Electricity saving question

[rainysparadigm]

Ok, so I'm just finding out about devices drawing power even when off, or chargers drawing power when not in use, etc. Yea, I'm a little slow Anyway, the first thing I did is walk through the house and unplug the 1. laptop charger 2. camera charger 3. phone chargers 4. coffee maker 5. counter grill thingy 6. toaster 7 .. you get the point lol

Now I'm wondering about things such as the TV, for example - it's just not gonna be situated that we can easily unplug it when not in use, and of course its remote operated so its got that whole "phantom" thing going on or whatever its called (staying on internally to pick up the remote signal). Anyway my question is, if I hook all my entertainment devices (tv, dvd player etc) to a power strip and then just flip that switch OFF when we're done, is that as sufficient as unplugging those devices, or would we still need to unplug the power strip?

And for a bit of encouragement for people still trying to get a grasp on this saving electricity thing like we are, just doing mindful things like unplugging the above when not in use, and making sure lights, computers, etc are OFF when we're done with them, some juggling with the heating arrangement in the house, and our electric bill was...

are you ready for this?

almost 50%.

Yep. Cut it in half. Ridiculous!

and we havent even got any of the new energy star appliances, switched out to energy saving bulbs or unscrewing unneeded bulbs, setting timers on things that just need to run on occasion (pet stuff).

Amazing.

[lpkitten]

yes, you can just flip the switch on your power strip and it will stop drawing electricity. that's what i do!

You can get fancy ones that will automatically turn off when they sense that the appliances are idle, but a regular power strip works just as well if you remember to switch it off.

[USCGamecocks]

Congrats, that's a bunch of savings. I'm getting offline to work on my house now.

[lucille]

I want to put our entertainment center on two power strips. One for things that don't store data and one for those that do. Our TV, cable box and media pc all have things that will reset or wipe if they are turned all the way off. It takes forever for our cable box to reprogram. But I hate knowing all the other gadgets are sucking power for no reason.

If anyone knows a way to convince my computer geek husband to cut down on his server and networking obsession it would be greatly appreciated. You don't want to know that that all does to our electric bills.

[rstlne]

Before I leave for vacation, I flip the circuit breakers for everything but the refrigerator. That keeps power consumption way down. Usually though, I use the power strip method. It is easier to turn a power strip off than it is to unplug everything.

[yourbeginnings]

I have replaced all my light bulbs with compact florescent lights. I have really not noticed a significant savings in my electric bill. Although I did it more for environment reasons, but hopefully over 12 month period I will notice a savings.

[jkuo13]

Originally Posted by lucille

If anyone knows a way to convince my computer geek husband to cut down on his server and networking obsession it would be greatly appreciated. You don't want to know that that all does to our electric bills.

Getting a computer geek to cut back on a tech obsession may be an impossible task. You can try getting him to put his servers into sleep mode when they're idle and wake up as needed. Ask him about "Wake-On-LAN" (WOL) and issue it as a tech challenge. Maybe you'll get some electricity reduction from that.

[Kathryn]

Originally Posted by lucille

If anyone knows a way to convince my computer geek husband to cut down on his server and networking obsession it would be greatly appreciated. You don't want to know that that all does to our electric bills.

I wish I knew the answer to that! I find it vaguely ironic that my husband contributes to our electric bills and air conditioning demands by crunching data on his PC all night as part of a volunteer distributed-computing project on climate change.

[Julie Rains]

Originally Posted by yourbeginnings

I have replaced all my light bulbs with compact florescent lights. I have really not noticed a significant savings in my electric bill. Although I did it more for environment reasons, but hopefully over 12 month period I will notice a savings.

I have noticed a $1/day decrease with CFLs. I have been trying to make changes to see what the impact of each change is though I have also been unplugging appliances. My family has not been very good about turning off lights when not in use so maybe that's why my jump has been significant. Or maybe it's b/c we've convinced my teenage son not to take 40-minute showers...hmm

[Finally_Frugal]

One of my goals this year has been to cut down on my energy usage, both gas and electric. I've been very successful with the gas, but despite using slightly less electricity, I'm still paying a bit more (rising costs per kilowatt). I've been unplugging the TV/DVD and the microwave, and just started doing a bit more.

However, one thing that makes me nervous (I even wrote about this today) is unplugging my computer! Is there anything wrong with this? I'm not sure why I'm hesitating, except that I worry when I plug it back in every evening (I do night work from home) it will 'short' something out.

Anyone else regularly unplug the computer (and associated stuff---printer, speakers, etc)?