Using Less Power in Life

Solar power is very attractive to many people for their power needs. But one of the big things that keeps many people from going solar is the price. People think that the price is too high because they look at the solar power system that is required to meet their power needs, and it doesnt seem to occur to anyone that their needs are too high.

The average U.S. home uses 6 times more power than homes in other parts of the world. We have more technology in our homes, gizmos, than anyone else, and we are very wasteful. Most people are suprised to find out that if they do a simple audit on their home to see what the big power users are for their home, that they can take steps to trim those down, and in the end, the price of switching over to solar is much less than they originally thought. The following are a few tips to get your home in green shape and help cut your bills.

1. Do a Home Audit. - This is probably the easiest to do. Doing a home energy audit will show you who the big energy bandits are in your house. If you don’t know how to do this, there are many companies that specialize in home energy audits, and many power companies will do them free of charge.

2. Buy Energy Efficient Appliances - Appliances account for much of the energy being used, so it would only be logical that they would have a huge pat in this. If/when you decide to make your home less of a power hog, EnergyStar appliances should be our first choice. Many local utilities give you a discount of some sort on purchase and a credit for use. Ther are more than a few incentives in each and every state for using more efficient appliances,

3. Simply Cut Your Home’s usage - There are many ways to cut your home’s energy usage, and some of them are things your parents probably yelled at you about when you were younger. Turn off lights and appliances that arent being used. Trim down the electronics that everyone has. Do you really need a tv in every bedroom of the house? Cut down on dishwashwer use. Personally, my power bill dropped from 180/mo to $80/mo just by buying a bottle of dawn and doing dishes myself. Replace standard bulbs with flourescents. Install ceiling fans in all rooms. Most ceiling fans have a reverse switch on them. One way will push hot air down in the winter, and bring cool air up in the summer. Block off sunlight with drapes/shades to cut your heat load. Wrap your hot water heater with insulation and maybe consider a tankless or solar water heater.

4. Create Your Own Power - If you look through the archives of this site, youtube, treehugger and other similar sites you will find many ways to create your own power. You don’t need to be a genius to do this or need special training, just a bit of mechanical knowledge and the time to do it. Another good site to find such articles is greenpowerscience.com. GPS is a fantastic place for the D.I.Y. person who wants to build their own power source

5. Use Solar Power to Charge Your Portables - People sometimes don’t realize how much power they carry around with them everyday. Portable computer, pda, cell phone, mp3 players are standard equipment for most people on the go today. Charging all those up from the outlet does add up. You can buy a solar charger for around $10 that will easily take care of the smaller electronics, and for around $50, you can get a solar charger that will charge up your portables batteries for your laptop. If you have a computer that doesnt have rechargeables, change them out, it is worth it in the long run

6. Building your own - If you are considering building your own home in the future, it is much easier and more affordable to build green than to retrofit. You can save yourself a lot of money if you plan ahead to be a green homeowner.

7. Buying Rewewable Energy Credits - Personally this is not a favorite of mine. I think this is the same mentality as the big suv drivers who think that because they spend x amount of money they that its ok to drive that big gas hog around, they are paying for it right? But if AFTER you trim down what you can, you still want to go a little farther, then REC’s are not a bad idea.

These are just a few ideas to get you going. There are many other things that you do in every day life that can be ‘trimmed’ down so that your home isnt using as much electricity. Once you do that, then you will see that your needs for a solar power system for your home are not as costly as you think!