ᐅ How and where do you save energy at home?

Hey,

turning off lights where they are not needed makes sense and is something anyone can do.
Or just install an Enpal system on the roof. Then you already have one less electrical problem in life.

How do you handle saving electricity?

Flury schrieb:

Turning off lights where they’re not needed makes sense

That really does make sense, but it has always been common practice. 😉

Flury schrieb:

Or just install an Enpal solar system on the roof. Then you have one less electrical issue to worry about.

Do you? Why exactly? Is the system free of charge?

Flury schrieb:

How do you save electricity?

There are hardly any options to save large amounts of electricity. Thanks to LEDs, lighting already uses very little power. You can’t really turn the refrigerator on only when needed. The waterbed has to be heated continuously. The TV doesn’t have an off switch, but since it’s new, its standby consumption is marginal.

By far, my biggest electricity consumers are my home office, the heating system, and the electric car charger (wallbox). And there’s not much I can save on any of those (and I don’t want to save on the heating either).

Flury schrieb:

How do you save electricity?

Yes… always… for 30 years.

SaniererNRW123 schrieb:

Refrigerator

… you can set it about 2–3°C (4–6°F) warmer. We did that.

SaniererNRW123 schrieb:

Waterbed

… you can throw it out.

Only heat the amount of water you need to warm or hot, instead of heating the entire “tank” all the time.
Turn outdoor lights on later and off earlier.
Mood lighting as well.
Don’t preheat the oven.
Take frozen food out in the morning if you plan to cook it in the oven in the evening.
Think more about cooking—do you really need three pans on the stove and the oven for one meal?
Unplug battery-powered devices after full charge.
…

I have two children and a wife. It’s a daily struggle to turn off the lights everywhere.

My wife always says, "We have LEDs anyway, so it doesn’t cost anything^^"

ypg schrieb:

Take the frozen food out in the morning if it’s going into the oven in the evening

Hmm. However, I just thought about the following:
Frozen food requires less energy to cook if it is filled with mass that stores cold energy.
The frozen mass, while sitting in the kitchen, absorbs heat energy from the surrounding air, which the heating system will then need to compensate for.
Whether you put the duck into the oven at -8°C (17.6°F) or at +10°C (50°F) core temperature in the evening might only make a difference of about 200 to 500 watt-hours.
This difference in energy would partly be offset by the building’s heating system on days when the house is being heated.

In the end, this saves energy because the heating system’s efficiency is usually better than that of the oven. In addition, daytime solar gains also contribute, even during winter.

I think that saving energy has always made sense. But at some point, you can take it too seriously. I mean this in general, not related to your example. I also take my frozen items out of the freezer beforehand. 🙂
I’m more thinking about lighting. In some streets here, you sometimes don’t see a single light coming from the windows late at night. The houses just seem empty or unoccupied. A "mood light" of 3 watts can easily be left on all night. That would result in an annual consumption of about 12 kWh. That can easily be balanced out by properly set heating systems (thermostats, venting, etc.), correct tire pressures on the car, anticipatory driving, vacations in local areas, food choices, and so on.

What I’m getting at is this: In the end, you have to weigh whether a certain level of comfort is worth a certain amount of energy. Saving energy purely for the sake of saving energy seems like actionism to me.

ypg schrieb:

… can be thrown out.

So, throwing out an expensive bed just to buy a new one that is unhygienic (from an allergist’s perspective) and not orthopedically supportive (from a back health perspective), and manufactured with a lot of energy? No, that doesn’t make sense.