conduct your
own power experiment

Take meter readings over a few days or a week to identify how much power you are currently using.
Enlist the family to try and reduce power as much as you can over a week and record daily readings, eg 7.00am each morning.
We've been doing this for several years now and have gone from using 20-25kwh daily down to an average of 5 kwh.
Some of the things we have done are ...
  • We use solar hot water

  • flouro bulbs (and turn them off when not in use)

  • clean the condenser behind the fridge (around 5% more power efficient)

  • made a gridded hole under the fridge so that cool air is drawn up from under the floor and
    over the condenser to increase its efficiency (around 10-25% more power efficient)

  • Use a Sabco mop/broom instead of the vacumn cleaner

  • Use a laptop rather than a desktop computer (90% more power efficient)



The image below shows a meter. Until a number has been reached, always read the lower number. eg while it sits between the numbers 1 and 2, the reading is 1. Have a go at reading the meter below.






The reading is 3 - 2 - 7 - 9 - 1



for ideas on how to reduce power use here's a few useful sites

Burkes Backyard - info on standby power (approximately 10% of your power bill is appliances on standby)

Energy saving tips - EWON

You may like to cut and paste and print the table below to record your readings



 day  1st reading  2nd reading  power used
 day 1      
 day 2      
 day 3      
 day 4      
 day 5      
 day 6      
 day 7      
 total  
N/A
  
N/A
  
 
 


You can conserve
power quite dramatically and without great cost.

It's a great family 'game' to play and can be very rewarding.
Make sure to point out to everyone that at the end of the day they have
reduced their greenhouse emissions by a kilo for every kwh they have saved.











created 2004