<p>Let me show how to save even more electricity and heat $.</p>
<p>That bathroom exhaust fan moves 200ft3 per minute. Your bathroom is being conservative-generous, 8x10x10≈800ft3. The fan will exhaust completely, all of the heated air, in 4 minutes. BUT to sure of air exchange, you leave the fan on for 10 minutes. A 2.5x exchange. or a room of 14x14x10ft ceiling (16x16x8ft. Ceiling) from outdoor temp to comfortable temp of 68, Do that 4 times a day, amounts to a lot of hot air wasted to remove the malodorous air. </p>
<p>SOLUTION: Point source the exhausting. The WASHLET BIDDY, with the exhausting/deodorizer and heated air dryer features. Just 1 minute would be enough to dry and to remove and filter the air 4x. The Washlet Bidet would deodorize and exhaust 4ft3/use or if used 4x/day=16ft3. 16ft3 is 500x better than the bath exhaust fan of 8000ft3</p>
<p>I challenge anyone to find another appliance that is more efficient.</p>
<p>Just got back from Home Depot and picked up two of the LED bulbs and a table lamp.</p>
<p>Our basement has recessed ceiling lighting with 8x40 4’ fluorescent lamps or 320 Watts to light the whole basement. We also have a light bulb and floor lamp that can light about a third of the basement near my office. One has a 40 Watt Bulb and the other has a 50-100-150 bulb. I typically turn on both. My solution is to use a desk lamp at 9 Watts so that I don’t use 140 - 190 watts (I seldom use the ceiling lights). I can spend several hours a day at my desk working and will sometimes leave the lights on while I’m sleeping if I have something running overnight that I have to check periodically. I can run the new lamp off my computer power strip too so that it goes on and off with the computer saving me a switch push.</p>
<p>My local bike shop converted away from magnetic ballasted flourescents to digital ballasted flourescents- His electric dropped 50%, better lighting, and costs offsetted by state and fed tax credits. Buy those HD branded LED’s. :)</p>
<p>The lamp is setup in my home office on a bookcase and shining on my desk. The cool thing is that I can touch the light bulb and it’s not even warm. The rest of the basement is now dark but that’s fine - I don’t need to see it.</p>
<p>OK, have just installed the photovoltaic (PV) today. The electrician came with two workers. It’s nice to see the electric meter spinning backwards in the bright sunlight! They were here since about 8 or 9 until about 3:30. 9 panels were installed, to join the two solar water heater panels on the roof. Our electric will will drop from $100/month to a $20/month processing fee. The price of the panels went down as well and the price reduction is being passed on to us. We will also get a referral fee if anyone we refer decides to use this company to install their PV. They let us charge everything on our credit card that gives us 2% back. We will get the tax credits for 35% and 30% of the entire system from our state and federal programs (totalling an almost 67% credit).</p>
<p>Son’s office building is almost complete and will run solar in the Midwest. It is happening. We need big ideas, open minds, and take some risks once again.</p>
<p>HIMom, that sounds great! If we ever end up in a sunny place, I will definitely look into PV as our source of power. I think it is safe to say that by the time of my retirement personal nuclear reactors will NOT be on the market (alhough the guy who designs Gucci’s website thinks they will). :D</p>
<p>Yes, we are in one of the highest possible sun zones. We might even have enough spare electricity to have our own electric charging station in the event we buy an electric car (one of my dreams). The one thing that irked H was that they used aluminum wiring not COPPER, which he strongly favors. Oh well, we didn’t specify. The rest of our house has been upgraded to copper. Sigh, it wasn’t something we thought of specifying.</p>
<p>We already have solar water heater & it has worked fine over the years & knocked down our electric bill. It’s somewhat silly that we even installed the system, since our electrical use and bill is so small, but every bit counts in energy independence from oil. We don’t use gas & our electric bill BEFORE the installation is about the lowest of any of our friends or family (only one new fridge, no extra freezer, no A/C, no heating).</p>
<p>There was an article in the paper this morning. In 2009, energy produced by solar installations in HI doubled. Doubled again in 2010 and projected to have doubled yet again in 2011. I wanted to get ours installed before the state and federal rebates were eliminated and also while we could afford it. There is a cap of 15% solar energy per neighborhood and I wanted to be sure we’re part of the 15%. The electric company is concerned that it doesn’t have mechanisms in place to deal with sudden demand surge when clouds pass overhead or similar situations.</p>
<p>There was also an article about how all of these storage rental places are installing PV for their electrical needs and it’s being subsidized 50% or so. Our local public library also has PV. My folks & two of my sisters are looking into it as well. Two of my brothers have PV & are happy to see their respective bills drop from 200-400 down to the $16 processing fee. (Both have larger houses, extra fridges & use A/C.)</p>
<p>Probably makes huge sense in Hawaii – doesn’t almost all of the fuel needed for electric generation need to be shipped there? </p>
<p>The surprise for me was how ubiquitous solar is in Colorado, and how rare it is in Arizona. Driving around the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and there’s hardly a residential solar installation to be seen – in a climate where I’d think it makes a huge amount of sense, particularly given the length of the summer cooling season (early April-end of October.) I’m not sure there are too many areas more sunny – and it would have to help the pollution issues there.</p>
<p>This year I’m making a point of looking for a good geothermal installer with experience installing for 100 y.o. houses. We’re not allowed to have solar panels, and we’re not sited well for that anyway, but geothermal ought to work – I’m just nervous about the capacity of most of these companies to accurately size the project given that most firms aren’t used to Victorians and plaster-on-brick construction.</p>
<p>It’s fun watching the electric meter spin backwards, even while most of our home is in shade! Very cool! Have never considered geothermal & our house is perfect for solar, especially since nothing blocks the sun’s rays from falling directly on our panels for most of the daylight hours. They are talking about putting windmills on Molokai and Lanai–residents are mostly not happy. The power is going to be generated for OAHU, not the islands producing the power. Personally, I am not a fan either. </p>
<p>We do import all of our oil and need to have more energy independence. There have not been any serious developments for anything but solar/PV so far as I know in this state.</p>
<p>I also wonder why AZ doesn’t have more solar/PV. It’s becoming hugely popular here with our soaring energy prices of $.34+ per kilowatt hour, which is said to be the highest in the nation.</p>
<p>90+% of the time I get by with two measly solar panels. Charges the batteries for my wife’s CPAP, runs the fridge and electric (LED) lights, recharges the camera batteries, recharges the laptop batteries. </p>
<p>I used to live in a nice house on Long Island. Electric rates were three times the national average. Overall cost of living was 1.7 times the national average. Much of the costs were due to inefficient local governments - hundreds and hundreds of inefficient money sucking entities. No more. Left the rat race, retired early and live well touring the US in a camper. I can’t imagine how many solar panels it would have taken to try to handle the electric needs of my former house, especially considering the long winter gloom. Yup, camper furnace just kicked on. Forgot to mention the solar panels also power the furnace blower. Of course here in northern California it is close to 50 degrees. Pretty cool. Tomorrow I leave for southern CA and southern NV. It should be a bit warmer.</p>
<p>Gee, edad. That sounds fun! Must be pretty expensive paying for gas & maintenance of your vehicle, though. Maybe we’ll try doing some touring in a camper as well. Have never tried it so far, but who knows?</p>
<p>Whoops! H just said that doesn’t sound like a good time to him. He’s partial to hotels with at least 2 or 3 stars, preferably non-smoking & definitely no musty or moldy smells.</p>
<p>I’m quite happy with the two LED bulbs from Home Depot for $10 each and am planning on picking up more of them to replace incandescent bulbs in places where they are on quite a bit. I generally don’t mind making capital improvements that result in lower operating costs.</p>
<p>We recently installed solar panels. We have been generating between 80 and 90 percent of our electricity usage with the panels. Of course we haven’t had a summer with them yet. Air conditioning may change the numbers quite a bit. So far we are very pleased.</p>
<p>I would like to buy solar panel for my home usage, I need to run my laptop, tube lights, television, couple of bulbs, etc. what do you think these electronic appliances energy consumption going to cost me. Can anyone give me idea of how big and how much watt I need to buy to run these appliances.</p>
<p>I work with a youngish Canadian couple who have a home in Northern Ontario that is off the grid. I will be visiting them this coming August.</p>
<p>Edad, I remember you discussing your move. Thumbs up.</p>
<p>I am living in Cyprus now and our power bills have doubled since the power station blew up this past August. That was because munitions confiscated off Russian ships on their way to good old friend Syria were stored on the island, of course, next to the main power source and not destroyed like the UN suggested they do. I feel so bad for my friends who I will be leaving behind and all the pensioners. It is unbelievably poor management in Cyprus. We have sun every day of the year and so much sun from May to November. Too much. Now everyone uses solar to heat their water and that works most of the year; even apartment complexes have roof top panels. And they did set up wind farms and those farms saved us when the lights went out in August until they brought in generators. But they need to be able to think creatively to serve their population. And quickly.</p>
<p>National Grid has a promotion in Massachusetts with big discounts on LED and CFL lighting. I called up one of the stores listed on their website and they have a 75 Watt equivalent (uses 13.5 watts) for $16.99. I looked on Amazon and this bulb is $40. It’s a floodlight but I bought a few fixtures that will take regular bulbs or flood bulbs and I’m thinking of giving this one a try. The alternative is the $9.97 bulbs (40 watt equiv for 9 watts usage) at Home Depot. The savings would be pretty small with MA taxes but it would put out quite almost twice the light for our fixtures that only take one bulb. I’ve purchased 9 of the Home Depot bulbs now and am pretty happy with the results. I’m using them where we have the lights on the most. I’m probably going to get another pair for the kitchen overhead lights today.</p>