Electrician | My Top 3 Energy Savings Tips

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1.)  If you have fan forced heaters or baseboard heaters throughout your home and you’re relying on the typical economical wall t-stat then do yourself a huge favor and upgrade to a digital t-stat. A digital t-stat can improve the overall efficiency as much as 30%. That’s a BIG improvement that can pay for itself very quickly. Why are they so much better and efficient? Because they are typically accurate to within a degree while you’re older economical t-stats can be off by 3-4 degrees or more. If you want the heater to to shut off at 70 and it really doesn’t shut off until 72 then you are wasting energy for the 2 degrees the t-stat is inaccurate. Sometimes the older t-stats act more like a on / off switch that we have to constantly adjust than a t-stat that measure the true temperature. Digital T-Stats for electric fan forced and baseboard heat is a great money saving investment!

2.)  Have you ever noticed all the lights on your stereo equipment and flat screen TV’s, cable box, Blue Ray Player, etc…. A lot of us now have a flat screen TV, Cable Box, Receiver, CD/DVD Player, X-Box or Wii or PlayStation etc… that is all plugged in at our central entertainment area in our home. Notice how all of them still have lights that light up even when we “turn them off”? If you can see a light on these devices then you are using energy. This goes for all the electronic equipment in your home. Some of the flat screen TV’s and gaming stations can really use quite a bit of energy throughout the year in the off position. One way you can combat the current that gets leaked even in standby mode is to get an energy saving multimedia surge protector.  These devices have outlets that can be in the always on mode like for your cable TV box and outlets that can be switched on and off via a USB remote. Simply plug in all your electronic equipment into the switched outlets and when you are done for the evening simply hit the USB remote button and it will cut the power completely off to all the electronics in the switched outlets. Think about if you have 2 or 3 areas in your home with equipment like this. It can really add up to a lot of wasted energy. These simple and cost effective devices can pay for themselves quickly and save you a lot of wasted energy as well!

3.)  Dimmers, We have all heard about dimmers but they are worth being mentioned again. Here are a few facts you may not know. Did you know that lighting can account for up to 20% of a household’s yearly electricity usage? The ability to dim as many of your lights as possible can truly add up the savings not only in electricity but lamp life as well. Look at the following chart provided by Lutron. Installing dimmers is still one of the easiest green home improvements you can make.