Solar Baby

If you are planning on changing over to an off-the-grid energy system, the first thing I would recommend is to start cutting your electrical power usage. Of course, the main energy hogs are the ones that use heat, such as electric heaters, electric hot water, electric stove and oven and the electric clothes dryer. Air conditioning, as well. These appliances use huge amounts of your electric power, eating up your watts as soon as they are turned on. Switching to propane or natural gas for water heating, home heat, cooking and clothes drying, along with more efficient refrigerators and freezers will offer much savings.  For an air conditioning alternative, there is evaporative cooling systems. Changing to these appliances will instantly cut off more than three quarters of what you usually use while teaching you how to get started.

Screw in light bulbs should be mostly compact fluorescent lights which use about one quarter the power of regular bulbs while giving the same brightness and color. Replace your big desk top computers with laptops. They use much less power. We run 2 laptops over 12 hours a day on very little power. A desk top (actually it is the monitors) uses as much in a few hours, as our’s do in a week. The monitors are what you have to watch though they have come out with more energy efficient desk tops and monitors now. Check them very carefully.

Newer gas cooking ranges have what is called a “glow bar” in the oven. It uses electricity, so even if your power is out you can’t use the oven.  This is an electric red-hot glow-bar pilot in the oven that consumes 400 watts all the time the oven is used! Instead, look for one of two types of pilot light ovens. An oven with regular gas flame pilot light is the simplest. Better is an oven pilot that lights by electric spark when the oven is started and goes off when the oven is finished. Propane or natural gas stoves with gas pilot lights need no power connection at all.

Another option would be no options! Yes, that’s what I did when purchasing my brand new Premier propane range, It has no timer, no oven light, no light on top and no clock. You can purchase a seperate timer for a few dollars just about anywhere. And most people already have a clock in their kitchen anyway. Same with lighting. Remember you do pay for all those little options. And they are electric users.

I won’t go into the refrigeration as I went into much detail on that on my previous posts. Both mentioning the Sunfrost and the Sundanzer.

It goes without saying that another big saving for any household is to hang your laundry outside. I do that. Even in the snowy cold winter of New York state. It is no big deal to me.  You could use a gas dryer and that would give you some savings but of course there is the price of the fuel and it still does use some electricity as well.

The Staber washing machine is also built with the off the grid family in mind. It is a simply designed machine with under 200 watts running power. With only a larger surge at the start of the spin cycle which means that 165 watts per load is way less than any other regular washing machine uses. It’s a double plus as it uses less than half as much water per load as other machines as well. Spins faster than others too. That  gives you a savings in more energy in faster drying on the clothes line or in your dryer. So if you do alot of wash each week this is a very good option.

There are some appliances that consume your power twenty-four hours a day even when you think they are turned off. Televisions, stereos, office equipment, garage door openers and many, many others. These appliances, really need to turned off when you are not using them. By turned off, I mean the plug pulled out, or on a outlet strip that is turned off. Remember little things count when you are trying to cut your usage back or to switch over to your own alternative energy system. Now YOU are in charge!

Copyright © 2009 Kathleen G. Lupole

Powered By KG Lupole LLC

Tags: Alternative Energy | off-the-grid | solar