Reduce your electricity usage
Dreaming of going off-grid? The first thing you should think about is reducing your consumption of power. I have been told that for every dollar spent inside the house towards reducing power consumption you can decrease the value of the necessary solar system by 3 dollars. Did that make sense? Let's see if I can break that down a little bit; you have 10, 2$ incandescent light bulbs in your house and the solar guy quotes you a 10,000$ system to turn your house to off-grid. You decide to switch out your bulbs for 10$ LED bulbs and ask the solar guy for another quote. This time it comes in at 9,760$. That extra 80$ (100$ of LEDs – 20$ of incandescents) saves you 240$ on your system. And even if you don't plan on getting that solar system right away anything you do to make your house more efficient today will save you in power bills.
Here are a few ways to make your house more efficient:
Dreaming of going off-grid? The first thing you should think about is reducing your consumption of power. I have been told that for every dollar spent inside the house towards reducing power consumption you can decrease the value of the necessary solar system by 3 dollars. Did that make sense? Let's see if I can break that down a little bit; you have 10, 2$ incandescent light bulbs in your house and the solar guy quotes you a 10,000$ system to turn your house to off-grid. You decide to switch out your bulbs for 10$ LED bulbs and ask the solar guy for another quote. This time it comes in at 9,760$. That extra 80$ (100$ of LEDs – 20$ of incandescents) saves you 240$ on your system. And even if you don't plan on getting that solar system right away anything you do to make your house more efficient today will save you in power bills.
Here are a few ways to make your house more efficient:
- LED bulbs
- energy efficient appliances
- keep things unplugged when not in use
- use plug-in timers for Christmas lights, fans, lamps, etc.
Your turn! Give us in the comments below your best tip to making your house more energy efficient.
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