Green Technica

Saving Money with Green Technology

Posts Tagged ‘save electricity’

Stop the Electricity Vampires

February 7th, 2010

Electricity vampires are those electronic devices that suck power when they’re not switched on. They use some power even though they are supposedly off. Some studies have shown that approx. 5% of all electrical power in the United States is wasted by units that are not in use. Let’s stop these vampires in their tracks with a smart power strip like the one pictured here.

The PC TrickleSaver Energy Saver is specifically made to turn off your computer peripherals. The device is plugged into the USB port of your computer and when the computer is off, power is then cut off to the peripherals stopping the vampires in their tracks. Other electronic devices in your house can be plugged into other smart power strips to save even more money by shutting off other power suckers.

Savings of CFL Over Incandescent Bulbs

February 4th, 2010

We hear that compact fluorescent bulbs save money. When you’re at the home improvement center and you see prices on the CFL bulbs around $4, how many of you make the choice to get the cheaper, old school technology to save some money right then and there. If you chose the higher initial price, will it work out in actual savings over the life of that high price bulb?

Luckily your employees over at the U.S. Department of Energy have a study that shows exactly how much you’ll save. They make some assumptions in the study like 100 watt replacement bulb, lasts 4.5 years and is on for 6 hours a day. That may or may not match your use case, but it’s a good place to start.

Here’s how much you’ll save replacing just 1 bulb:

Breaking down our savings for just one year, we’ll save $23.33 in just 1 year for each incandescent you replace with an equivalent CFL. Multiply that times the number of bulbs you have in your house and you’ll see that it does make good green and economic sense to buy the CFL.