Do you find energy conservation confusing? You're not alone. According to a recent study, Americans are by-and-large misinformed about what household appliances consume the most electricity. As a result, homeowners who wish to cut down on the energy they use in their home electrical work might find themselves spending time and resources to improve efficiency in areas where they won't see big gains. Read on to learn more about where most of our energy goes and how you can get the biggest payback for your conservation efforts.

The Failings of Cognitive Accessibility

In general, Americans tend to overestimate the amount of power that is devoted to common home devices like computers, television and lighting, while underestimating the amount of energy that is consumed by bigger ticket items like heat, air conditioning and hot water heating. That's because we confuse the amount of time we spend actively using a specific device with how much power it uses.

“Consumers tend to use the frequency with which they think or interact with a given energy source as a proxy for its consumption,” Ohio State University psychology doctoral student Dan Schley, lead author of the study, said to the Washington Post. For example, someone who spends eight hours a day working on a computer might naturally be inclined to think that device is what's driving up the electricity bill.

How to Make Your Actions Count

However, it turns out that the energy consumed by common electronics is dwarfed by what goes into major appliances. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, a whopping 48 percent of energy in the average home goes toward heating and air conditioning. The hot water heater takes the next largest individual chunk, at 17.7 percent. The refrigerator uses 13.7 percent, with all other appliances and electronics accounting for about 21 percent of the total.

The upshot? If you really want to cut back on consumption in your home electrical work, you need to target the biggest guzzlers. That means making interventions like installing smart thermostats, turning down your water heater temperature and beefing up the insulation in your home. The simplest, most effective change that most families can make is to bump the thermostat down a few degrees in the winter and up a few degrees in the summer.

Don't Neglect the Small Stuff

That's not to say you should ignore simple behavioral changes that can save money in other areas of your home electrical work – things like unplugging devices when they aren't in use, installing energy efficient cable boxes, using the power-saving settings on your computer and turning off the lights when you aren't in the room. Just treat these items as the appetizers and desserts of your energy-saving strategy, rather than the main course.

If you need help identifying the largest loads on your home electrical work, arrange for a visit from an expert electrician today.

You only need to type a few words into a search engine to pull up numerous DIY guides for repairing and replacing electrical lighting outlets in your home. Just grab a screwdriver, pliers, and wire cutters and you’re set.

But hold on—do you really know what you’re doing? These DIY guides can be notoriously sketchy, and some depend on you knowing far more about electrical repair than you probably do. Because of the risk of electrical shock and bad wiring that can lead to fires, you should leave the outlet repairs to trained electricians. Outlet shorts and faults are a common cause for household fires (the Electrical Safety Foundation estimates electrical troubles account for 55,000 fires a year), so you should never take such chances.

The benefits of having solar panels installed in your home is well known, but few people understand the way that solar panels work. It won’t make much difference to your daily life to understand photovoltaic cells, but inquiring minds will benefit from this brief discussion. Before you invest in a solar installation, take some time to understand them.

At they’re most basic, photovoltaic cells convert the energy of ultraviolet light into electricity. The sunlight hits the atoms of a semiconductor, most often silicon mixed with a very small amount of phosphorus. The phosphorus is included in the pure silicon crystal because it has an “extra” electron. When hit by sunlight, this electron is “knocked” loose. Should it find an atom lacking an electron, it would come to rest there, but the tight, perfect crystal lattice prevents that. The electron, known as a “free carrier,” continues wandering.

All the electrons excited by sunlight in a solar panel would move around aimlessy if we didn’t provide them any direction. Placing a conductor at either end of a panel allows us to dictate the direction of the electrons away from the panel and towards the batteries that are the next step in the solar installation.

Of course, this is a great reduction of the actual process of converting solar energy into electricity. The reality involves a greater understanding of physics and chemistry. Over the years, science and industry has harnessed the power of this simple interaction between a few molecules and sunlight to greater degrees, until today, when we have a finely tuned grasp on the process. Indeed, solar panels are far more efficient today than they ever have been in the past.

And that is just one of the reasons that today is the perfect time to invest in a solar installation for your home. If you’re eager to understand the power of investing in home solar, give us a call today and let us explore the options with you.

Did you know roughly 1/4 of your electricity bill is used specifically for lighting? With recent changes in lighting technology, we now have the ability to control the costs of our electricity consumption more effectively. Choosing the right light bulbs for your home or business may be confusing with all the different options we have today, so we’ve listed the three most common types in hopes to shed some light on the issue.

Incandescent Bulbs

Incandescent bulbs, the oldest and most common bulbs on the market, are relatively inefficient compared to other bulbs. They work by connecting an electric current that travels through a wire filament, heating up the filament until it illuminates. Unfortunately, up to 90% of the actual energy it consumes produces heat. The cost of each bulb is the lowest compared to other bulb types, but their lifespan is also the shortest, as they only last up to 2 years (based off 3 hours of use / day). With the passing of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, manufacturers are working to produce more efficient incandescent bulbs that produce up to 25% less energy.

Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs)

Distinctive by their bold designs, Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) are the most energy and cost effective bulb type on the market today. An electric current is driven through a tube containing argon, and a small amount of mercury vapor that triggers the actual illumination. CFLs use up to 75% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs, cutting overall electricity costs significantly without producing excess heat. Their lifespan can be pushed up to 9 years, and technically pay for themselves after just 9 months of use, costing less than half as incandesces bulbs for the same amount of light.

Note: research has shown that CFL’s work best when left on for long periods of time, but lose efficiency when turned on and off regularly.  Because of this, it may be best not to use CFL light bulbs in areas like closets where the lights are usually just flipped on then off.

Light Emitting Diodes (LED)

Making an appearance in electronics starting in 1962, Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs), are rapidly taking the lighting industry by storm with its highly effective technology. By connecting a diode to an electrical current, electrodes are triggered within the diode, forcing them to release photons, which we see as light. The up-front costs of LEDs are higher compared to other bulb-types, but ultimately they last up to 25% longer than traditional incandescent bulbs. Manufacturing has increased drastically in recent years, and companies are expected to offer more affordability in the near future. By reducing energy consumption by up to 80%, LEDs pave a direct path to lower electricity bills.

Depending on the aptitude, knowledge, and experience of the homeowner, some electrical work can be conducted as a do it yourself project. It’s important to make sure you don’t get in over your head as an improper electric job can be a nuisance at best or a safety issue at worse, and it nearly always costs more to fix a botched job than to hire a professional to conduct it properly in the first place. Another mistake people make is to have a carpenter or painter who is already working at the house conduct electric work. You would be right to think they probably know how to do light electric work, but because it isn’t legal you have no protection against any damage they cause and your insurance may not recognize a claim made based on unlicensed work.

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