A Cheaper Way to Save Residential Energy

Summary

Homeowners are spending lots of money on energy saving products for their homes.  Are these energy saving purchases masking wasteful habits that need to be addressed?  This paper proposes a "first-step" solution to reducing residential energy waste before buying more expensive energy efficient products.

Analysis

It’s great to see people investing their hard-earned (and scarce) disposable income to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.  More insulation, better windows, Energy Star appliances, higher SEER HVAC systems and other energy saving purchases are being made which allow homeowners to reduce their energy needs.  And with the governments, both federal and state, offering tax credits to homeowners that invest to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, more folks are getting off the fence investing in energy reduction improvements for their homes.

 

But investing in big ticket energy renovations is just one method of saving energy.  There is another method that is cheaper, more effective and has a better payback:

 

Take action to change your bad energy habits!

 

Let’s face it we all have bad energy habits.  According to industry studies, the average home in the US wastes between 15% and 25% of the energy it consumes.  We all are guilty of leaving on lights, appliances and other electric dependent gadgets – unnecessarily – and are shocked when we receive sky high energy bills.  Then we try to buy our way out of high energy bills by spending money on energy efficient upgrades without changing the bad energy habits that are forcing us to invest in more efficient equipment in the first place.  Bad energy habits are trumping energy saving investments!

 

While it’s a whole lot simpler to pour money into new appliances and equipment for your home and let your investments do their energy saving magic, the end result is that we become energy LAZY.  So before you spend gobs of money on household energy improvements, change some energy habits around your home.  If you are having trouble identifying energy waste in your home, purchase a real-time electricity feedback monitor.  Energy monitors are relatively cheap and will display how much energy you’re using in real-time so you can take action to reduce wasted energy on the spot.  Independent studies performed on homes that installed real-time energy monitors showed that homeowners that saw how much energy they were using cut back on their energy waste and saved between 5% - 15% on their monthly electricity bill.  In addition to helping you develop good energy habits, a real-time energy monitor will help you measure the effectiveness of future energy efficiency investments (without having to wait for the results via your monthly electricity bill). 

 

So before you spend gobs of money on energy saving equipment, take action to change your energy using habits and live energy efficiently.  Buying energy efficiency is a step in the right direction but living energy efficiently is the long term solution.  And living energy efficiently is a habit we all need to fall into.