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100+ Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill: Laundry

Welcome to the seventh portion of the series: 100+ Ways to Improve your Electric Bill.  Many of these are low cost and no cost tips, and easy to implement.

So far in the series, we have covered:

• Air Infiltration
• Heating and Cooling (Part 1 and Part 2).
• Refrigeration
• Cooking
• Water Heating
• Lighting

We all do loads of laundry, sometimes multiple loads a day and often don’t think about conservation while we’re cleaning our clothes.  Edison Electric Institute has some great tips on laundry and conservation:

• Follow detergent instructions carefully. Oversudsing actually hampers effective washing action and may require more energy in the form of extra rinses.
• If you are in the market for a new washing machine, consider using a front-loading or horizontal axis washing machine. According to studies by DOE, these new units use at least 30 percent less water and 50 percent less energy to make hot water and wash clothes than regular washing machines. They are also gentler on fabrics.
• Set the wash temperature selector to cold or warm and the rinse temperature to cold as often as possible. Sort laundry and schedule washes so that a complete job can be done with a few cycles of the machine carrying its full capacity rather than a greater number of cycles with light loads.
• In terms of features, when shopping for a clothes washer, look for several water level options (to adjust to different loads). Also, look for pre-soaking and suds-saver options.
• Washing machines with higher spin speeds can extract more water and reduce drying time, which saves more energy.
• Avoid over-drying. This not only wastes energy, but harms fabrics as well.
• Many dryers have settings that allow an automated moisture sensor to reduce the drying time. Dryers with automated moisture sensors may have a buzzer or other sound system to let you know when clothes are dry. Use the sound system to minimize drying time.
• To save energy, try not to run the electric dryer unless it is carrying its rated poundage of clothes. Don’t overload, however, since this causes excessive wrinkling and perhaps requires an added amount of ironing. 
• Dry towels and heavier cottons in a separate load from clothes with lighter weights.

Thanks to our friends at the Edison Electric Institute for providing the list of 100+ Ways to Improve your Electric Bill.

Check Out Our New Programs Coming This Summer!

Residential Home Energy Check-Up Program

• Provides owners and occupants of single family homes an easy and low cost home energy audit. It will include a walk through audit of customer homes, direct install measures, and recommendations for additional home energy improvements.

Residential Duct Testing & Sealing Program

• Designed to promote the testing and repair of poorly performing duct and air distribution systems. Qualifying customers will be provided an incentive to have a contractor test and seal ducts in their homes using methods approved for the Program, such as mastic material or foil tape with an acrylic adhesive to seal all joints and connections. The repairs are expected to reduce the average air leakage of a home's conditioned floor area to industry standards.

Residential Heat Pump Tune-Up Program

• Provides qualifying customers with an incentive to have a contractor tune-up their existing heat pumps once every five years in order to achieve maximum operational performance. A properly tuned system should increase efficiency, reduce operating costs, and prevent premature equipment failures.

Residential Heat Pump Upgrade Program

• Provides incentives for residential heat pump (e.g., air and geothermal) upgrades.  Qualifying equipment must have better Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio and Heating Seasonal Performance Factor ratings than the current nationally mandated efficiency standards.

Commercial Energy Audit Program

• As part of this Program, an energy auditor will perform an on-site energy audit of a commercial customer's facility. The customer will receive a report showing the projected energy and cost savings that could be anticipated from the implementation of options identified during the audit. Once a qualifying customer provides documentation that some of the recommended energy efficiency improvements have been made at the customer's expense, a portion of the audit price will be refunded, up to the full price of the audit.

Commercial Duct Testing & Sealing Program

• Promotes testing and general repair of poorly performing duct and air distribution systems in commercial facilities. The Program provides incentives to qualifying customers to have a contractor seal ducts in existing buildings using program-approved methods, including: aerosol sealant, mastic, or foil tape with an acrylic adhesive. Such systems include air handlers, air intake, return and supply plenums, and any connecting duct work.

Commercial Distributed Generation Program

• Provides qualifying customers with an incentive to curtail load by operating customer-owned backup generation when called upon to do so up to 120 hours per year. The Program is implemented by a contractor who is responsible for installing equipment to enable remote operation and monitoring of the customer's backup generation equipment and for dispatching load curtailment events under the direction of the Company.

100+ Ways to Improve Your Electric Bill: Lighting

Welcome to the seventh portion of the series: 100+ Ways to Improve your Electric Bill.  Many of these are low cost and no cost tips, and easy to implement.

So far in the series, we have covered:

• Air Infiltration
• Heating and Cooling (Part 1 and Part 2).
• Refrigeration
• Cooking
• Water Heating   

We all turn on and off the lights each and every day, but it might be time upgrade with more efficient lights.

Enjoy!

• Provide “task” lighting (over desks, tool benches, craft tables, etc.) so that work and leisure activities can be done without illuminating entire rooms.
• Select the type of light bulb on the basis of its efficiency. Compact fluorescent bulbs will give an incandescent bulb’s warm soft light, while using 75 percent less electricity. They also last about 8 to 10 times longer. Use these bulbs in fixtures or lamps that are on for more than two hours each day.
• If you don’t like the “look” of compact fluorescent lighting, consider high-efficiency halogen lighting. For example, a 100-watt incandescent bulb can be replaced by a 72-watt or 70-watt halogen bulb. A 60-watt incandescent bulb can be replaced by a 42-watt or 40-watt halogen bulb.
• Consider using Light Emitting Diode (LED) light bulbs, especially in hard-to-reach fixtures. A 60-watt incandescent bulb can be replaced by a 12-watt LED bulb that will have a rated lifetime of more than 20,000 hours.
• Some compact fluorescent bulbs can be used with dimmer switches. Check the package to make sure they can be used with dimmers. Where possible, consider using dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs.
• The reflectance of interior surfaces has an important bearing on lighting efficiency. In home decoration, therefore, choose lighter colors for walls, ceilings, floors, and furniture. Dark colors absorb light and require higher lamp wattage for a given level of illumination. Light-colored surfaces should be kept clean to keep reflectance levels high.
• In lamps and fixtures having two or more sockets for incandescent bulbs, consider using a single large bulb in one socket rather than filling all sockets with bulbs of smaller wattage. A 100-watt bulb, for instance, produces 50 percent more light than four 25-watt bulbs for the same amount of energy. Using compact fluorescent bulbs will save more energy. Typically, a 23-watt compact fluorescent bulb can replace a 90- or 100-watt incandescent bulb.
• Many so-called “long life” bulbs emit significantly less light than a standard incandescent bulb of the same wattage. They should be used only where the long-life feature is advantageous, as in hard-to-reach fixtures, or where it is not possible to use compact fluorescent bulbs.
• When possible, locate floor, table, and hanging lamps in the corner of a room rather than against a flat wall. Lamps in corners reflect light from two wall surfaces instead of one and, therefore, give more usable light.
• Clean lighting fixtures regularly. Dust on lamps and reflectors impairs lighting efficiency.
• For large areas such as family recreation rooms, where high levels of lighting are required periodically but not 100 percent of the time, install fixtures on two or three separate circuits so illumination can be controlled by switching circuits on and off.
• When purchasing light bulbs, the wattage ratings tell you only the amount of power it takes to make a bulb work. The amount of brightness is measured in lumens. Larger wattage bulbs are usually more efficient, whether incandescent or compact fluorescent, producing more lumens per watt than smaller bulbs.

Thanks to our friends at the Edison Electric Institute for providing the list of 100+ Ways to Improve your Electric Bill.