Wuff

Friday, September 19, 2008

eco:darkness falls

You're told incandescent bulbs are bad and waste energy. Our house only has them in the dining area as a sculptural feature. But cumulatively any kind of lighting adds up. We had our garden lights and house lights on:

and I noticed our consumption was an astronomical 3770 Watts. Start turning them off...
  • −300 Watts: garden lights (low voltage) off
  • −200W: garden pump off
  •  −30W: pump lights (low voltage) off
  • −200W: dim dining lights (evil incandescents) as low as possible
  • −200W: power off dining lights
  •  −30W: rear fluorescent lamp off
  • −200W: power off monster stereo
  • −470W: awesome second floor lights (halogen) off
  • −430W: living room lights (more halogen) off
  •  −60W: side light (halogen) off
  • −260W: dim downstairs lights (halogen track lights) as low as possible
  •  −40W: power off downstairs lights
  •  −80W: dim studio lights (halogen track lights) as low as possible
  •  −20W: power off studio lights
So to save energy, live in the dark.

I saw the Cellophane house at the MOMA "Home Delivery" show of prefab homes, which has all LED lighting. It's an... interesting space.

Labels: ,

posted by skierpage at 00:34

2 Comments:

  • I noticed you say you dim some lamps as much as possible. I assume you are referring to a dimmer switch. Dimmer switches are wasteful of energy. You are better off switching to a lower wattage bulb. Even better would be switching to LED lighting. I know they are still expensive at the moment but the price will go down...

    By Anonymous known as tinker on olpc wiki, at October 06, 2008 8:37 AM  

  • "tinker" you make good points but re-read what I wrote. I dimmed lights then I turned them off. Maybe dimmer switches are wasteful (a physicist says Modern light dimmers are actually much more efficient than they used to be), but my measurements prove I save energy by dimming lights (and obviously even more by powering them off).

    Giving up variable lighting to save energy is a difficult step; I'll see if there are some lights I always leave at the same low setting.

    By Blogger skierpage, at October 06, 2008 2:08 PM  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home