An example how to save a lot of energy with a small investment….

Since my 1500W of solar panels I have been looking how to reduce my energy consumption. It makes a lot more sense money wise to save on energy consumption compared to generating this same amount of energy yourself. The rotary clothes line is a beautiful example how to use the energy of the sun very efficient and save on your own energy consumption by reducing the usage of an electric clothes dryer (now called dryer)

A rotary clothes line running on solar power.

A dryer consumes around 600 kWh / year for an average household (Source milieu centraal Nederlands). A good rotary clothes line cost around 45 euro. Assume we use this rotary clothes line for 50% of the time a year (summer), and for the other 50% of the year we keep using the dryer (winter). That would mean we could save, using an electricity price of € 0,20 / kWh (June 2006, Netherlands), around  € 60,- a year. So the rotary clothes line will pay itself back in 3/4 year. If you don’t need the rotary clothes line anymore you can collapse it so it does not take any space anymore in your yard…

Collapsed rotary clothes line

Comparison

Let compare the savings of the rotary clothes line with the energy production of the solar panels. The 12 solar panels (including the inverter, monitoring unit, cables, mounting equipment, extra power group) cost around €7000. These solar panels provide annually around 1350 kWh. Let compare the two now in the table below.

Conclusion

Investments on energy savings can have a short pay back period. With small investments you can get big savings in energy. See also the article Earning money with energy saving. Even so, solar panels with their longer pay back period are a good investment. Watch for an article soon on this site.