The Accidental Environmentalist

Ok, I admit it, I’m obsessed. I can’t stop checking up on it. My charges keep racking up. No matter how hard I try, my family keeps working against me.The best I can do is tread water. It’s the wee hour of the morning, I’ve done all I can do.

What am I talking about? I just purchased TED. The Energy Detective. It’s a little device that wires into your circuit breaker panel that allows you to monitor your power consumption in real time.

As soon as I was able to install and configure it (without reading the manual of course), I noticed that we were consuming 2.6 kilowatts of energy and the Heat Pump was not even working. Ouch, that’s the equivalent of 26, 100 watt incandescent light bulbs burning in your house.

I took immediate action. I whizzed around the house looking for anything that “glowed”. I unplugged the plethora of wall warts that have invaded my electrical outlets. I turned off lights, computers, unplugged coffee pots, printers, night lights. With each “Victory” I ran downstairs to see what effect I had. Just when I figured that I had done all I could do, I noticed a blue light behind a computer I had just turned off. It was the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), which admittedly is a good idea, However this particular unit was drawing 200 watts without the computer even being turned on.

TED was still displaying 1.6 KW. The family was watching American Idol on our 50″ plasma TV. I refrained from turning it off immediately but later I found that it was drawing 800 Watts. My next investment is going to be a coin slot for the television so that we all understand what the real costs are.

I installed TED on one of our kitchen counters, the next day I noticed that my wife had been paying attention to it.

VICTORY!!!!, That’s it. I’m all in. Compact Fluorescent light bulbs, Energy Star rated appliances, High Efficiency Heating and Cooling equipment, whatever it takes. You can’t measure what you can’t see.

Every homeowner needs to invest in energy monitoring. It pays!