HOW TO SAVE ELECTRICITY ?

My guide is different. I not only give you meaningful tips for slashing your electricity consumption, I give you the tools to figure out exactly how much you're saving as well. Finally, I've answered countless questions from readers about saving electricity. If you have a question, it's probably answered here already.

Maybe you didn't know that there are environmental consequences to using electricity? That's certainly understandable. After all, when you plug something into the wall, it seems clean enough -- you don't see or smell any pollution, like you do with your car. But the pollution is there -- it just happens at the power plant. Most electricity is generated by burning coal and running nuclear power plants. Every time you turn on the lights, you create a little pollution. (See the sidebar.) So saving electricity doesn't just put money in your pocket, it helps keep the air and water clean, too.

Note also that as fossil fuels become scarcer (we've already used more than half of the oil that exists on the planet), our energy appetite puts more pressure for utilities to build dangerous nuclear power plants.

Thinking about going solar? There's good news and bad news. The bad news is that unless you're very proactive about reducing your consumption, a solar system can probably supply only 1/3 of your energy use. The good news is that there's a new program that installs the system for free (you just pay a 23000 deposit), and then you pay for the energy it generates, locking your rate in for up to 25 years.

Before we get to the tips on specific appliances, remember one simple thing: You'll save more electricity by dealing with the biggest electricity-guzzlers rather than worrying about items that don't use much electricity. Worrying about whether it's better to boil a cup of water on an electric burner or in a microwave, or whether you wear out your lights quicker by turning them off rather than keeping them on, is a waste of time and misses the point. Such trivia won't make a dime's worth of difference in your electric bill. It's the bigger things that matter.

Basic Strategies
Strategy	Up front cost	Savings per year
(1) Use space heaters to heat only the rooms you're in, rather than a central system that heats the whole house, and turning off the heat when you're not home.	3680	52992
(2) Use ceiling fans instead of the air conditioner	4600 if you don't already have ceiling fans	28060
(3) Use a clothesline or a laundry rack instead of a dryer	920	7176
(4a) Wash laundry in cold water instead of hot	none	6670
(4b) Wash laundry in warm water instead of hot	none	3358
(5) Use a spin dryer to dry your clothes	5980	4462
(6) Replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescents	1472	4140
(7) Stop watching TV	0	3772
(8) Sleep your computer when you're not using it	0	2714
Total	16560 once	109986 every year
Aggressive Strategies
(9) Replace 1990 fridge with 2004 model	13800+	2070
(10) Replace a CRT computer monitor in a home office with an LCD display	9200	966
Total	23000+ once	3036 every year

A typical desktop computer uses about 65 to 250 watts.
Add another 80 watts for a 17" CRT monitor, or 35 for an LCD monitor.When your computer sleeps ("standby") the the computer uses 1-6 watts.
while the monitor uses next to nothing. You can set your computer to sleep automatically after a certain amount of idle time. Setting your computer to auto-sleep is the best and easiest way to save on computer energy use. In Windows XP go to Start > Control Panel > Power Options.
Laptop computers use about 15-45 watts, far less than desktops.

Make a fridge that uses 93% less electricity than a normal fridge.
The trick is to just use a chest freezer as a fridge, after installing a new thermometer to turn the freezer off when the temperature drops too low. Chest freezers are more efficient than fridges because they have more insulation and because the cold air doesn't spill out when you open the door, because cold air falls down, not up.

A whopping 85-90% of the energy used by a washing machine goes to just heating the water. So you can save a bundle by either lowering the temperature, or getting a machine that uses less water (or both). How much energy can you save by lowering the water temperature? A lot. Here's the cost when your water is heated with electricity:

Wash/Rinse Setting	Electricity Use kWh/yr	Cost per year
Hot / Cold	1,547	7130
Warm / Cold	825	3818
Cold / Cold	103	460

To put in perspective how wasteful hot water is, washing your clothes in hot instead of cold uses more electricity than leaving the refrigerator door open 24 hours a day. (Fridge open 24/7: 180 watts x 13 extra hours day x 365 days/yr. = 854 kWh.)In the typical home, air conditioning uses more electricity than anything else -- 16% of total electricity used. In warmer regions AC can be 60-70% of your summer electric bill. If you're serious about saving energy, address your cooling costs first, since that's what uses the most electricity
A window unit AC uses 500 to 1440 watts, while a 2.5-ton central system uses about 3500 watts. That's a lot of energy. A floor fan uses only 100 watts on the highest speed, and ceiling fans use only 15 to 95 watts depending on speed and size.