About ten years ago, my physics professor made a joke about how his grandfather had tried to save money by going around the house and turning off any light bulbs that were not necessary. He laughed and added, “nowadays I would just hand him (his grandpa) a few pennies and keep the light on!” It was a good lesson on energy consumption and how much they’re converted into money. But it was then, 10 years ago.

In the year of 2008, with soaring energy prices and shrinking paychecks, I bet the professor can’t make the same joke anymore. The waste in daily utility uses can amount up to several hundred dollars a year for a single family home. As a matter of fact, more and more people have switched their traditional round light bulbs to compact fluorescent ones (which emit the same amount of light for less electricity consumption). The savings can be sizable as the family size expanded.

Another considerable saving on utilities is to install a special sensor on the water heater. The principle is that regular water heaters keep heating up water even when nobody uses it, thereby wasting electricity. Usually, people only use warm water in the morning or evening, leaving the vast amount of idle time in between. Keeping a full tank of hot water day in day out will require a considerable amount of energy. So this sensor detects the water flow in/out of water heater and only heat up the water when it’s in use. Although it might take a bit longer to warm up water, most users can’t even realize any differences.

Other ideas would be checking your appliances that may eat up too much electricity and replace them with better ones (yeah right, how about the cost of new ones?). Well, there’s another reason to switch too. Let me state an example. I have 2 TV’s and 2 computer monitors, all of them used to be the CRT kind (Cathode Ray Tube), which consume a lot more electricity than the LCD types. As you can imagine, most of the consumed energy is turned into heat, which also make my crowded apartment too hot for comfort. So if I turned them on for a while, I would need to turn on my A/C as well. What a waste of energy! Furthermore, they are big! They consumed lot of my limited space. Replacing all of them with flat screen not only saves me money, but also makes my room cooler and more spacious.

If you have any ideas to save energy, please share. Thanks!