I have completed another week of my year long quest to learn how to be green.  My wife’s challenge to me for the week was to turn off lights when I am not in a room.  Right now, we only have one lamp and one overhead light laminating the room so I think we are making progress.  I think I have learned quite a bit about electricity use and have changed my habits in a manner that will reduce our environmental footprint.

This has been an exercise in habit and I thought I would have more problems with it than I did.  Last week, my task was to stop using plastic bags and I had one heck of a time remembering to adhere to the challenge at hand.  For some reason, this week’ green challenge seemed much easier and I thought it would be considering I thought it required the sort of mental discipline as last week’s task.  So far, I have been doing a good job and I have only been told by Ashley a few times that I should turn off a light.

I am not exactly positive on the long term impact I will have by continuing to do this task, but I would imagine it will add up over a lifetime.  Ultimately, leaving lights on when you are not using them is wasteful and there is no real reason that I should leave lights on.  Turning lights off is good for the environment, good for your electricity bill and the right thing to do.  Please let me know any comments you have in the area below and stay tuned for the next task that is coming shortly.

During the course of this week, I have been making an effort to turn the lights off when I am not in a room per the rules for this week’s green challenge.  So far, this has been going very well and has only taken some effort to remind myself to do accomplish this week’s green task.  Even though it is very important for me to reduce consumption by turning lights off, I think it is also important to take a look at some of the various kinds of light bulbs and which ones are environmentally friendly.

Incandescent lights are probably the light bulbs you are most familiar with and grew up with.  These are the normal light bulbs you can get at the store for .99 cents or less and they generally last a few months.  These bulbs use between 15 and 150 Watts and over 90% of the power consumed by these bulbs is emitted as heat rather than light.  These are the dinosaurs of the light bulb world, are not green and the only benefit I can see for using them is that the upfront cost is relatively low compared to other bulbs.

Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs are another kind of light bulb that is a much better option than the incandescent bulbs.  This is currently what we have in our house and since we started using them, I do not think we have had to replace a single CFL bulb.  The benefits are that they last much longer than incandescent bulbs, they have a greater lumens/Watt efficiency (that is, it takes less energy to create the same wattage) than incandescent bulbs, it is environmentally friendly and it is more cost efficient than incandescent bulbs.  The main downfall of CFL bulbs is that they contain a small amount of mercury in the bulb and that they are a bit more expensive up front.

Finally, we have LED lights.  LED lights are the most energy efficient light bulbs on the mass market.  Apparently, LED bulbs can last between 25,000 and 50,000 hours whereas the traditional incandescent bulbs last between 1,000 and 2,000 hours.  Even then, the light does not “burn out” in the same way that we have grown to learn.  Instead of just burning out, these bulbs fade away slowly.  The 25-50k rate measures only until when the bulb is 70% as powerful as when originally put in place.  That means there could potentially be additional usable hours beyond the 25-50k hours.  At this rate, although not the green thing to do, a light bulb could run for over 5 years straight.  Also, these bulbs do not produce much heat which is an indicator of energy going toward light rather than heat.  The main drawback is cost.  These bulbs are more expensive than either CFL or incandescent, but might actually be cheaper in the long run.  I have also read that these bulbs do not light quite the same as the other bulbs and possibly provide less ambient light.

I summary, LED light bulbs are the best for the environment if you can afford them.  CFL Light bulbs are a great alternative and reasonably priced.  Stay away from the incandescent light bulbs.  Let me know any tips or info you have in the comment area below.

This week’s green task has been to turn lights off when I am not using them.  I think I have been doing a pretty good job at it and will continue to watch my electricity use.  I am going to deviate a little bit from this week’s challenge and write about a slightly different subject today.  Ashley asked me to write a bit about phantom charges and I am going to oblige.  I am going to bring it one step further and ask that this topic be made into next week’s challenge.

I do think that turning lights off is very important for reducing your impact on the environment, but I think there are some major changes that could be made in our house by reducing the phantom electricity charges.  Ashley indicated that we could reduce our electricity output by 10% just by reducing this kind of charge.  I know we have plenty of appliances that suck electricity unnecessarily.

We will surely see a smaller electricity bill next month, but I wonder if we can drive it down even further?  Turning our lights off will reduce our energy bill and I think we can reduce it even further by helping stop these phantom charges.

So, I think I have been doing pretty good with this week’s green challenge and look forward to my next one.  I hope my wife will allow my first request for a challenge next week.  I am hoping we can make a big difference!  Tell me your story in the comment area below.

How do phantom charges affect your electricity bill?  Is it worth worrying about?  Phantom charges occur when appliances use electricity when you are not using them.  Just going around the room that I am sitting in while writing this paper I can list several things that are using electricity and are not being directly used. 

The volume on the computer; has a light on right now, as well as the camera charger.  The iPod charger is lit up showing the time but we really don’t need a second clock in the same room and the hard drive is lit up and we don’t use this daily.  In the living room our surround sound has a power light and also the DVD player.  When we turn off the TV the DVR is still on.  In the kitchen I can say that the oven shows the time all night but the inconvenience of turning that off isn’t worth it.  There are several cell phone chargers plugged in right not charging phones.  As you can see we use a lot of electricity that we don’t need to. 

You can reduce your electricity bills by 10% simply by unplugging appliances or switching devices off at the power point they are connected to when not in use.   Even though you hit the power switch on your gadgets they still consume electricity.  The amount of usage of these appliances can be anything from .5 to 5 watts per hour; which may not seem like a lot but when you multiply by the number of hours a day and the number of households in the world this adds to a lot of carbon pollution.  Even though this week’s task is about “turning off lights” I would like Ben to focus on how much we are consuming in phantom charges.  If you have any tips on how to conserve, please write in the comments below.

I have been trying to follow the rules of this week’s green challenge by turning off all lights when I leave a room and I understand that it saves energy, but I think it would be a good exercise to find out specifically why this is a good idea.  “Save energy” is such a broad term and it seems to help me to take a look at specific reasons why I should be turning off lights to save energy.

One of the most common ways electricity is created is by burning fossil fuels.  When fossil fuels, such as coal, oil or natural gas, carbon dioxide is released into the air and that is the nasty stuff that leads to global warming.  So, by keeping the lights on when you are not using them is just an exercise in wastefulness.  To turn OFF those same lights is an expression of conservation and only using what you need.

How big of a difference does this make?  Although I usually really like doing the math, I am going to rely on other people’s math today.  A 60 Watt light bulb consumes .06 Kilowatt hours of electricity.  If I can prevent this light bulb from being on 3 additional hours by turning off the light when I am not using it, this adds up to .18 kWh, or about 66kWh per year.  According to this site, 1 kWh of electricity generated from coal creates 1-3 pounds of CO2.  A simple step such as turning off a light saves 66-198 pounds of CO2 per year.  If you start talking about households where lights are left on all the time, I suppose the potential waste can get into the thousands of pounds.

This is such a small step and such a big reward for our planet.  Let me know if you have any other interesting information on the subject in the comment area below.

1. Turn off the lights when you leave the room.
2. Unplug things when you are not using them.
3. Turn off the television.
4. Open shades instead of turning on lights.
5. Change to CF or LED lights
6. Instead of leaving your computer on all the time, turn it off or at least the monitor
7. Line dry your clothing
8. Cleaning the coils on your refrigerator.
9. Put large jugs of water in your freezer. 
10. Keep the heat down if you have electric energy.
11. Turn outdoor motion lights off if you do not need them or turn down the sensitivity.
12. Try using a Solar Cooker once
13. Install solar panels
14. When cooking, use a lid to keep the heat in.
15. Install a Tankless water heater
16. Buy a hand can opener instead of wasting electricity on the plugin version
17. Put wrap on your windows to conserve energy
18. Stay away from high power usage TV models
19. Use power strips and turn off the entire strip when not in use.
20. Buy a solar power battery charger
21. Turn off your computer right now… but only after reading a few more posts on GuyGoesGreen and leaving a comment below! 

This week’s challenge is to conserve energy by turning lights off around the house.  Although I think I have already starting becoming more conscientious about this since I started Guygoesgreen, it certainly is a behavior that I need to improve.  Hopefully, you can join me this week on this eco challenge and both give me tips on what you do to conserve energy and possibly also learn along with me.

I have been told ever since I was a little guy that I should turn lights off when I am not in a room because it is wasteful.  I, being somewhat stubborn and forgetful, may not have been the best at this and hope to learn about this type of wastefulness and take effort to change this behavior.  I learned last week that I might have a tough time re-training my brain, but I think part of my journey is not only learning how to be green, but also how to rewire my brain for some things.

Some of my previous tasks require multiple steps and thought to follow through with.  Those challenges seemed to be a bit easier for me.  It is easy to say “I can only shower once a day” and for me it is easy to turn off the faucet when I brush, but it seems that there are some very small actions (or inactions) that I perform nearly every day that are difficult.  For example, last week my challenge was to not use plastic bags and it seemed like I only realized that I took a plastic bag once I was in my car.  I did it without thought.  I think that possibly this might be another one of these tasks.

So, now that I know going into this green challenge that I will need to retrain my brain, do you guys/gals have any suggestions right off the bat?  Are there any tricks, tools or suggestions you have for me to make sure the lights are off or how to conserve energy in relation to the lights?

‘Tis the season to be jolly and Guygoesgreen is starting to get into the mood.  Here in Fargo, snow is on the ground, the Christmas tree is up and it looks like Christmas puked in our living room.  To celebrate the Christmas spirit, I thought I would share what some of my fellow bloggers are writing about in regards to having a green Christmas:

Blank and Gold Go Green gives some tips on how to have a green holiday season.

Urban Homesteader offers 13 ways to reuse Christmas cards.

Here are some Eco Friendly Christmas gift ideas.

Here is an idea for making your own eco-friendly Christmas ornaments.

Detailed here is a Christmas tree in Copenhagen with LED lights powered by bicycle.

If you have any great links or information on having a green Christmas, please let me know in the comment area below.