Tag Archives: Saving
Green Tax Incentives Save Your Business While Saving The Planet
While the federal government may be dragging its heels on environmental issues, California tax incentives aimed toward encouraging reduced energy consumption and cleaner, less polluting operation are allowing the Golden State to forge ahead. Green energy tax incentives ? sometimes known as ?eco credits? – can save California business owners and entrepreneurs considerably at tax time. The term ?eco credits? can be somewhat misleading; these are not actually ?credits,? but deductions. Under California’s green energy tax incentives, you can deduct up to 40% of the cost of any energy-saving technology that you install in your place of business. For example, if you spend $1,000 installing solar panels, you can deduct $400 of that from your business tax bill for that year. This is just one of the many eco credits that may be available to you. California energy credits are often overlooked even by savvy businessmen. It’s no surprise; as you well know, state and federal tax codes are anything but simple. It’s why you definitely want the services of a certified public accountant when it’s time to file who can help you understand which green tax incentives may apply to you and your business as well as how to best take advantage of them. You may not know that California is actually leading the world when it comes to renewable methods of generating electric energy. The good people in Sacramento want to keep it that way, which is why California energy credits have been passed into law; these green tax incentives, which are combined with environmental regulations, have not only helped our native industries to prosper; they have resulted in a cleaner state.
An easy way to saving energy and water
With increasing pressure to save energy and water, homeowners can sometimes sacrifice the use of a bath, for the more stringent shower. When deciding whether to install a bath or a shower you may want to consider which of the two saves more water. Taking a shower instead of a bath is a commonly known money/energy saving tip. To save water through shower usage depends on the time you spend in the shower and how quickly the shower head dispenses water. A typical bathtub requires about 30 gallons for a bath. A standard shower head will flow about 3 gallons per minute. In five minutes, this uses only 15 gallons of water. Using a low-flow shower head can cut the total water usage to less than ten gallons saving thousands of gallons of water per year. Depending on your showerhead and whether it has a flow restrictor in it and how long you shower, the answer could oscillate either towards shower or bath. There are two types of low-flow shower heads: aerating and non-aerating. Aerating – mixes air into the water stream. This maintains steady pressure so the flow has an even, full shower spray. Because air is mixed in with the water, the water temperature can cool down a bit towards the floor of the shower. Aerating shower heads are the most popular type of low-flow shower head. Non-aerating – air is not mixed into the water stream. This maintains temperature well and delivers a strong spray. The water flow pulses with non-aerating shower heads, giving more of a massaging showerhead effect. You must evaluate the situation carefully when deciding to replace a bath tub with a shower. In certain circumstances replacing a bath tub with a shower can devalue a property. This depends on the market the property appeals to. If it is a 1 or 2 bedroom house, then the market may lie in couples, first-time buyers or investors. With these sorts of purchasers, the property would not be likely to devalue as showers are a suitable alternative to baths. Larger properties, however, would benefit from bigger bathroom features such as baths or hot tubs. While replacing the bath with a shower cubicle may not affect the value for young couples and investors, it is essential to finish the bathroom to a high standard, as this will definitely affect the value of the property. So, whichever route you take with regards to your bathroom, plan the layout well and finish the job with quality and precision. If space is the issue, then flexibility of choice can be limited depending on the size and shape of the bathroom.
Achieving Mood Lighting and Saving Energy – are Fluorescent Lights Dimmable?
Dimmer switches can give a more relaxed feel to your home, and save you energy as well. But with the increasing prevalence of compact fluorescent lights or CFLs, many people are wondering what options they have for using a dimmer with these lights – or whether it saves more electricity to use a regular CFL, or to use incandescent or halogen bulbs on a dimmer switch. Let’s start by putting to rest some misconceptions people have over the relative energy use of fluorescent, incandescent, and halogen bulbs. Many homeowners put in halogen bulbs, starting in the 1990′s, on the mistaken idea that these lights are more efficient than incandescent lights. In fact their energy efficiency is pretty much the same as that of incandescents. So don’t think you’re saving energy by using them. CFLs, meanwhile, are very efficient – it takes about one fourth as much electricity to light up a CFL as to light up an incandescent or halogen lamp with the same light output. They also happen to last about eight times longer than incandescent lights. So if you are using a dimmer primarily to save power, you might be better off just switching your incandescent or halogen lights to CFLs, and keeping the dimmer switch on full, or going back to a standard on-off switch. That will give you more light for less power. If you want a more mellow lighting all the time, one way is to put in light bulbs that aren’t as bright. Whether you go down from, for example, a 100 watt incandescent to a 60 watt incandescent bulb, or down from a 100 watt incandescent bulb to an 18 watt CFL, you’ll still get less light and you’ll use less electricity. Of course, the CFL solution will save you much more electricity in the long run. But chances are you want the best of both worlds: the low running cost and better durability of CFL bulbs, with the flexibility to dim them when you don’t need their full light. You may have heard that you cannot put a regular CFL on a regular dimmer switch. In fact you can, but it is not recommended, because it can really reduce the life of the bulb. There is no increased risk of explosion or fire from installing a regular CFL on a standard dimmer switch – you’ll only increase the risk of shortened bulb life. And since the higher price of CFL bulbs is offset by the fact that they outlive incandescent bulbs by a ratio of 8 to 1, putting regular CFLs on a standard dimmer destroys that cost advantage. If you choose to dim CFLs, you have two real options: buy a special dimmer switch that is compatible with CFLs, or buy dimmable CFLs that are designed to work with standard dimmers. Both choices leave you with the energy-saving advantages of CFLs, as well as the ability to dim those CFLs. But for now at least, dimmable CFLs seem like the more affordable option, because fluorescent-compatible dimmer switches are prohibitively expensive, while the price difference between standard and dimmable compact fluorescents is miniscule. Let’s consider the total cost for both options, for a fixture with three 60-watt light bulbs. Let’s assume you already have a standard dimmer switch and regular incandescent light bulbs. If you want to upgrade to CFLs, your choices are: 1. Installing three 13-watt standard CFLs at $3 a piece, and a $49 fluorescent dimmer switch. Total cost: $58. 2. Going for three 13-watt dimmable CFLs at $3.50 a piece, and use the existing dimmer. Total cost: $10.50! As you can tell, using an existing dimmer switch is a more affordable alternative. Since both options use the same amount of energy, in terms of payback period the solution with dimmable compact fluorescent lights is definitely much shorter. Even if you need to buy a dimmer switch because you don’t have one, it still makes sense to go with a standard switch and dimmable CFLs. You can get a standard dimmer switch for under $10. Even a fashionable one for $25 is more affordable than a fluorescent dimmer at $49. And with the cost gap between standard and dimmable CFLs so small, the only way a fluorescent dimmer switch will be cost competitive is if its price drops substantially, which it probably will over the coming years. If your only motive for using a dimmer switch with CFLs is to save money, and you don’t already have a regular dimmer switch, I would suggest you stay with basic CFLs and forego the dimmer switch. Use the money you save on the dimmer switch to buy more CFLs for other areas of your house. Dimmer switches resulted in major savings for incandescent or halogen fixtures because the bulbs were so wasteful. For example, my rec room has six 50-watt bulbs on a dimmer switch. By using the dimmer at about half power, we use 150 watts instead of the full 300 watts. Assuming an hour on each day, that would save 150 x 365 watts, or 55 kilowatt hours a year. But if we were to switch those halogen bulbs to 13-watt dimmable CFLs, we’d save 81 kilowatt hours a year at their full strength. By turning them down to half, we’d only save an extra 13 kilowatt hours a year – that’s about $1.30 worth of electricity. Not really enough to make it worth considering this alternative. Consumer response to dimmable CFLs has been less than overwhelmingly positive. There were certainly some teething issues with these lights – early burn-out, flashing light, and loud buzzing noises. These problems have been pretty much resolved in the more recent dimmable compact fluorescents. But if there isn’t a strong motivation for you to dim your CFLs, I would recommend sticking with standard compact fluorescents for a year, until the market offers a wider range of choices for dimmable fluorescent lights. Who knows – in a year or two, fluorescent dimmer switches could be as cheap as standard dimmers. Robin Green owns Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people save energy in their homes. Go to this website for help on cutting your energy use on heating, cooling, lighting, and other household activities. For more on compact fluorescent bulbs, see the dimmable compact fluorescent bulbs page and the CFL savings calculator.
Is Your Old Refrigerator Running Optimally? Tips On Saving Energy In The Kitchen
Unless your fridge is so old or worn out that you’ve already chosen to replace it with an energy efficient fridge, you really should do a simple assessment of whether the fridge is running well. Issues such as how often and for how long the compressor motor runs, whether there’s frost in the freezer section, how good your door seals are, and the temperature range of the freezer and fridge sections, can all impact your refrigerator energy use. Begin by simply trying to remember how frequently you hear the motor going. Does it seem to be going continuously, or is the refrigerator usually silent? Does the compressor seem to keep switching on and off (short periods of running time, then short rests)? During times of the day when the fridge door stays shut (for example overnight), the pattern of energy use for energy saving fridges is typically that of short periods with the motor working, interspersed with much longer periods of the compressor motor resting. If that’s how your fridge behaves, you’re off to a good start. If the compressor motor is going nearly all the time, there may be issues with the gasket seal, or cobwebs on the coils, or the fridge may be in an enclosed area so that the heat the motor is working to extract from the interior has nowhere to escape to. You may just have an old refrigerator with an inefficient compressor motor, which translates into less heat extracted for a given amount of electricity input, or you might have substandard insulation in the fridge walls, so that more heat flows in through the fridge sides. Or you might have set the temperature too low in either the refrigerator or the freezer compartment. Next look for ice build-up in the freezer compartment. Fast or heavy frost build-up in a manual-defrost freezer is usually an indication that warm, moist air is getting into the freezer section. You could have a poor seal on the freezer compartment, which allows cold air to escape through the seal, and warm, moist air to enter in its place. It takes more power to extract heat from moist air than from dry air, so you win on two fronts by eliminating air leaks. Even if you have a great seal, you should defrost a manual-defrost freezer regularly. You should never let more than a quarter inch of ice form on the compartment walls, as it makes the compressor motor work harder. Check your refrigerator and freezer compartment gaskets to make sure you have a good seal. The standard test is the dollar-bill check. Open the refrigerator or freezer door so that you can slide a dollar bill halfway in, then close the door. If the bill stays tightly in place when you pull, the seal is fine in that part of the gasket. Do the same at several other points along the gasket. If at any point the bill slides out, or moves freely, try moving the bill along the seal in each direction until it sticks. That should give you an idea of how big each leak is. You can sometimes solve gasket leaks by cleaning the gasket to remove any residue that might prevent a good seal. But if there are gaps and the gasket is clean, you really should replace the seal. Your refrigerator may pass the dollar bill test even though the gasket is letting in air – if the gasket is cracked. Cracks can open up in the thin part of the gasket where it attaches to the door. Run your finger along the gasket feeling for rips, all the way around each door. If you’re a DIY type, gaskets can be fairly cheap to replace. I bought a new gasket for my refrigerator five years ago and with no previous instruction had it on the door within a half hour. And an appliance repair person can install one even faster, especially if you tell them to bring a replacement gasket with them when you call them. So if your gasket is leaking or too rigid to provide a good seal, get it replaced. What are the ideal temperatures for your fridge and freezer sections? The last thing to look at in your do-it-yourself fridge assessment is the temperature in each compartment of your refrigerator. You can use either a standard glass thermometer or an electronic probe thermometer to do this. Place the thermometer (or the probe portion, for an electronic thermometer) in a jar half-filled with liquid (a pickle jar does nicely), and leave it in the compartment for a full 24 hours. (Make sure the jar is only half filled with liquid for the freezer compartment, so the freezing doesn’t break the jar. Don’t open the unit for at least an hour before you do your 24-hour measurement. Check the temperature on the thermometer. For the fridge compartment, you should strive for 39F or 40F (or 4C). For the freezer temperature, go for 5F (or -15C). If the refrigerator temperature or freezer temperature is lower than this, you are wasting energy cooling your food more than necessary. Remember that for chest or upright freezers, where frozen food tends to be kept longer than in the freezer compartment of refrigerators, you want a somewhat lower freezer temperature of 0F or -17C. If the compartment is not at the ideal setting, adjust the thermostat in the appropriate section up or down by just a small amount. Then wait another 24 hours and take a second reading. It’s best to tweak the thermostat a little at a time, until you reach the ideal refrigerator temperature. Once you reach that ideal setting, you can use a permanent marker to draw a line on the thermostat dial, so you have a reference point. It’s not a given that this will always give you the ideal temperature (thermostats can be finicky) but if you subsequently notice that the line is far from the front, you’ll know to measure the temperature once more. It’s important to measure your refrigerator temperature (both compartments) on a monthly basis, or at least, if you have already checked it and have marked the position of the thermostat dial, to see that the dial hasn’t moved. It’s easy for these dials to get turned inadvertently, or on purpose by little hands, and if the temperature varies far from the proper settings of 40F for the fridge section or 5F for the freezer section, you either risk food spoilage or a higher electricity bill. Robin Green owns Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people find ways to use less energy at home. For more on saving electricity with your fridge, see Energy saving refrigerators and Energy efficient freezers on Green Energy Efficient Homes.
Saving Energy Through Energy Efficient Curtains, Shades, and Other Window Coverings
If your windows are ancient and aren’t doing a passable job of keeping heat inside your home in winter (or keeping it out in warm weather), maybe it is time to consider having new, energy saving windows put in. But new windows, especially good quality energy efficient ones, can be prohibitively expensive. This means that it can take a long time for them to pay for themselves in energy savings. For the amount of cash you would pay to replace the windows in a single big room, you can achieve almost the same energy savings with some basic weather stripping and by using energy efficient window coverings to eliminate heat transfer between your home and the out of doors. Let’s first review how windows keep the cold out in winter, and the hot out in summer. Windows reduce heat transfer in three ways: convection, conduction, and radiation. Windows stop or reduce convection airflow between a room and the exterior, blocking heat from passing through the window along with the airflow. A leaky window, or one with cracks in the glass or broken putty, allows air through these openings, so heat gets out in winter, and heat sneaks in during hot weather. Even the thinnest sheet of glass has some insulating properties, but if the glass is double-glazed and the space between the panes is an inert gas such as argon, the panes provide extra insulating value, which reduces heat transfer through conduction. Conduction is the type of heat transfer that causes the metal handle of a pot to heat up when you boil water in the pot; so you can imagine that a metal window frame, if not properly built, can conduct a lot of heat. Although you can’t readily add extra glass panes to a window, there are other techniques to create extra still air spaces between the window glass and the room, which will increase insulation and reduce conduction transfers. Radiation, the third type of heat transfer, usually happens when sunlight in the infrared spectrum travels through windows, heating the air inside, or when infrared radiation inside the room radiates out through the glass. Home energy auditors can actually take infrared photos of a house to illustrate where heat losses are most significant, and windows are often among the greatest sources of heat escaping from houses in winter. How does knowing about heat transfer through convection, conduction, and radiation help you cut energy losses through your windows? The first issue to tackle is convection. If your windows have broken panes, get them repaired. If you still have the old wood-framed windows with putty holding the glass in, check the pane for any peeling or missing putty. It’s fairly straightforward to pry cracked putty out with a putty knife and put a fresh layer on in its place. If the wood of the window itself is rotten, or if the glass is hard to get out for replacing, you may not be able to avoid getting new windows, but if you can cut the minor air leaks, you’ll have accomplished a lot towards minimizing energy losses and should feel some relief in your heating and cooling bills. You might be surprised to know how much heat can travel out of a house in winter through the wood trim around a window. Just wait for a really cold day, put all the exhaust fans on in your house( kitchen range vent, bathroom exhaust fans, etc.), and run your fingers along the edges of window and exterior door trim on the inside of rooms. Anywhere you feel cold air coming in, you have a draft that should be sealed. It probably doesn’t hurt to run a thin bead of clear or white caulking around window and door frames to cut this convection heat transfer. The final thing to try to minimize convection heat losses is to use tape-on or Zip-Loc type window kits to close off any windows that are very drafty, or windows that really should be replaced but that can’t be replaced because of your budget (or because you are renting the place). These window insulation kits are a good way to rapidly cut your heating losses in winter: the kits normally come with several sheets of 3 by 5 foot clear plastic, and a roll of double sided tape. (If you have many windows to cover you should purchase a 48″ roll of the plastic and get the tape separately as you’ll pay far less than buy buying several kits.) You measure and cut plastic rectangles slightly bigger than the window, run the tape around the window frame, remove the protective tape from the double sided tape, and then place the cut plastic over the window, sealing along the tape line. Blow dry the window plastic for five minutes, and it shrinks to form a tight, flat extra pane of ‘glass’ that is practically unnoticeable. This plastic can hold its flat shape for weeks, although you may find it needs an occasional short blow dryer blast to pull up the odd wrinkle in the plastic. The next problem you’ll want to tackle is conduction – heat being drawn through the solid materials of the window. In terms of energy saving window coverings, your goal here isn’t really to stop this conduction – you can’t usually change the materials the window is made of – but to add barrier layers between the window and the room to slow that conduction down. The plastic window insulation kits stop convection heat loss by eliminating drafts into the room, but they also eliminate conduction, by providing a layer of still air between the room and the window. A curtain can accomplish a similar task: when closed, the curtain traps a small amount of air between the curtain and the window, so that on a cold day the air behind the curtain naturally gets cold but the room itself stays cozy. When you put curtains on a window to reduce conduction heat transfer, you need to consider convection currents within the living area. Hot air rises, and cold air falls, so if you install curtains you should ensure that the air currents are blocked, preferably at both the top and bottom of the curtain or blind. Otherwise, in cold weather, the cold window will cool the air between the window and the window covering, and that colder air will fall down onto the floor, drawing warm air from above the window covering down in front of the window in a continuous cycle. In summer, the flow runs backwards, with the air between the curtain and the window warming from sunlight, flowing up out the top opening, and drawing cool room air up towards the glass where it gets heated. You can stop these air flows by having the window covering flush with the wall at the top and bottom, or by having the bottom touch the floor and by closing in the curtain rod area at the top. If you have cloth blinds that cover the window frame, you can use Velcro tabs along the sides of the blinds that you then press into Velcro tape along the window frame; this completely seals the air space between the window and the blind, providing an excellent insulation barrier. Cloth blinds as well as curtains can use a similar technique but with magnetic tape in the fabric, and metal along the framing, so that the window covering sticks to the walls on either side of and below the opening. Another method you can try to add an insulation barrier to conduction through the window is to buy cellular blinds, which are made in a honeycomb or cellular cross section, or other blinds that incorporate a hollow space within the blind (for example, air-foil shaped blinds). Cellular blinds when fully retracted take up almost no space and the cells are empty; when extended, they can add insulating value from R-2 (for single-cell blinds) to R-5 (for double-cell). Window blinds can help address the third type of heat transfer, radiation, by preventing heat from radiating across the window pane (into the house from sunshine in summer, and towards the outside from the radiant heat inside in winter). The most effective blinds use light, reflective colors on the outside, so that sunlight is more or less completely reflected away from the room. Good blinds can reflect enough solar energy away from the window to reduce heat transfer by up to 45%, but they do very little to the R-value of the window, so have little effect in winter. Roller shades, which have a spring mechanism and can be pulled up or down (we used to call these blinds when I was young) are a great barrier against radiation, and also provide good insulation to reduce convection air flows around the window that lead to conduction losses through the pane or frame. Roller shades, because they are placed so close to the glass, are better at reducing convection currents, especially if their sides and bottom are attached to the window frame (for example, by using side tracks). Unsecured shades can cut heat exchange by as much as 28%, while secured-edge shades cut it up to 45%. Shades that can be reversed, with one side dark and the other light, are ideal, because the light side can reflect the heat where you want it (outside in summer, inside during winter). Awnings and overhangs are a good way to cut direct light from entering a room and heating it up in summer. Because the solar angle is lower in the winter, these window coverings only block the sunlight you don’t want, letting the lower-angled winter sun warm your home. Storm windows – which are found on many older homes – can be up to 50% more energy efficient than single-pane windows, provided the storms are sealed against drafts. So if you have old wood-framed storms sitting around in your basement or garage, you should use them each fall and take them down once winter has passed. If you have aluminum framed storms you can typically leave them up all year long; just don’t forget to close the glass during the winter. Windows make up such a small percentage of the surface area of a home, yet they are among the biggest potential sources of energy waste in a house being heated or air conditioned. So it’s important to do anything you can to limit heat exchange through convection, conduction, and radiation. Just remember to set aside a portion of the money you save on lowered utility bills, so you can replace any worn-out, leaky windows with new, energy efficient ones when the time comes. Robin Green owns Green-Energy-Efficient-Homes.com, a website that helps people find ways to use less energy at home. For more on energy saving window coverings, see Energy saving window coverings on Green Energy Efficient Homes.
Green Energy Revolution: Energy Saving Devices
World today is experiencing energy revolution. Environmental issues are catching up and with the increased emphasis placed on preserving the environment we all need to play our roles in saving energy. By saving energy, we can definitely take a positive step in fighting the climate change and in preserving non-renewable sources of energy. Let us look at some devices and measures that can help us conserve energy and replace non renewable sources with renewable sources of energy. Many companies are now providing customer-focused energy equipments like Energy savers, Utility Instruments, Level Controllers, Control Panels and Process Control Equipments etc. Various products that are now placed in the shelves of the store and that help in energy revolution and conservation are: ?Integrated Intelligent Home System: This provides you with home security, control, automation and communication related features. One can control and monitor their home and office security along with controlling the home appliances and lighting from any telephone, keypad, handheld remote control system, computer or the internet. The products have outstanding remote communication features which can allow you to communicate with visitors when they are still at office doors, you can send them your messages and can also hear their messages. In case there is alarm notification, you can listen to different sounds and the activity present in the surroundings. ?Light and Air -conditioner Energy Saver: These devices are normally very easy to install and help to save energy directly. They can adjust the temperature by automatically realizing the self-motion adjustment. They do not connect to any circuitry in the AC. They have stable capacities and do not get affected by fluctuations in external temperature. Trouble from these energy saver devices do not harm or affect the functioning of your equipment in any way. The devices are shock proof and help you reduce your power requirement by minimum 20%. ?Green Energy Products Today, you would find an array of Green products in the market. Green products and appliances include energy saving appliances and devices for your office and home, windows/doors utilizing solar energy and household products built out of eco-friendly materials. Fluorescent light bulbs are another light saving devices utilizing minimum amount of electricity per watt. All these energy saver products positively influence the environment and reduce the energy and electricity costs. They also reduce the emission of pollutants in the long-term. Other products like energy saving remote control made out of plastic are also available for saving energy in your day to day use. Benefits of using Energy saving & Intelligent Products: ?Uses 75% to 80% less electricity. ?Cost less and work too well ?Reduce dependence on coal and petroleum ?Help to address concerns of global warming ?Reduce the gasoline and electricity bills ?Reduce the green house gas emission levels Overall, reduced energy usage means that the need to go for building new transmission lines, infrastructure and other related devices can be delayed and prolonged. Hence, one can defer the environmental concerns and issues, if not have complete removal. All the energy saving programs and devices will reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions made by coal utilizing power plants. Emissions up to an average of around 2.1 billion pounds per year can be saved for around 20 years So, when we are aware of these things, why not head on the way to conserving energy! Carol Oon writes articles on ai home automation. Other information written by Carol Oon related to ai automation control, ai integrated intelligent control and ai intelligent control can be found on the web.