We’ve all become so accustomed to using appliances whenever we need to that most of us don’t stop to consider the enormous amount of energy they pull. Sometimes the appliances get used for the sake of convenience, and if it seems like there’s no way around it, the vacuum, dishwasher, TV, or even the dryer can stay on for far longer than they need to be. But all of those extra minutes add up to extra dollars, and most of the time it means more carbon being released into the atmosphere.
Luckily, Energy Circle has a solution to this problem, and they’re proving its usefulness with a public display of their President’s home energy usage in graph format. According to the blog posts and tweets that line up with the power surges, the family has even encouraged the kids to start saving energy and unplugging appliances when they’re not in use by offering the kids 50% of the energy savings that they contribute to.
The point of this year long exercise that started on Earth Day is to show how drastically a single appliance can affect your energy consumption, and how easy it is for a household to cut back on its overall usage. The Energy Circle family is using TED – The Energy Detective – in its studies, with a visual output in the kitchen so everyone can see what’s going on throughout the house.
If it sounds like something your household could benefit from, check out Energy Circle’s open source solution to wiring your home with TED, and see what kind of a difference you and your family can make.
