Save energy this season; turn off your surge protectors
So, about a month ago, I decided to try a little experiment at home. Having heard from both Ideal Bite and my electrical engineer boyfriend that putting things like small appliances and electronic equipment on surge protectors and turning them off when not in use can save electricity, I decided to make a couple of minor adjustments around my apartment and try it for a month.
All I did was this: In my pantry, I have a microwave and a toaster oven that are plugged into a surge protector next to the fridge. If I'm not using either, I turn them off. In my living room, I have my DVD player, VCR, television, iPod dock and TV Antenna, as well as a lamp, plugged into another surge protector. I leave it turned off until I actually decide to watch television, then I make sure to turn it off when I go to bed.
Well, after a month of doing this, I managed to save a total of $14.67 on my electric bill. Mind you, I was gone for a weekend last month, so I do have to account for that, but even with that, I still saved an estimated 50 KWH of electricity over the course of a month just by making that one small adjustment. According to a carbon calculator provided by the World Resources Institute, that's a savings of 64 lbs. of CO2. Yay!
So there you go—a minimal amount of effort that results in huge savings both in my electric bill and my eco-footprint. Score! Now if I can just bring myself to do the same thing with my computer equipment...
2 comments:
Dani another thing you can do is simply unplug those things (even surge protectors) when not in use. It seems annoying at first, but my wife and I are now trained an unplug anything that's not in use (sans fridge). Our elec bills are extremely low for our square footage! Have a green holidaze!
That's a thought as well. I wonder, though, what the difference would be between turning off a surge protector and unplugging it altogether.
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