all, the AC line voltage is rectified and smoothed with a capacitor before going through a circuit that rapidly switches on and off the current through the tube. Without smoothing, the voltage would vary between 0 and 230*sqrt(2)=325 V (for 230 VAC); with the smoothing capacitor, it would be vary between something like
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I don't work for Ikea, I just like referring others to free resources that help people be more responsible in their consumption behaviors.
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It was around $20CDN for 8 of them.
They also produce a nice white light, not yellow!
But, now that I'm not producing incredible amounts of heat from light bulbs, how much more does it cost in natural gas to heat my house?
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There are a wide variety of form factors available these days.
They make teeny ones that fit in cieling fan and candle type settings, bulb size ones, they make cold white, cool white, warm, and very warm lights. etc.
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I am suprised that incandesent bulbs are even legal to sell (I will probably get crap for this). The percentage of electricity saved for a gas house is huge. I do admit that in my bathroom the slower turn on and lower brightness/size ratio causes a mild annoyance, but even if I left them on all the time I would be saving overall in my house (I don't it just takes about 30 seconds to get decent brightness in the bathroom at night).
The only places I still use incandesent are the dimmed kitchen ligh
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energy saving lightbulbs (Score:2, Redundant)
EIA Residential Energy Statistics are free to all (Score:5, Informative)
Things might change as people consume their 8h/day TV on 60" plasma space heaters.
Use a dimmer (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyways, somewhat on topic, I hear that in California all new development and remodeling requires fluorescent lighting. Is that true?
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Not sure about California, but here in the UK new building requires a "low energy" lighting installation. This can be either CF or a halogen type that provides efficiency about halfway between the two. You may find this is a useful alternative for your dimmable lighting, BTW.
Re:Use a dimmer (Score:4, Interesting)
Many of the other replies to this post are at best mis-informed. So, here are the facts.
1) Reducing the power to incandescent bulbs via a dimmer does not save money. It is true that you use less power, but as you reduce the voltage the efficiency of the bulb goes down. Wikipedia has an article [wikipedia.org] on this with some handy power laws. If we apply these to the example case (75% of the voltage, assume 100W bulb) we get only 38% of the light (i.e. about what we would get from a 40W bulb), but we consume 63W of electricity. Of course, the bulb will now last for about 100 times as long. Perhaps the original post didn't mean 75% of the voltage, but instead 75% of the light. Doing the maths for this case we get: 88W and 3.8 times lifetime.
Note that the above lifetime extensions are purely a result of the lower voltage and nothing to do with flipping on and off. You will get the advantage even if you leave the bulb on all the time. But, since bulbs cost more to run than they do to buy and replace (except in special cases such as traffic lights) then reducing the voltage is a false economy. You would be better off simply buying some lower wattage bulbs or better still getting some compact flourescent lamps instead.
When I first knew my wife she lived in Estonia and her bedroom was fitted with a very clever scheme for dimming the lights (something which I often wanted to do!). Her light fitting had three bulbs connected to a double wall switch. One switch operated a single bulb and the other controlled the other two. One could therefore have 1, 2 or 3 bulbs and they would always be running at optimum efficiency. I suspect that limited Soviet domestic technology was the motivation behind this scheme rather than power efficiency, but it worked very well. Sadly, although several of the rooms in the flat are still wired for this scheme, you can no longer buy the special multi-wired fittings. I have offered to modify my mother-in-laws new lights, but she is reluctant.
Finally, can I point out that dimmer switches do not rely on resistance. If they did then they would get very hot! Most use electronic components called triacs [wikipedia.org], which are essentialy switches which can be controlled in such a way as to permit current to flow for only part of each half cycle of the AC voltage. This reduces the average voltage and for incandescent bulbs this is what matters.
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Most light dimmers actually use a transistor that chops off parts of the AC waveform. Since the transistor is always full-on or full-off, no significant power is lost in the dimmer switch (which would get very hot otherwise). The chopped-up waveform is also the reason you're no
Irrelevance (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh look at meee, I'm silentounce, I only need the glow of my displays and diagnostics. I'm so independent and free, look at meeee!
Well what about those of us who need our blinkenlights as well, huh? Ever think about that, you insensitive clod? Oh, but I suppose in your world, people oughtn't need their blinkenlights, right? right? I know you must look down on the rest of us, smug
Dryer (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that $25/month that you pay to run your dryer (even less if you spend a little more upfront and get a gas model) is just about a wash in the long run as compared to the $1.50/load that it would cost at a laundromat. We used to spend $40/month on quarters for laundry. About two-thirds of that was for drying and the rest for washing.
But yeah, those multi-bulb units will really kill you. Once you realize how much it costs per month to operate a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, that's the real incentive for switching to compact fluorescent wherever you can (slow startup-time and all).
Re:Clotheslines are not allowed (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, as long as everybody I know never turns off the light in their office I don't expect them to do that at home either. That tells me that energy is still far too cheap.
Re:The bottom line (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but they're still working out kinks with the measurements. For instance I bought a dishwasher that was world's better than the competitors on the energuide/energy star scale. Turns out that my dishwasher has a sensor that measures how dirty the water is, automatically (and significantly) shortening the cycle for small/null loads. Turned out that the energy test the government ran did a cycle with nothing in it at all, making a best case.
While the sensor will definitely help, it certainly won't to the degree demonstrated in the artificial benchmark.
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So, if I hand wash the dishes first, I'll save a ton on electricity!
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Felt the article was lacking. (Score:4, Insightful)
He also failed to give real numbers and total things up. Sure, maybe the electric clothes dryer is an energy hog as compared to say the a computer. But it does not let us know if the dryer is twice as bad as a computer, 10x, or 100x. If you have say 3 computers up and running constantly, then it still makes sense to unplug them instead of 'the energy hog' dryer, if the dryer only uses up twice the power of a single computer. I would have loved to know relative strengths, such as 1 electric stove = 7 laptops.
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It's an immeasurably small ammount of power. A fraction of a watt.
The drain comes from the ineffecient power supply, when totally idle. Even if your device doesn't have a remote, unless it has a heavy duty 120V/10A power switch, your power supplies are probably drawing 2W constantly, even when off. That includes all wall-warts, (
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I personally witnessed small compact hifi systems drawing 30W while "off" compared to 35W while on without any load.
Re:Felt the article was lacking. (Score:4, Interesting)
A cable co.-supplied DVR uses 52-53W ON, and 50W when "OFF". (I put a lamp timer on that thing, since I don't record overnight anyway.)
A regular (non-DVR) cable box uses 15-16W ON, and 15W OFF.
An HP4110 fax/scan/printer uses 10-11W ON(idle), and 10-11W OFF. (Ok, not a remote-on device. WTF?)
Stereo, LCD monitors, and CRT TV each uses =1W in standby.
Old news, but... (Score:2)
Duh? (Score:2, Informative)
You have to be perpetually asleep to not have realized this already. Light bulbs have a wattage rating right on them. So does practically everything else except for a clone PC, whose wattage rating is on a sticker inside the case (on the power supply.)
An electric dryer draws about 4 kW (heating element, blower, motor) while a gas dryer pulls about 400-500W (for the blower and the motor.) Any asshole could look this up with google... except the one who wrote this article.
It shouldn't take a rocket sci
Re:Duh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've given up some of my economizing. I can't stand the spectrum of CFL. Call me when they get dimmable CFLs with appropriate color temperatures (2000-3500K) and a 98-99CRI. It's a cost I pay to satisfy the millions of years of retina-brain evolution under blackbody radiation sources. Call me a traditionalist.
Actually, I'm not a rabid electro-hog, but I've come to an
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I agree with you on the lighting. I only use CFL lights where I'm not hanging out all the time; in the second bathroom, in the laundry room where it probably ends up costing more than it saves, et cetera. I'm personally looking to LED lighting to solve the problem because it's easier to get a specific color out of a cluster of LEDs than waiting for fluorescents to get the color right.
But besides the issue of saving money, there's the issue of "saving the environment", or more to the point, doing your pa
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Man, you're telling me. What really kills me is when they build these new housing developments and lay the houses out on this plan so that none of them are properly solar-situated. If they just rotated the development by a few degrees they could cut the energy consumption of the whole development by a very sizable portion. Maybe I'm just some kind of asshole but I really think we should force anyone building a housin
His guess about the dryer is spot-on (Score:4, Informative)
Now this was in 2003. We've noticed that the generation charge has been going up, so that, compared to 2003, we are paying roughly $10 more a month for the same number of kWh (roughly 180 kWh/mo). So you'll even save a bit more now.
Anyhow, that prompted us to walk around and replace all of our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, and so on (saving us another $10/mo). Considering that none of these bulb have died (save the one that our landlord dropped), I think the $40 or so we put into bulbs has paid us back quite a bit.
I did the same experiment with the power meter. I was quite surprised to discover that under normal load, my Soekris router consumed less than 1W. Very cool. The same can't be said about the laser printer (LaserJet 4M Plus), though. 700W peak, ~30W at idle. We leave that one off most of the time.
I've got this guy beat, big time. (Score:5, Funny)
Almost the entire city, plus the environs, has been without power for the past 4
days.
Ref:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2
Thus we are major leaders in energy savings!
Estimate 18 Month Payback for CF Bulbs (Score:5, Interesting)
That's better than a 26% per year ROI. The 100 Watt equivalents are about than $2.70 each when purchased in 3 packs at Walmart. I replaced every bulb that didn't have an occlusion due to a light fixture (about 30) in my home for around $80.
It's a better investment than the stock market any day.
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I wish the light bulb manufactures advertised this metric on their bulbs. As it is, I won't be buying any more CF bulbs.
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I've been replacing the lights in my house with CF as the incandescent ones die. As I do this, I put the newest CFs in the rooms I use often and transfer the older ones to places like the living roo
ok, perhaps not obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
but just a moment of reflection should tell you that yes, anything that generates heat is going to be a huge draw of power. one can directly express heat power in Watts; yes, the same watts used to express electrical power.
electric heaters are usually 1500 watts. light bulbs from 60 to 100 watts. appliance motors in the home are around 1/4 to 1/2 horsepower (1 horsepower ~= 746 watts).
let's keep this in terms of heat for a second. in case you're wondering what uses more power -- your hair dryer or wire
Wasting electricity in the winter impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that you're spending money heating your house in the winter, isn't it effectively impossible to "waste" electricity? Any electricity you consume is going to end up as heat (minus an irrelevant amount as light and kinetic energy), which you want anyway.
Of course, if your main heat source is not electricity (e.g. gas), electricity might be slightly more expensive. But I think the basic idea holds.
Re:Wasting electricity in the winter impossible? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ironically, many people have A/C.
Where's the irony? An A/C unit is simply a heat pump facing the wrong direction.
Anyway. Adding to your point: even electric heat is generally designed to deliver the heating effect to areas where it is most useful. As opposed to heating your ceiling.
Even it everything broke even, CF bulbs are nearly cheap enough (if not ARE cheap enough) to offset the cost of replacing the 5 or six incandecent bulbs which would be required in the CF's place
The big f'ing plug didn't give it away? (Score:2)
Moxi (Score:2)
Unused rooms? (Score:2)
But aside from more energy-efficient appliances (and lights), I really do have to wonder how much energy could be saved by just hooking up rooms to motion detectors.
I'm in my 30s, and growing up I often heard my Dad complain about rooms with the lights left on. Lately, I've been seeing advertisements from my power company about energy savings from turning off ceiling fans in rooms when no one is there.
Ho
Good Suggestions (Score:2)
CF Replacement Bulbs
Gas Dryer
Those three things will annihilate your electric bill.
Examples:
We recently replaced our twenty year old 15 cf* fridge with a 20cf energy start. Power usage went from 1500kwh/year to 425kwh/year. And the old fridge had new seals, was kept away from the stove, vents, and all that. Insane how much we've saved. Sure, it costs $450 plus delivery - but as long as you don't put it on a butt-raping credit card, your fridge will pay for itself in less than five y
My Dryer Uses Half As Much Energy! (Score:2)
You have a knob that controls the timing for your dryer. The old energy inefficent dryers used to to have the knob labeled so that it had one normal cycle - Dry. But then they decided to relabel the knob to that there is TWO cycles painted above the knob: 50% of the arch
Some info from mythbusters (Score:2)
They busted that myth wide open. They found that the energy it takes to start up the lightbulb is infinitesimal for all but the fluorescent bulbs, and the fluorescent loses any savings after only 23 seconds (i.e. if you are out of the room for more than 23 seconds, you are wasting money). Basically, it took very little power to start up the bulb, despite what the
not as bad as it used to be (Score:2)
First, a dryer is in a class of it's own. It will suck electricity, but only when it is being used. Same things with lights. And both are very deterministic. If they are not being used, they will not use electricity. And often these things are not, in fact, being used
American style science (Score:4, Insightful)
I would start with reading the wattage close to the handle.
Evidently (Score:4, Funny)
Hierarchy is: (Score:4, Informative)
- Electric heating (resistive heating: Driers, room heaters, heating appliances.)
- Motors
- Lighting
- Consumer electronics.
Electric heating (by resisitance heaters) consumes an ENORMOUS amount of power.
Switching from electric to gas drying (so the electric load is just the motor) will cause a big savings in the electric bill, while the gas bill won't go up anywhere neer enough to compensate. Ditto (even more so) if the house has electric heat.
Same is true of the other heating appliances (hair driers, toasters, stoves and ovens, etc.) But (except for ovens if you do a LOT of baking) they tend to only run a short time so it doesn't make all THAT much difference on your bill.
Motors are the next big load. Air conditioners are the worst, due to the heat pump. But moving anything around (even air) is costly. One horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 KW (and motors can be very efficient - 80s to 90s percent - but they're still not lossless). (Nevertheless, using a heat-pump for HEATING - especially if the weather outside is above freezing or so - uses a lot less power than resistive heating. But except for merely cool days it's still more expensive than gas.)
Lighting is next. Incandescents are especially hot heaters, and the light is the visible part of the hot-wire glow. Much more is heat. Switch to fluorescents (compact or otherwise) and you get about four times as much light per watt. (LEDs may beat that in a few years but right now they're trailing fluorescents.)
Consumer electronics is 'way down there - because it's improved a lot and because there has been serious effort to increase its efficiency and reduce its losses - as well as to reduce localized heating of the components. (When I got my first linux box it was a good space heater - and most of that was the disk drive. Nowdays things take a LOT less power.) With cheap semiconductors modern power supplies are now highly-efficient switching-mode devices, which also helps a lot.
(Other appliances have also been re-engineered for efficiency, so switching to a modern large appliance may save you significant power and/or fuel. But electronics has had a much bigger improvement.)
Was it really your dryer or was it your washer? (Score:4, Interesting)
Have showers with your clothes on!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Place them on a clothes rack and they will dry indoors in hours.
1) no washer needed, just uses soap from shower
2) no dryer needed, all natural
3) you wash in FIFO order, not 5 days worth at a time.
4) you save water
5) its dry by the morning to wear again, so you only need 2 pairs of everything at most
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True enough, though they've gotten a lot closer.
Nonetheless, I remember having a computer room full of always-on PCs, a giant tube television, a huge power sucking amp, and so on -- my furnace never came on. Since switching to a lot of power efficient gear, a low power LCD screen, CF lighting throughout, and so on, suddenly the furnace seems to always be one, so my conservation has been offset to a degree in the winter.
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Re:If only... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:If only... (Score:4, Funny)
Nah...in the long run, that will prove to be VASTLY more expensive, especially if you ever decide to upgrade to a newer model.
That's why I just live with them....more like leasing with an option to buy.
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