The winter months are upon us. We are now continually running the heat and leaving the lights on a longer. During the winter months, you will take notice of your increased energy bills. No worries though, below are some online resources that can help ease the pain. They probably won’t cut your bills by 50%, however they do offer suggestions that will help you out.
ENERGY SAVERS
When you go to Energy Savers, you can learn all about energy conservation. The site has content on renewable energy, ways to reduce your energy consumption, and more. It also has information on how to perform home-energy audits to see what you could do to reduce your energy bill. All in all, Energy Savers is an extremely useful site if you plan to reduce your energy bill.
ENERGY STAR
Energy Star has quickly become a buzzword in the home-energy space, but its Web site is one of the most useful in this roundup.you get to Energy Star, you can do quite a bit. I used the site to find information on energy-efficient appliances. The content it provided was outstanding. Aside from that, Energy Star features tips on how to address some inefficient energy issues in your home. One of the site’s best resources is its list of potential tax credits that you can get by acquiring Energy Star products. The page provides several links for you to find the products that help you qualify for the credit. I really liked Energy Star. If you’re looking to find appliances that match your financial goals, this site is for you.
HOME ENERGY SAVER
The U.S. government’s Home Energy Saver tool is a great way to determine if your home is up to par when it comes to energy efficiency. When you get to the page, you’ll need to enter your zip code. From there, the app calculates the average energy cost in your area. It also displays what an energy-efficient home would cost in that location. Next, you’ll need to input information about your house, including its square footage, how many windows it has, what kind of heat you have, and more. It takes a little while to fill out the form, but once you do, the audit tool helps you find several ways to maximize your energy efficiency. I took it and was surprised to see if I completed all the tasks that were required, a savings of $900 was in store for me. Definitely worth the time to try it out.
LOW IMPACT LIVING
Low Impact Living provides several tools for you to figure out just how efficient your energy use is. It also offers tips on how to improve your usage and awareness through one of the best impact calculators outlined in this summary. When it’s complete, the quiz turns out a bunch of ideas of how to reduce your energy bill. For me, those suggestions included replacing my refrigerator, changing a few lights to compact fluorescents, and use low-flow showerheads. Following all the suggestions the site offered could save me up to $1,100 per year.
MICROSOFT HOHM
Microsoft might not seem like the most obvious choice for a company that will help you reduce your energy costs, but its Hohm service will do just that. When you sign up for Hohm, you’ll be asked to fill out an energy profile, detailing how you’re using up energy each month. Once complete, the service displays a full evaluation of your energy efficiency. It also gives you tips on how to improve and thanks to formation of the Hohm Community, you can also connect with others to share your best practices. It’s more than worthy of trying it out.
OAK RIDGE NATIONAL LABORATORY
If you’re wondering how much insulation your home may need, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has a page that will help you find out. When you get to the site, you’ll need to fill out some basic information about your home, including your zip code, whether it’s new or existing, and what kind of insulation you currently have. From there, the site will determine what kind of insulation you should install in your house to make it more efficient. Worthy of a look.
GOOGLE POWER METER
Another site I like is Google’s power meter application. PowerMeter is a free electricity usage monitoring tool that provides you with information on how much energy your home is consuming. Google PowerMeter receives information from utility smart meters and in-home energy management devices and visualizes this information for you on iGoogle (your personalized Google homepage). And, Google PowerMeter is free.
Also check out the SAVING $ tab on this website for other money saving tips for this winter and all year around.
Below is a flashback of looking back to see how things were done, prior to all the high tech gadgetry ways to save time and money. So in the retro spirit let’s look at sure fire a no tech cost effective way to save money.
The clothesline
You may remember the visual to the right from your childhood days when your Mom hung out the clothes on one of these inverted umbrella type rigs or perhaps via stringing a line between the house and a nearby tree.
Well what is old is new again, at least when it comes to saving energy. We recently started doing for drying heavy things like towels, sweatshirts and jeans. The money we saved by using the dryer less often was measurable, almost 12-14% off each months electric bill. If you use a gas dryer you will get similar savings as well.
Environmental concerns and sky-rocketing energy costs have also prompted many state and local governments to pass “right-to-dry” laws allowing their use (check with you local ordinances before installing one).
Advantages of a clothes line
Saves money
Zero greenhouse gas emissions per load.
Laundry smells “clothesline fresh” without using chemicals.
Less wear and tear on your clothing fabrics.
Laundry items tend to not shrink from the hot air of a clothes dryer.
No static cling!!
Your clothes are softer as dryers tend to remove short, soft, fine fibers.
Possibly less ironing as items not immediately removed from dryer tend to get wrinkled.
Items may dry more quickly on dry or sunny and windy days.
Avoids airborne lint and reduced air quality.
Eliminates heating up the inside of a house by a clothes dryer especially helpful during the summer months.
Eliminates the internal house noise from the running clothes dryer.
Disadvantages of using a clothes line
Laundry items need to be hung indoors during rainy weather.
Neighbors may find it aesthetically unpleasant so it is best to erect it in an inconspicuous place.
Laundry items may be more stiff which is easily remedied by giving them a short dryer spin.
Wind, temperature, and humidity can vary the drying time.
Environmental contaminants such as soil, dust, smoke, pollen and animal droppings can come in contact with clothing.
Drying laundry indoors
Laundry may be dried indoors for a variety of reasons including:
inclement weather
physical disability
lack of space for a line
legal restrictions
to raise the humidity level indoors
to lower the air temperature indoors
convenience
to preserve privacy
Several types of devices are also available for indoor drying. A drying rack or clotheshorse can help save space in an apartment or clothes line can be strung in the basement during the winter. Small loads can simply be draped over furniture or a shower curtain pole. The drying time indoors will typically be longer than outdoor drying because of the lack of direct sun and wind.
To learn some other quick inexpensive ways to save money visit the SAVING $ tab above to start saving energy and money today!
A global renewable energy company, Helix Wind, announced this week it will begin a technology demonstration and test of two small wind turbines to power cell phone towers in Southern California.
The turbines will be installed by early 2010 and the test will run for one to three months.addition to powering the towers, the test will explore the feasibility of selling power back to the electrical grid under a Power Purchase Agreement. The test will represent one of the first grid- connected cell sites powered by renewable energy in Southern California.
This market segment is of great interest to California. There are approximately 3,500 cell phone towers in Southern California, and due to the continued expansion of broadband wireless, the data volume of which has doubled in the past three years, an additional 1,000 to 1,200 towers should be brought on line over the next five years.
Grid connected cell phone towers can benefit from renewable energy, and wind power can dramatically reduce the emissions and carbon footprint associated with them. Under the right conditions, the towers may even be able to produce surplus energy, providing an additional revenue stream to tower owners.
About Helix
Helix Wind Corp., a global renewable energy company, is engaged in the design, manufacturing and sale of small wind vertical axis turbine designed to generate 300W, 1kW, 2.0kW, 4.0kW, and 50kW of clean, renewable electricity.
The below video is worthy of watching. We can all make a BIG difference in a short amount of time if we make the effort to conserve energy, waste less and do things smarter. At the end of the video you can find out more about this fine organizations efforts and how you can make a difference. Or you can see their site at www.fouryearsgo.org
Only a Very Small Percentage of Retired Phones are Recycled
While the huge number of retired phones continues to grow and the demand for refurbished phones is accelerating, only a very small percentage of displaced phones are actually making it into the recycling channels.
Nokia estimates that 74 percent of people are not even aware that their old phones can be recycled and most others don’t know how or where to recycle them. From the results of a worldwide survey done in 2008 by Nokia, only three percent of displaced phones are being returned for recycling – even less than the four percent that are being thrown in landfills. The rest remain in our respective drawers at home.
So Where Can They be Recycled?
The first thing you should attempt to do is to clear your mobile phone of all data and get it back to its original state. If you still have the manual you can easily find how to do it. If you do not , you will have to scroll through the set-up and or mechanical menus to find the option to do this. Another method that I recently did to clear my Blackberry of data before selling it on eBay, was to search the internet via your favorite browser search engine with “erase data on XXXX” where XXXX is the manufacturer and model on your phone. This popped up a number of sites to assist me through the process. While also doing a search, key in “cell phone recycling” to get a list of places to either resell, donate or eco dispose of it.
This a small listing of many you will find if you search the Internet as mentioned above. Many of the large office supply chain stores also offer drop boxes as well as many of the cellular phone providers either at their retail locations or via programs on their websites. The bottom line is to get rid of the old ones cluttering your draw to save some space, make a few bucks or to donate to the less fortunate. Don’t delay do it today!
It’s not only what isinside that counts this holiday, but how you wrap your presents that matters as well. All of those lovely gifts can lead to a pile of boxes, gift-wrap and plastic packaging destined for the landfill. In 2009 Americans threw away 78.5 million tons of packaging, making up more than one third of all solid waste in landfills.
It’s in the Wrap
Everyone will appreciate gifts wrapped with recycled love. Comics are favorites, but outdated maps, yellow pages and finished coloring-book pages also can have a nice wrapping effect. And how about cutting the brown paper bags from the grocery store. Cut them open and use the inside for a crayon or paint canvas custom designed by the artists you have at home. If you must use wrap, look for recycled or at least partially recycled brands.
Gift Bags, too
Reuse last year’s gift bags if you can, but if you’re low on supply, try one made of natural fibers or recycled content, or make your own. Brown (recycled) lunch bags are always good as are the paper sack from the grocery store. If you must buy some new ones, once again look for at least partially recycled products.
One site we like is Green Field Paper. Of course there are many more just Google “Recycled Wrapping Paper” and you will have many to choose from. We are certain that with a little extra effort your holiday, be it Hanukkah,Christmas, Kwanzaa or Winter Solstice will be greener and more meaningful.
Each bulb with this new LED technology uses only 0.04 watts and is up to 90 percent more efficient than its incandescent counterpart. So a household burning 10 strands of lights for eight hours a day for a month at $0.0853 per kilowatt-hour would spend $127.67 for large incandescent bulbs, $7.20 for traditional mini-lights, and just $0.72 for LEDs. Also these newer bulbs are sturdier, last up to 100,000 hours, or 20 years, and barely warm up thus eliminating most fire concerns.
To also maximize holiday lighting savings, use timers to limit light displays to no more than six evening hours a day. Leaving lights on for 24 hours a day will easily quadruple your energy costs while also creating 4 times as much green house gases from the additional energy needed to light them.
And be safe, unattended lights can cause fires, especially if the lights are on a dried holiday tree or wreath, so always unplug your interior lights before going to bed or leaving the house. See the U.S. Department of Energy website to learn about the savings.
When buying a new HDTV, be sure to look for a green energy LCD TV. The new Energy Star 3.0 ratings standard requires less than 1 watt of power usage when the TV is off and has a algorithm for maximum energy use based on screen size. Look for this mark on any TV or for that matter most electronic devices when you make a purchase.
Several trends are shaping the future of green jobs and the growth of the green economy. Entrepreneurs from more established sectors like telecommunication and IT are moving into the green sector. Traditional companies are adding new divisions to take advantage of growing consumer demand for green products and services. And green-tech start-ups are buying up assets from bankrupt old-economy industries and re-purposing them, while energy incumbents are buying up green-tech assets.
Green-tech has seen a significant influx from telecommunication and IT industries. Big-name entrepreneurs such as Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, Ethernet inventor and 3Com co-founder Bob Metcalfe and Brightmail founder Sunil Paul have moved into green sectors like solar, wind, biofuel, water purification, electric vehicles and smart grid technologies. Employees as well as technologies also are cross pollinating from biotech, nanotech, semiconductor and automotive industries. Play the video below for some additional insight:
You may remember the visual to the right from your childhood days when your Mom hung out the clothes on one of these inverted umbrella type rigs or perhaps via stringing a line between the house and a nearby tree.
