This is a real invitation, I have spoken with the agency.
They are looking for people who live in an apartment or home, are responsible for the energy bill, have used a home energy monitoring device to measure energy in the home, and have acted on the results.
Survey is an hour, and you will be asked to keep a journal of how you use your device for the week leading up to the study.
I offered to do a few postings to help them find "real" users who could help, besides it is rather nice to be offering $75.00 of another persons cash.
For the invitations text, and details please see: http://www.open4energy.com/forum/home/dev/energy_monitoring_device_review_0907291255
While on this subject, I have yet to find a device that I can or should use on a continuous basis. I use a Watts Up to understand how much energy is used by each device, but once I know the answer I cannot find a reason to keep it connected. Am, I missing something?
Also, if you read an article that presents results from using a Kill-a-Watt, please note that they are not accurate below 60watts - and really are not the answer to measuring vampire and standby power values.
They are usually infomercials for smart strips. So far we have not been able to show how these save energy in practice at all. To save Nett energy the equipment needed to save, must save more energy than it required to produce. As a rough guide, if it cost $25.00 it must save around $15.00 to be carbon neutral. If you browse our site you can find the exact measurements we have been doing, but standby power is usually around 1.8watts, and Vampire Power 0.8 Watts.
At 11.5 cents per KWh, a device using 1Watt continuously, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year will cost $1.00
So my DVD player which uses 0.1 watts on standby power, costs 10 cents per year. Any savings device I buy to save this power must cost less than 7 cents per year if it is to be carbon neutral - none found so far.
The only way to save energy with my printer which uses 4Watts on standby power, is to turn it off. We have an article on this - but in summary - a smart strip, in fact any automated solution costs energy compared to the "one finger off method" - and that is not including the carbon footprint of whatever you buy.
Do not be duped into $60.00 savings promises, I do not know what computer you use, but my HP dual core AMD energywise uses exactly (yup measured for 7 days/second) 1.2041 KWh per week.
Cost per week = 13.846 cents or $7.19 per year
There are savings, but the best I have found is a 24% saving by changing the default power settings to - no screen saver, 5 minutes wait, 10 minutes idle and then sleep - but remembering to PRESS the sleep button as I walk away from my desk, saving the 15 minute power management cycle - not hard to do - but really hard to remember to do! It seems we are born with a "forget to turn it off mode" - any other explanation for the things I keep leaving on, despite trying not to would be welcomed!
Frustrating, there is nothing I can buy to do it for me. It's either feel guilty, or change my behavior, and we all know what that is like.
Conclusion - The biggest saving I have found in my home office is replacing the light in my office (from a 100Watt glutton to a 24Watt saver) and remembering to TURN IT OFF once the room is filled with natural light, the majority of the day. Good on HP for making a laptop that uses 0.01Watts on standby, and 18watts with the screen off, and between 25Watts and 65Watts depending on the cpu use. Average was 35Watts, need to watch more full screen videos .....
They are looking for people who live in an apartment or home, are responsible for the energy bill, have used a home energy monitoring device to measure energy in the home, and have acted on the results.
Survey is an hour, and you will be asked to keep a journal of how you use your device for the week leading up to the study.
I offered to do a few postings to help them find "real" users who could help, besides it is rather nice to be offering $75.00 of another persons cash.
For the invitations text, and details please see: http://www.open4energy.com/forum/home/dev/energy_monitoring_device_review_0907291255
While on this subject, I have yet to find a device that I can or should use on a continuous basis. I use a Watts Up to understand how much energy is used by each device, but once I know the answer I cannot find a reason to keep it connected. Am, I missing something?
Also, if you read an article that presents results from using a Kill-a-Watt, please note that they are not accurate below 60watts - and really are not the answer to measuring vampire and standby power values.
They are usually infomercials for smart strips. So far we have not been able to show how these save energy in practice at all. To save Nett energy the equipment needed to save, must save more energy than it required to produce. As a rough guide, if it cost $25.00 it must save around $15.00 to be carbon neutral. If you browse our site you can find the exact measurements we have been doing, but standby power is usually around 1.8watts, and Vampire Power 0.8 Watts.
At 11.5 cents per KWh, a device using 1Watt continuously, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year will cost $1.00
So my DVD player which uses 0.1 watts on standby power, costs 10 cents per year. Any savings device I buy to save this power must cost less than 7 cents per year if it is to be carbon neutral - none found so far.
The only way to save energy with my printer which uses 4Watts on standby power, is to turn it off. We have an article on this - but in summary - a smart strip, in fact any automated solution costs energy compared to the "one finger off method" - and that is not including the carbon footprint of whatever you buy.
Do not be duped into $60.00 savings promises, I do not know what computer you use, but my HP dual core AMD energywise uses exactly (yup measured for 7 days/second) 1.2041 KWh per week.
Cost per week = 13.846 cents or $7.19 per year
There are savings, but the best I have found is a 24% saving by changing the default power settings to - no screen saver, 5 minutes wait, 10 minutes idle and then sleep - but remembering to PRESS the sleep button as I walk away from my desk, saving the 15 minute power management cycle - not hard to do - but really hard to remember to do! It seems we are born with a "forget to turn it off mode" - any other explanation for the things I keep leaving on, despite trying not to would be welcomed!
Frustrating, there is nothing I can buy to do it for me. It's either feel guilty, or change my behavior, and we all know what that is like.
Conclusion - The biggest saving I have found in my home office is replacing the light in my office (from a 100Watt glutton to a 24Watt saver) and remembering to TURN IT OFF once the room is filled with natural light, the majority of the day. Good on HP for making a laptop that uses 0.01Watts on standby, and 18watts with the screen off, and between 25Watts and 65Watts depending on the cpu use. Average was 35Watts, need to watch more full screen videos .....
