What are the best, 'Novel/New' manners/ways that I, personally and/or as a family, can Conserve energy ?

The biggest user of electricity in a household after a/c in a hot climate and electric heat in a cold climate is the clothes dryer. With drum and heating coil running, it's pulling 4000 watts, yes 4 KW, until the humidity sensor (if your dryer has one) senses that the clothes are getting dry. Figure the a dryer load runs 0.75 hr and a typical family of 4 does 8 loads of laundry per week. The 4 KW is probably drawing for the first 0.5 hr and maybe down to 2 KW for the next 0.25 hr. Do the math and you'll see that there is a LOT of energy consumed by the clothes dryer.

That's more energy than used in cooking, lights, TV, PC, or even bathroom fans. So if you really want to make a big impact on electrical energy conservation, use a solar clothes dryer (clothesline). When the weather is not so good for outdoor clothes drying, even hanging the clothes for 24 hr in the garage or porch can reduce the drying time by a third to a half. Even that is a BIG savings, and pretty darn easy to accomplish.

I could get into why clothesline drying isn't popular, and why there are no energy efficiency ratings on dryers (Fed Govt thinks they're all pretty much the same <wrong>) but then I'd have to go to soapbox mode.

Turn down the heat and put on a sweater, simple basic and a no brainer. I have a ton of clothes, so many that I would be sweating but I chose or do not chose to heat my entire house so that it is 21 degrees centigrade no matter where I go. Wouldn't it be more conservation minded to just dress warmer. It is the law of conservation of matter. My warmth matters, not the warmth of my basement when I am on the third floor. We need to have more personal expectations for conservation instead of the wasteful ideas we have now. Even with regard to 30 years ago, there were very few malls, now with a mall everyone walks around in the halls of malls with no worries about the cold or the heat, where as 35 years ago, you were outside and only the store itself was warm or cool, not the space outside the store called the sidewalk. Have we gone overboard? I think yes. Do we need to change, I think YES! Consider everything we do now with what was 40 or 50 years ago and we are definitely spoiled. As a kid I remember laying in bed at night sweating from the extreme heat of summer. When was the last time you did this? Today we are pampered with air conditioning and so on, get use to the way it used to be and our world will be better off for it. We need to go back to how people survived 50 years ago and in another 50 the world will heal itself. Until that happens expect more of the same.

There are many things you can do to help conserve energy, and lower your electric bill.

1. Swith out your light bulbs to the lower wattage energy efficient ones. They resemble spiral shapes in some cases. they are more expensive but can last years while using 50-75 percent less energy.

2. turn your max temp on the water heater down 10 - 20 degrees.

3. When shopping ask for paper instead of plastic.

4. Raise your ac, lower your heater when you are not home, but only a few degrees or it has to use more energy to catch up.

5. Buy rechargable batteries.

These are just a few suggestions.

HTH,

Kendyl