Three ways to reduce energy use is to program your thermostat to use less energy when you are away from home or sleeping; use LED lights for your most often used lights; and use ceiling fans, or free air when the temperature is right outside, and close up when it gets too hot or cold.
Old and new homes benefit from using a programmable thermostat. If you are not home during the day, why heat or cool the house to a comfortable temperature? When asleep at night, allow the thermostat to reduce to lower temperatures in winters, and buy a good quilt. Different types of thermostats allow programming either by individual day or weekday/weekend, and can raise or lower temperatures at specific times during the day or night, for winter and summer.
Benefits: Lower costs at no loss of comfort (once the thermostat is optimized to learn the required lead time for temperature adjustment.)
LED Lights: Did you know that incandescent lights’ use of electricity was 90% generating heat and 10% generating light (Amann et al., 2012). LED technology has fully matured, including providing interesting shapes for lighting, in addition to much lower costs, varied light colors, longer lifetimes and reduced fire hazards. Light colors are indicated by ‘Kelvin’, where 2700k is most yellow (“warm white”) and 5300k is bluest (“daylight” or sunlight on a bright day). For best efficiency, use LEDs in particular for the lights most commonly turned on.
Ceiling Fans: A breeze cools similar to how you feel cooler when you exit a pool. In summer months, a ceiling fan can cut costs and increase comfort, by making a room feel 4-6° F cooler by providing a breeze all day or night (Harley, 2012). Fans can be reversed (clockwise), bringing hot air down to room level in winters or whisking hot air up (counterclockwise), with the breeze cooling you off (Amann et al., 2012). Larger rooms need larger fans. Ceiling fans cool people but do not reduce room temperature, so turn them off as you leave the room.
