Rants of A Coyote

The goal of this article is to show, using dollar value, savings (Or lack thereof) of different energy "saving" techniques. Since there are many techniques, I will be covering Thermostat Setting, Thermal Drapes and CFL Bulbs in this post.

Thermostats

Most of us want to save money on our utilities, but also want to live comfortably. I believe that this can be done very well within reason. First off: Lets start with the common energy hog:  Home heating/cooling.  Different sources range the amount of money that you save anywhere from 15-20% for 5 degrees to 5% for every 1 degree as what you will save by lowering/rising your thermostat. For this exercise, lets assume 3% per Degree.

Example Model: You live in a place in the winter and like to have your place at 72 degrees and 68 in the summer. Fairly common, yes? Now, many newer place have forced air heating/cooling, but lets just say that you have electric forced air heating (Not Natural Gas) and electric cooling as well, and that your electric bill runs about $150/mo. You have standard plastic blinds installed in your place.  Fairly common these days, especially in apartments.

Lets go about saving money! Just by being forceful and telling our bodies to accept a new "Comfort Level", lets start by reversing out winter/summer temperatures.  68 in the winter, 72 in the summer. Using our 3% per degree rule that we already established, we find that we should be saving about $18/mo, or $216 a year.

Thermal Blinds

Next step: Thermal Blinds (AKA Thermal Drapes). I have not tested this myself yet, but I have read on different forums and in user reviews that the average Thermal Blinds help maintain room temperatures by as much as 5% in modern settings, and increase the "Comfort Level" of a room by as much as 5% in addition to the actual 5%.  This is because you will not be feeling the "Draft" of the window as cool or warm seeps through.  Obviously people with the ridiculously expensive and efficient triple pane windows (Like Penguin) already notice huge savings over the long run.

Lets again be conservative and use 3% on each amount. That being the case if your winter comfort level is 72 but you set to 68, thermal blinds should make the room feel closer to 70 degrees while also saving an additional amount of $$ as well. If we want our goal to be a feeling of 72 and account for window drafts, we would want to set our thermostat to 70 in the winter AND Summer.  With this we should still be saving $216/Year.

Wait though, these blinds cost money! How does that affect our savings?  Okay, fair enough... Lets assume you have a large 5'x7' window in your living room and this is the room that you wish to make the most efficient because, well, you spend most of your waking hours here. Heading to my nearest Target (Of course, go to your store of choice, Target is close for me) and start planning...

A simple set up would be equiv. to the following:

• Simple thermal backed drapes. - $17.99 Reg Price, Need 2 so total is $35.98
• Single rod and mounting bars. - $13.99 Reg Price, Need one so total is $13.99

Total Cost: $49.97

This means that over the course of a year we should still see a savings of around $166 ($13.83/mo). Following years would be back up to the $216 amount.

Lighting

Continuing to work with the living room, lets tackle the lighting.  For this I will use the example for 4 standard can lights that normally use 65w Bulbs. If those bulbs are used 8 hrs a day, (and assuming an average of $.10 per KWH) then you would be spending $6.08/mo ($72.96/Yr) on Incandescent lighting in the living room. Now, not taking into consideration all the things about mercury and stuff like that, or the fact that over the life of a bulb that Incandescent bulbs end up producing MORE mercury than CFL, lets add the cost of bulbs: with newer bulbs coming out we will say that the Incandescent bulbs are $.25 ea and CFL are $4 each (CAN Style).  Most CFL are rated around 10,000 hrs, and most Incandescent last about 1000 hrs.

In one year at 8 hrs a day we are just shy of 3000 hrs, or 3 Incandescent bulbs per socket (1 CFL per socket).  So total bulb cost: $16.00 for CFL.

Now go back to energy usage... How much energy do 4 13W CFL's use? $1.26/mo (Or $15.10/Yr)

So taking into account our initial up front investment of $16.00 to replace the bulbs, the total cost for the first year for CFL will be $31.10, so we save $41.86 for the year (or $3.48/Mo).  Following year would be right around $60 savings (About $5/mo)

Overall Savings

So just for these three categories, in the first year we would be saving $17.31/Mo ($207.72 in the first year) and the following years would be close to $23/Mo ($276 a year)

This means that on average we would be saving 15% on the energy bill each month after the first year (11% during the first year)