{"id":2826,"date":"2009-08-24T00:00:11","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.olino.org\/us\/?p=2826"},"modified":"2009-08-20T05:40:39","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T10:40:39","slug":"energy-saving-more-than-a-hobby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olino.org\/blog\/us\/articles\/2009\/08\/24\/energy-saving-more-than-a-hobby\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Saving, More Than a Hobby"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"collector\"<\/a>Since January 2008, \u00a0we are busy in our household trying to reduce our energy consumption. We succeeded in this task quite well. We reduced our gas consumption with 30% and our electricity consumption by a staggering 90%.\u00a0 Are you curious how we did this?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Start<\/h3>\n

Our Household consists of three persons, two adults and a child. We live in a standard Dutch rowhouse (Dutch: \u201crijtjeshuis\u201d) which was built in 1974. For the standards back then, our house is extremely well insulated in that\u00a0our floor, walls and roof are all equipped with a fair amount of insulation.
\nWithout really knowing our energy consumption,\u00a0 our energy bill \u00a0has always been very high.\u00a0 Until January 2008, \u00a0we used an average of 5500kWh of electricity and 1550m3 of natural gas each year. Since July 2006 we kept track of our consumption by monitoring our meters monthly. So we did see our high consumption but we didn\u2019t really do anything about it.<\/p>\n

In the beginning of 2008, \u00a0I wanted to know how much electricity our own server was using. We were in for a serious shock. Even after a few days we noticed that our server was using between 140 and 150W continuously , 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When calculation to a yearly consumption this is 1300kWh. Our server was responsible for almost 25% of our electricity bill!<\/p>\n

The Numbers Tell the Tale<\/h3>\n

This has been\u00a0eye-opening\u00a0\u00a0for us, and after this we wanted to know the energy consumption of every appliance and then\u00a0try to reduce this as much as possible without losing our comfort in our house.<\/p>\n

We started to map all of our appliances, including all of our lamps with\u00a0the digital electricity consumption meter we also used to measure our server. I put all of these appliances in an Excel sheet and I calculated the consumption in a year for each line. This can be seen in the column \u201cOud Verbruik\u201d<\/p>\n

\"alles_over_energie\"<\/a>
\nFigure 1: : the energy consumption of each appliance in Excel.<\/em><\/p>\n

After measuring and calculating the yearly consumption, \u00a0I noticed that my Excel sheet came very close to our actual yearly consumption. I was off\u00a0 by about 10%. I\u2019ve also put in this number in Excel under \u201conbekende verbruiker\u201d, translated \u201cunknown user\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Server<\/h3>\n

We barely used the server. The server was intended as a fileserver, downloadserver and as a\u00a0development and testserver for my work. For development and testing, \u00a0I used my laptop instead. The fileserver part was only used for our documents and photos. We moved these to an external harddrive. We also stopped downloading, as we didn\u2019t watch the movies we downloaded anyway. In other words, the whole server lost its function.
\nResult: -1286kWh<\/strong> for period over a year and a very distinct drop in our energy graphs.<\/p>\n

Standby Consumption<\/h3>\n

The next victim was our standby consumption in our house. An Example:
\neven with all audio and video appliances switched off,\u00a0\u00a0we would use 15W of energy. For our computer and printer in the living room, \u00a0this was 6W. Compared to\u00a0the\u00a0yearly consumption, \u00a0this was 131kWh and 53 of unnecessary energy consumption.
\nFor this we bought two extensions cords with a kill switch. At night and when we leave the house we switch both off.
\nResult: -184kWh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Refrigerator<\/h3>\n

Completely by accident, \u00a0we discovered that our refrigerator in our kitchen also was a problem. One night our son got sick and I tried to get some sleep on the couch in the living room. I noticed that the compressor of the refrigerator was running constantly
\nUp until that point , I hadn\u2019t checked it with our kWhmeter. The result was shocking:\u00a0 over 800kWh for a period of a year. A new refrigerator and comparable one would only use 300kWh according to the website www.kieskeurig.nl<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0After a short search, \u00a0we found a cheap but good A+ class refrigerator with a yearly consumption of only 310kWh.
\nResult: -500kWh<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Other Savings<\/h3>\n

Laptop vs. Desktop<\/h4>\n

We sold our desktop computer in the living room and bought\u00a0a laptop. Instead of 120-130W contiguous usage, \u00a0the laptop only uses 35-40W of power.\u00a0 Another advantage is that we both can use our computers while sitting on the couch in the living room.<\/p>\n

Forced House Ventilation<\/h4>\n

Our house is equipped with a standard ventilation system. This system uses around 180kWh on a yearly basis. There are also new similar DC systems\u00a0that do the exact same thing for only of a fraction of the amount of energy. So we changed our ventilation unit for a ITHO CVE2 DC fan. Not only is this new one a lot more energy efficient its also a lot more silent!<\/p>\n

Network Changes<\/h4>\n

We used a gigabit switch and a wireless access point for our home network. We switched from one ADSL provider to another and got another all in one ADSL modem\/router\/access point. This also saved two appliances 24\/7.<\/p>\n

Refrigerator in our Loft<\/h4>\n

We bought a new refrigerator we use in our loft. Of course we switched to a A++ model. It was tempting to just switch off this refrigerator altogether, \u00a0but we do use it often and normally its filled over 75%. Again we used the website www.kieskeurig.nl to find a A++ refrigerator.<\/p>\n

Lights<\/h4>\n

We made a list of all the lamps we had and calculated and guessed what they would use on a yearly basis. The total energy consumption for our lights was around 300kWh in the beginning. Almost all lights are changed for either energy efficient ones and even LED bulbs. We also switched over from halogen lighting in our living room to energy efficient ones. We found a brand\u00a0that almost exactly matched the same color as the halogen version. With this we reduced our energy consumption to 170kWh.<\/p>\n

Temporary Results<\/h3>\n

In a period of\u00a0less than a year, \u00a0we reduced our energy consumption from 450kWh each month back to 250kWh. This got us hooked for more!
\nWe now had a valuable Excel sheet with all the appliances and lamps. I added an extra column called \u201cextra savings\u201d. With some colors we could see how much we already saved and how much we still could do.<\/p>\n

\"electriciteitsverbruik\"<\/a>
\nFigure 2, Electricity consumption van 2008 till now.<\/em><\/p>\n

Solar Heating<\/h3>\n

Around April or May of\u00a02008 we heard that our government would start another round of extra funding for solar heaters.\u00a0 From that moment, \u00a0I started to learn more about solar heaters and what possibilities there are.
\nOne thing I noticed is that there is very little to\u00a0next to nothing to be found here in The Netherlands about this subject.
\nOur first plan was to take a standard solar heater from Remeha. We already had an HR gas central heater from the same brand, so\u00a0this seemed logical. But after reading more and more about solar heaters, \u00a0we both started to have doubts. Around July, \u00a0we made the final decision to get a solar heater to further reduce our energy consumption.
\nWe immediately invited several contractors in our house to get more information and for a quotation. We noticed several things:<\/p>\n