Side Note: The Biggest Consumers of Energy in the Home
This article from the U.S. Department of Energy lists the appliances that usually consume the most amount of energy in the home:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/appliances.html
I’m not going to go deranged green here, but I have seen some very practical approaches for reducing the amount of energy consumed by some of these appliances. For example, here is a creative way to direct hot air from your attic into the dryer, which in summer reduces the amount of energy required to heat the air and also vents the attic, a win/win situation. It makes sense, and apparently is already more-or-less standard in countries outside of the US.
Awhile ago I walked around the house with a Kill-a-Watt and closely studied the behavior of every energy-consuming thing in my house. As a result, I was able to make some changes that really reduced my electricity bill. That said, I can really drive myself crazy with that stuff, so it is good to get a little perspective. A flat-screen TV, for example, costs about $70 a year on average.
The key issue is practicality. Is it really worth spending $1000 more on an appliance to save several dollars a year? And if I plan to sell my house eventually, who is going to want to buy it with all sorts of one-off modifications to it? So I try to keep myself constrained to home modifications that are palatable by the mainstream or can be easily undone. And I try to limit my purchases to things that -=mostly=- will pay for themselves in a reasonable amount of time or that are simply so appealing to me that I feel good about making the change. It can’t all be about money, but it is -=primarily=- about money for me.
One last note: We replaced the “can light” bulbs in our living room with CFLs. There were 10 50Watt bulbs in there. That is 500W whenever they were on, which was all the time no matter how much bitching I did to my family to turn off the lights. Replacing these bulbs with 5W CFLs reduced the wattage to 50W. The bulbs were a few bucks each and I bought them from 1000bulbs.com (I recommend them, as my experience with them has always been positive). The energy savings were immediate and the bulbs paid for themselves in just a few months.
