This past Christmas, I visited my parents in
BC. BC Hydro has given all of its customers two of the new
florescent light bulbs for free. These bulbs give off great
light but only run 15 watts. Can you imagine if we could change
all of the bulbs to around a quarter of the wattage. What
a difference it would make on the demand. I would encourage
Hamilton hydro to see if they could sponsor such a program
- at the same time it would be beneficial to educate the public
on the efficiency and life of these bulbs. The bulbs are pricey
right now, but with more on the market and more being sold,
the price will come down - and the price MUST come down for
people to have any interest, because most people look at the
immediate cost and spending $15 for a bulb when you can buy
4 regular bulbs for $1.99 seems ludicrous!
Save hydro when cooking pasta! This recipe is
from a Hamilton Spectator newspaper clipping from several
years ago. It makes perfect pasta every time. Use the 20 minutes
'soaking' time to prepare your stir-fry or sauce.
Perfect Pasta
Fill a large pot about 3/4 full with water.
Add 1 teaspoon salt and 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil.
Bring water to a boil.
Add pasta of your choice and stir.
Bring back to a full rolling boil.
Stir once more, cover pot, remove from heat
(turn off burner now)
and leave for exactly 20 minutes on another cool burner.
(Use your oven timer.)
Alternate Solution to regular outdoor
Christmas lights Submitted by Dave Niemczycki
Each year we would install two strands of 50-7 watts bulb outdoor
Christmas lights for the Christmas season. This always bothered me since they were
on for approximately 9 hours each day for roughly 60 days. What this translated into
was 378 kilowatts of extra energy being used over the Christmas season. This was adding
an unnecessary load to the limited electrical generating capacity that is available.
After the power failure that we experienced this summer, and with the possibility of this
scenario happening again during the Christmas season due to the extra loading on the
electrical system by Christmas lighting. My first solution was not to install outdoor
Christmas lighting. But this was not the best solution for the family that considered
the lighting as part of the Christmas season. Therefore I decided to investigate an
alternate solution to the situation by using the Internet.
By using the Internet I was able to find an alternate solution that was available
here in Canada at Home Hardware. What I was able to find were ForeverBright LED
Christmas lights that used 80-90% less energy, the bulbs would last 200,000 hours
and were more difficult to break.
Being skeptical of these claims at first, I purchased one 70-bulb strawberry
multi-colour out door strand to give a try.
Well here is the result. The 70-bulb strand only uses 4-watt
total of energy.
The quality of the light output for the bulbs were exceptional. So I purchased three
more strands and already have installed them. Total load being used by the Christmas
lights is 16 watts.
So how are we saving energy? Well normally we have two compact fluorescent bulbs
(23-watt over the garage door and a 13-watt by the front door entrance) that
were always removed when we installed Christmas lighting to help save on energy.
But the family felt the front door entrance could a little brighter so I installed
a 13-watt light bulb in the fixture by the door entrance.
Total watts being saved = 36 (CFB) - 29(Christmas lights & 13 watt bulb) = 7 watts.
Even though these strands are more expensive, the benefits out weighed the cost.
Instead of having 100 light bulbs consuming 700 watts of energy per hour, we now
have 280 LED bulbs using only 16 watts of energy per hour. Also we do not have
the cost of carrying spare bulbs since the LED bulbs last 200,000 hours
(approximately 23 years of continuous use) and each strand comes with a 5 year
warranty.
So I hope you find this Christmas energy saving feature worth while and you will
enjoy the Christmas season a little better knowing that you are contributing to
the energy solution.
