Do you need more space for a growing family? One of the tradeoffs to buying a larger home is having to pay more in utility costs for heating, cooling and other appliance use. However, advances in energy efficiency mean that you can offset some of that increased consumption. That means you save money and worry less about your energy use, even if you just bought the mansion you always dreamed of.

Bigger Houses and Bigger Households

We like our homes bigger. The average American home size has grown  20 percent since 1980, and we've been filling those homes with ever more electricity-dependent devices, like televisions, computers and household appliances. Fortunately, over 70 percent of the growth in household and building size has been offset by efficiency improvements, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Total energy use by U.S. households inched up each year between 1980 and 2009, the EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey reports. That is because of various reasons, including more households, larger households and a trend toward bigger houses. However, consumption per square foot actually dropped by 37 percent during that time period -- and if it hadn't, the total increase would have been considerably higher.

Residential energy accounted for 21 percent of total U.S. consumption in 2012 so the cumulative savings are significant. The numbers are astronomical -- residential usage increased from 9.3 quadrillion BTUs (British thermal units) in 1980 to 10.2 quadrillion by 2012 -- and without additional efficiency measures the total would have increased by another 3.6 quadrillion BTUs.

Multifaceted Efficiency Efforts

There are numerous factors driving the efficiency revolution: Stricter consumer appliance standards, local building codes geared toward efficiency and federal tax credits, in addition to awareness outreach programs and labeling efforts like the federal Energy Star program have all contributed to the reduction in consumption per square foot.

If you want to save the most energy, smaller is always better when it comes to houses. There's less space to heat and less to cool. However, if you need the extra space, take heart knowing that technological and behavioral improvements mean that a large house doesn't gobble up nearly as much energy as you might expect.

For more ideas on how to decrease your consumption, ask a home services expert to evaluate your home. He or she can help you find new ways to save no matter the size of your home.

Call local Mister Sparky® for more energy efficiency tips and advice. We're always here to help!

A home battery can solve a lot of problems. With enough storage, you can buy electricity when it's cheapest, then dole it out when you need it. Plus, you'll be protected in case of a blackout. Until very recently, the technology for a practical home battery system wasn’t powerful enough to keep the average home humming. However, several companies are now producing or developing home batteries that can change the way we power our residential electrical work.

High Generating Costs at the Margins

Many areas of the country are shifting toward variable time-of-day pricing models for utilities, in which electricity typically costs more during the day and less at night. Utilities want to incentivize daytime conservation because they need to meet the demand at any given time or risk brownouts. Since demand is much higher during the day, utility companies needs to bring on extra generating equipment, which is expensive. The more they can smooth out demand so they can produce similar amounts of electricity around the clock, the lower the overall costs will be.

That's where batteries come in. There's no way around consuming more power during the day – that's when Americans typically use their electrical work to power air conditioning, televisions, computers and other appliances. However, with enough home storage capacity, you can purchase electricity at night and store it in your home battery until you need it. That way, you pay less, the utility can ameliorate its variable demand problem, and everybody wins.

Competition Hits the Market

Tesla Motors was one of the first companies in the home battery field with its Powerwall, but now other competitors are swiftly preparing to hit the market. Currently, LG Chem and Samsung SDI are working on their own battery models, with LG Chem's product projected to be available in North America before the end of the year.

Globally, the home battery market could grow nearly tenfold, from $388 million today to $3.2 billion by 2020, according to Business Korea. The home battery field is poised to grow hand-in-hand with that of batteries for electric cars, since the technologies have a lot of overlap – in fact, some experts project that electric cars themselves will soon serve a second function as an energy storage unit for your home. They won't be as practical as stand-alone batteries for many families, since the cars are liable to be away from home during the day when the electricity is needed, but they can add capacity in an emergency.

A Helping Hand for Your Storage Capacity

We're just at the start of what promises to be a revolution in home energy storage options. For more information about what home batteries are available in your area, or if you need any other residential electrical work, contact an expert electrician today.

CRI) of 82 to show the true colors of objects and surroundings.

A rocker switch allows for two levels of light, but the fixture can also be dimmed with an electronic low-voltage (ELV) dimmer. Up to 10 under-cabinet fixtures can be joined in a series with our interconnect cables. The low-profile white aluminum fixture has 120V AC operation and is designed to last 30,000 hours—three times longer than equivalent fluorescent fixtures.

How many light bulbs have you changed in your lifetime? It’s a simple action, and often one that we don’t put much thought into, but what if the simple act of changing a light bulb could make a profound impact on the environment, and the well-being of future generations?  As experienced www.EnergyStar.gov:

“If every American home replaced just one light bulb with a light bulb that’s earned the ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light 3 million homes for a year, save about $600 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to those from about 800,000 cars.”

Think about the changes that you can make by simply replacing the outdated incandescent bulbs in your home as they burn out with one of the Alternative Lighting Solutions below. Here are some details on a couple of the most popular Alternative Lighting Solutions available.

Compact Fluorescent Lamp: Modern CFL bulbs for use in homes consist of a curved fluorescent tube and electronic ballast in a single unit, designed as a direct replacement for standard blubs. They use 3-4 times less power than comparable incandescent bulbs. These are great options to replace your standard light bulbs, but they do have a few small drawbacks. According to an article by PopularMechanics.com, while CFL’s do have a much longer lifespan than standard bulbs, they often lose some of their brightness long before their expected lifespan is up, and this is increased in fixtures that don’t allow for efficient cooling of the ballast located in the base of the bulb. Another documented fact about CFL bulbs is that they do contain mercury, which means that they must be disposed of properly by taking them your local approved recycling center. You wouldn’t throw a battery out with the daily trash would you? So you shouldn’t throw these out either.

Light Emitting Diodes: LED’s are a form of “solid state” lighting that have become available recently to homeowners as an incandescent and CFL replacement. Using small light emitting diodes mounted directly to circuit boards, these are highly efficient, and have fewer parts prone to failure, allowing for an expected realistic lifespan of 20,000 to 30,000 hours, when operated at recommended temperatures. While initial costs for these bulbs are higher than incandescent and CFL options, long term energy savings are where this alternative lighting option truly shines, with the average LED bulb using approximately 12-17% of the energy that it takes to run an incandescent bulb of similar output, the end result is a bulb that costs drastically less to power over time.

As a point of comparison, here is a simple chart of the energy usage of LED and CFL bulbs compared to incandescent bulbs, and the output associated with them:

Lighting technology has changed a lot in the past decade, and it is pretty amazing to see what could be on the horizon for future lighting innovations. Take this for example. While most homes will never need this amount of output, it’s pretty impressive to see that something the size of a Christmas tree light, like this plasma bulb, can put out more light, more efficiently, than the giant bulbs that we use in street lamps!

The great thing about these changes is that they aren’t something that requires a huge change in your lifestyle, so they are some of the easiest ways possible to help the environment, and lower electric bills while you are at it!

About ElectricMan Inc.

Modern day living is highly reliant on the use of electricity and the different appliances, equipment and fixtures it powers. Industries are even more reliant on electricity and their profitability is closely knit with how seamlessly their systems operate. They rely on electricity to such an extent that they rarely give it a second thought; well, at least not until something goes wrong such as:

Most of these problems can be attributed to poor power factor. Let’s understand a little more about what that is.

Power factor is essentially a measure of how effectively the incoming power is being used by the electrical equipment on your premises. It is expressed in terms of a numerical value in the range of 0-1. A higher power factor indicates that the electrical equipment is being used more effectively.

For instance, if the power factor is 0.8, it indicates that 80% of the power supply to the equipment is being utilised effectively and that 20% is being wasted. Regardless of what this ratio of effective usage Vs wastage is, the latter is an unnecessary expense. Typically, your power factor should be closer to 1; it indicates that your site is using energy in an efficient manner.

A number of businesses are currently being charged a kVA tariff and not a kilowatt tariff. This means, your service provider is probably charging you for the power they supply to you, rather than that you actually use. Simply put, you are paying for power that is being supplied to you, but which is being wasted. If your business has a low power factor, it means you pay even more for this waste. There is another aspect you should keep in view. As mentioned at the start, poor power factor has the potential to cause power drops and power losses; in turn, these lead to motor failure and overheating and failure of other equipment too.

Installation of Power Factor Correction equipment might just help avoid prohibitively expensive infrastructure upgrades; it does this by reducing the current electrical demand on your system & improving the efficiency stability. Based on which tariff you are on, power correction might just prove to be an excellent way for your business to deescalate its electricity costs.

The power factor can be improved by installing Capacitor Banks. These are PFC (Power Factor Correction) equipment and help correct the inefficiencies in the energy supply. Apart from this, they also reduce the peak demand on the power network. This is an effective and cost-effective solution to reduce your power bill as it helps lower the monthly demand and the capacity charges. Generally, the payback periods for PFC are between 1 and 3 years. Taking the life span of the PFC equipment into consideration & the potential savings, this investment can prove to be very worthwhile for you.

If you feel that you are paying too much for electricity, we at Allround Electrical can conduct a survey of the equipment used on your site and map their electrical consumption against the power your plant is using and is being charged for. We will then provide you a report of what your power factor is; and if it is low, how it can be corrected. For more information, call us at 1300 169 263. You can also drop us a line via email.

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