There's no denying that appliances make people's lives easier—no one wants to go back to lugging clothes down to the river and beating them with a rock to get them clean. Today, though, we demand more from our appliances than mere convenience: We want them to be energy efficient, too. Otherwise, money and energy go down the drain along with the dirty laundry water. This section explains lots of ways you can save money and help the planet.
As you learned in the box on Calculate power use for free, if you know how many watts something uses, you can calculate how much power it consumes. If you don't know the wattage, Table 2-1 lists U.S. Department of Energy wattage estimates for common appliances.
Table 2-1. Wattage of Household Appliances
|
Appliance |
Number of Watts |
|---|---|
|
Ceiling fan |
65–175 |
|
Clock radio |
10 |
|
Coffee maker |
900–1200 |
|
Clothes washer |
300–500 |
|
Clothes dryer |
1800–5000 |
|
Dehumidifier |
785 |
|
Dishwasher |
1200–2400 |
|
DVD player |
20–25 |
|
Hair dryer |
1200–1875 |
|
Iron |
1000–1800 |
|
Microwave oven |
750–1100 |
|
Personal computer: Desktop monitor and hard drive |
60 (standby)–270 |
|
Personal computer: Laptop |
50 |
|
Portable heater |
750–1500 |
|
Refrigerator (frost-free, 16 cubic feet) |
725 |
|
Television |
65–170 |
|
Toaster oven |
1225 |
|
Vacuum cleaner |
1000–1440 |
When you're shopping for new appliances, look for Energy Star–qualified ones. Energy Star began in 1992 as a voluntary labeling program that let manufacturers identify energy-efficient models. The first Energy Star products were computers and monitors, but now the program includes office equipment, major appliances, lighting, home electronics, and even homes and other buildings (see LEEDing the Way to Green Buildings).
Note
Although the program began in the U.S., products with the Energy Star label are also available in other countries including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Japan.
Many countries also label major appliances with an energy guide that rates the model's efficiency and estimates how much it costs to run. In the U.S., for example, the bright-yellow EnergyGuide tag has been rating energy efficiency since 1980. The EnergyGuide tag tells you three important things:
How much power the appliance uses (in kilowatt hours per year)
How the product's energy use compares to similar models
How much it costs to run the product each year, based on average prices for electricity
This figure shows an EnergyGuide tag for a dishwasher.
In Canada, look for the EnerGuide label, which has similar information. In the European Union, check out the EU energy label, which rates a model's energy efficiency from A (most efficient) to G (least efficient). And in Australia, you can compare appliances at www.energyrating.gov.au.
No matter how efficient your appliances are, there are lots of simple things you can do around the house to consume less energy (and save money on your electric bill). Here are some easy-to-implement ideas:
Wait for full loads. Don't run a half-empty washing machine or dishwasher. You'll get more bang for your energy buck by running them only when they're full.
Wash in cold water. When possible, use cold water to wash clothes. It takes a lot of energy to heat water for a load of laundry—about 90% of the energy required to run the machine.
For small loads, try an electricity-free washer. Wonder Wash is a portable washing machine that uses pressure to clean laundry loads up to five pounds—without electricity. (It requires a bit of elbow grease, though, because you have to turn the barrel with a crank.) Wonder Wash uses less water than hand-washing clothes in the sink and it's fast—your clothes get clean in two minutes or less. For more info, visit www.laundry-alternative.com.
Get a natural gas dryer. If you have an electric dryer, consider replacing it with a natural-gas one, which costs about half as much to operate.
Clean the lint filter. When your dryer's lint filter is clean, air circulates better and your laundry dries faster.
Skip the dryer. When the weather allows, hang laundry outside to dry. If the weather's too wet or cold for that, use wooden clothing racks (they're cheap) to dry it inside.
Don't pre-rinse dishes. Instead of rinsing dishes in the sink or using your dishwasher's pre-rinse cycle, scrape off any leftover food (which, incidentally, is great for compost—see Composting tips and tricks) before you load the dishwasher.
Air-dry dishes. Your dishwasher's drying cycle uses heat to dry any water clinging to your dishes, and that takes a lot of energy. Instead, choose air dry or simply stop the dishwasher and open the door after the final rinse cycle.
Microwave smart. Microwaves cook food around the perimeter of a plate faster than at the center. So arrange your meal in a circular pattern, pushing it away from the middle of the plate or bowl, to make it cook quicker. More surface area also means less cooking time; thin slices of potato, for example, cook faster than whole ones.
Thaw food in the fridge. Put frozen food in the refrigerator overnight to thaw it, rather than using the microwave or hot water.
Cook with gas. Gas stoves are about twice as energy efficient as electric ones, and they let you control burner temperatures more precisely.
Use the right size pots and pans. There's no reason to heat up more surface area than you need, so don't use a giant pan to fry up a single egg. (Flat-bottom pans make better contact with electric burners than those with rounded bottoms.) And don't use a burner that's bigger than your pan.
Don't open the oven to peek. Each time you crack the oven door, as much as 25% of the hot air inside escapes, so look through the door's window instead.
Double up when baking. Try to cook or bake more than one thing at a time, so you'll have the oven on for less time.
Clean your fridge's coils. Dirty coils restrict airflow and make the compressor work harder (which uses more energy), so be sure to clean yours twice a year. Unplug the fridge, and then use your vacuum cleaner's long nozzle to suck up the dust.
Turn the fridge up a bit. Your fridge may be working harder than it has to. Put a thermometer in the fridge to see how cold it is—somewhere in the range of 37°–40° F (3°–4.5° C) is ideal. If it's below 40°, try moving the temperature control to the next warmest setting. Check the temperature the next day, and repeat the process if necessary.
Keep the fridge closed. Don't stand in front of the fridge with the door wide open as you decide what you want for a snack. While you're making up your mind, your fridge is pouring out cold air—making the compressor turn on that much sooner.
Make sure your fridge is sealed. If the seal on its door isn't tight, your refrigerator could be leaking cold air. Take a dollar bill and hold it against the seal, close the door, and then try to pull the dollar out. If it slips out easily, the seal probably isn't tight enough, so you should clean or replace it. If you have to tug on the dollar to pull it out, the seal is doing its job.
There's a phantom lurking in your house, a vampire that sucks energy and raises your utility bill. But you don't need an exorcist or wooden stake to banish this bogeyman. An appliance's phantom load is the power that it uses even when it's switched off. TVs, cable boxes, DVD and DVR players, video-game consoles, appliances with digital clocks, computers, power adapters, transformers, chargers, and anything with an instant-on function (meaning you can turn it on with a remote rather than pushing a button or flipping a switch) can all have phantom loads.
The load for a single appliance is usually in the range of 5–15 watts, which isn't a whole lot. But that small amount adds up fast when you consider all the devices in a typical home, and the number of homes across the country. Experts say that phantom loads accounts for as much as 5% of total U.S. electricity use—that's more than $3 billion annually! With those numbers, the phantom load starts looking more like a phantom menace.
The simplest and surest way to reduce your phantom load is to unplug things when you're not using them. The problem with this method, of course, is its sheer inconvenience, especially if you have to crawl around on the floor or reach behind furniture to get to the plug.
If unplugging isn't feasible, consider these load-reducing tips:
Replace rechargeables. Instead of using power to constantly recharge the batteries of your cordless phone, electric shaver, vacuum, and so on, switch to the old-fashioned kind (you know, with a cord). Unplug the corded shaver when you're not using it, or go even more retro and use the kind of razor and toothbrush that don't need any electricity at all.
Go solar. Use solar power to charge portable gadgets. You can buy solar-powered chargers to power up everything from MP3 players to cellphones to laptops. These can be pricey, though, depending on the device you want to charge. For example, you can pick up a solar charger for your cellphone or iPod for around $20; for a laptop, they start at around $150. (Of course, after you buy the device, the sunlight is free.) You can buy them from Solar Style (http://solarstylemiami.com) or Solio (http://store.solio.com), or go to www.amazon.com and search for solar charger.
Use a power strip with an on/off switch. If you have several devices that you use together—like a computer and a printer or a TV and a video-game console—plug them into a single power strip or surge protector. When you're finished using them, turn off the strip. The main challenge with this method is remembering to switch off the strip.
Try a smart power strip. If it's too much trouble to unplug devices or switch off their power strips, consider getting a "smart" power strip. When you plug a device into one of these gizmos, it can tell when you're not using the device and adjust the power accordingly. There are two kinds of smart power strips (some even come with a remote, which is handy when the strip is in a hard-to-reach area, like under your desk or behind the sofa):
A master outlet controls the other outlets. When this kind of strip senses a decrease in power use by whatever's plugged into the master outlet, it turns off the other outlets, too. This works well for office equipment: Plug your computer into the master outlet and your printer, desk lamp, fax machine, and so on into the other outlets, for example. When you shut down the computer, the strip also powers off everything else. To see this in action, check out BITS Limited's Smart Strip (http://bitsltd.net).
An occupancy sensor monitors activity. These strips figure out whether each outlet is being used and turns them off or on accordingly. Watt Stopper's Isolé model uses this approach (www.wattstopper.com).
As you might guess, smart power strips create their own phantom load, but it's minimal. The BITS Smart Strip, for example, uses just 0.28 watts while in standby.