Low Impact

As I’ve mentioned previously, my household subscribes to green energy - consequently, my electricity provider sources the equivalent of my power consumption from wind power sources. This means that, disregarding the greenhouse gasses emitted during the wind turbines’ construction, there is no CO2 emitted for my day-to-day power consumption.

This is in stark contrast to most Australian households whose power is sourced from coal power plants. Not only is there a great deal of greenhouse gasses emitted during the construction of the power plant, but each kilowatt-hour generated results in almost 1 kg of CO2 being emitted.

But despite being on green power, it still makes sense to reduce our electricity consumption. One simple reason is cost - the less power you use, the lower your electricity bill! But there are good environmental reasons to reduce your power consumption, even if you’re subscribed to a green energy program. Every “green” kilowatt-hour you refrain from using is available to someone else - something that could become even more important if demand for green energy outstrips supply.

I live in a townhouse in Canberra, a region that enjoys summer maximum temperatures in the high 30’s, and winter minimums of around -5 degrees celsius. The townhouse is a terrace style, with shared walls on either side and with multiple levels. As part of a complex, there are also Body Corporate rules to be complied with.

Put together, this presents a number of challenges to reducing our electricity consumption. For instance we have electric hot water and heating, rather than the more efficient gas due to the difficulty of getting gas connected to the premises. Reverse cycle air conditioning is also difficult due to the multiple levels. Putting wall insulation in is difficult due to the shared walls. And solar hot water is difficult due to issues with both body corporate approval, as well as plumbing it down through the various levels.

(That’s not to say that these things are impossible - just difficult.)

The graph above shows our electricity consumption over the last two years. Looking at the bad news first, you can see that winter is our worst time of year due to the electric heating. All in all, that winter consumption level is a little embarrassing - I’m just glad that we’re on green electricity!

But looking at the good news, you can see that over the 2 years our electricity consumption has dropped markedly. Winter consumption has fallen from 32.8 kwH/day to 19.8 KwH/day - a reduction of 39%! Summer consumption hasn’t fallen as dramatically, but it has dropped from 13.7 KwH/day to 9.8 KwH/day, or 28%.

These kinds of improvements have solely been made using simple steps that haven’t cost much money, or required major lifestyle adjustments. It includes things like:

• When our wall mounted heater died, and we were told that an electric heater was our only realistic option we ensured we picked one that was appropriately sized for the house, rather than an over-powered one (or counter-intuitively an underpowered one which would end up straining away 24 hours a day trying to warm the rooms).

• We replaced all light globes with compact fluorescent light globes, cutting our electricity use for lighting by around 80%.

• We fitted water-saving shower heads. While these reduce our water usage, they make a surprising difference to your electricity bill too. Using less water in your shower, means using less hot water, so you use less electricity for your water heating.

• We made sure that whenever we went away for more than a night, we switched off our electric hot water heater - why use electricity to keep 125 litres of water simmering away at 50 degrees celsius if you don’t need to?

• During winter, we set our thermostat to 21 degrees, rather than 24. This meant wearing sensible cloths - shorts and T-shirts were out - but neither were we needing to wear thick woolen jumpers!

• Using our Centameter and MS6115 power meters, we tracked down appliances that were always consuming significant amounts of power and made sure they were switched off at the wall when not being used. Surprising culprits included an electric fan (with a remote control), and our washing machine.

There’s still plenty more that we can do. I have hopes that it might be possible to get solar hot water installed somehow, and I’m looking at double glazing to reduce heat loss in winter. But nonetheless, reducing our power consumption by almost a third with those simple steps is a good start.

Categories: efficiency, energy, environment, green, housing, reduce

Tags: efficiency, electricity bill, green energy, lifestyle, power consumption