So my brand new home is very energy efficient - lower power light globes, high star rating appliances etc - But there's always room to squeeze a little more efficiency out of a home. Here's some tips I discovered after installing a wireless power meter (thanks to QLD's $50 climate smart energy check-up program).
Air Conditioners.
We all know that air conditioners use a lot of power. My ducted air-con draws over 4000 watts when cooling at maximum rate. Obviously minimise the use of air-con at all costs to reduce those bills. For me, this means opening a window or two at one end of the house, and at the opposite end to create a breeze through the centre.
What you may not know, however, is that most air conditioning units (especially ducted) draw quite some power when NOT in use! If you have a control panel on the wall with status information, chances are you're burning power for no good reason. I located the master power switch for the ducted unit (which was located externally next to my condenser unit) and turned it off, powering down the control units in the hallway. This saved 75 watts of power! 75 watts * 24 hours a day really adds up.
Power Saving Solution: Talk to an electrician about having an override switch installed inside the house so when you want to use the air-con, you simply first switch on the master switch and then use the wall panel.
Laptops and chargers.
I have a laptop. It uses much less power than a regular desktop computer which is great! However my habit is to leave the laptop on charge each night. While using my wireless power monitor I noticed that even when the laptop battery is full, the unit was still pulling approx 30 watts of power. That adds up.
Power Saving Solution: Buy a power timer adaptor and set it to switch on at midnight and off at 3am. Plug a power board into this timer, and use this board to charged devices overnight. You just connect your laptop to the charging board and at midnight the system powers on and gives your laptop a solid 3 hours of charge before switching off again to minimise phantom power draw. By waiting until midnight you may also be saving via offpeak tarriff. Obviously you may need to top up your battery during the day, but at least you start the day with a full charge.
Lights and globes
Here's a big saving area. We all know incandescent and halogen globes are poor energy users. But even CFL's can use a lot of power compared to newer LED technology.
I recently swapped out 6 x 11 watt CFL's with 6 x 9 watt LED's in my lounge and the drop in power was significant! The CFL's drew approx 40 watts of power according to the power meter. Less than one would expect for 6 x 11 watts, but I don't really know how that works anyway
The LED lights drew a mere 12 watts! That's a 28 watt saving. I then proceeded to replace my exterior CFL's with LED downlights, and lights in the hallway etc and soon I was saving 50 watts compared to CFL. Adds up!
Be aware that LED's are not cheap. Genuine CREE 9w LED downlights are currently selling for around $32.00 each on eBay. This may take quite some time to pay themselves off - but for me, enjoying better power efficiency, cooler temperatures, instant warm-up and what I consider to be a nicer light output makes it worth it.
Power Saving Solution: Replace halogens and CFL downlights with LED downlights.
That's all for now, but I hope this was helpful