Making a Difference

I can understand why a young person would say this, but I wonder why I still do. After all I have found out that ”making a difference” is very easy to say, but hard to explain and even harder to accomplish.

1. First, if you actually care about what type of difference you make, you need to know how you are going to measure it, and measurements take time and discipline, not to mention a comfort with math.
2. Second, if asked “difference for whom?” you should be able to answer it without fear that “for myself and my family” makes you sound selfish and “for the tired, poor and down-trodden” makes you sound naïve. By the way my experience is that you probably won’t be able to make a difference for one of these groups without also making a difference, positive or negative, in the other.
3. Third, you should be prepared to talk about what steps you will take and tools you will need to make that difference, for having a vision is not the same as having the ability to get there.
4. Finally, you need to be flexible and be able to take advantage of unexpected opportunities as they arise, or you need to be prepared for disappointment, because few make a positive difference in the way they first imagined… though all eventually do make some type of difference.

What does any of this have to do with the environment and our motivation to do something about it? My answer is “climate change.” For the last 5 years I have been replacing light bulbs in my house with Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL’s) in the hope that I would be making a difference: reducing my family’s energy demand and energy bills as well as our personal carbon footprint. Thus as an incandescent bulb burned out, I would exchange it for a CFL providing there was a unit that could meet the needs of the room it was being placed in. At last count, I have installed 16 CFL’s, reducing the household’s installed wattage by over 600 watts. So have I made a difference?

Household Electricity Usage

But looking at how much we paid for that electricity over the past 5 years, the answer is a more resounding, “hard to see.” 

Total Billed for Household Electricity

The point is that random “as the mood hits” actions rarely make a significant difference. What is instead needed is a 4 step circular process: Assess, Plan, Act and Measure.

Assess… Take Inventory

To make a difference, you need to know where you are starting from. The graphs above give a good indication of my electricity baseline. On top of that, I inventoried every light-producing bulb installed on my property… and I was aghast that it totaled over 140! Thus I have only changed out around 10% of my bulbs for more efficient units. No wonder I am not measuring much of a change… yet.

Plan… Determine what is doable and when it is smart to do it

From the bulb inventory, I was able to estimate that lighting is responsible for about 45% of my annual electricity consumption… that’s over $1000 per year at current rates, and those rates are not going down (see next graph)! Thus continuing to improve lighting efficiencies should save me money, and should reduce my utility’s need to build new power plants on my account. 

Electric Rates Charged by PSE&G

Now if I were to change every one of the 120 non-fluorescent bulbs in my house, that would cost me a lot of money, much more than I or the planet would benefit from in the near future. But the inventory process also showed me where to focus my initial efforts… and that is on the lights that stay on all night to ensure security of my property. These exterior lights appear to be responsible for 1/3 of my electric bill and 2/3 of my lighting needs. Changing them should give me a noticeable decrease in power draw.

Act… Budget time and money to implement your plan, then spend it

I started finding CFL’s a few months ago that were in decorative casings, so I began to replace a few exterior lamps with these. But these CFL’s were still too bulky (and not as decorative as I or my wife would like) to fit every light post. So imagine my thrill (and the inspiration for this post) when this past weekend I finally saw decorative LED lamps at the local Home Depot, though at a huge cost. I am now trying these in the other exterior lamp posts and will let you know if they project enough light to be generally useful.

The last change I will need to make is in foundation lighting. This is dependent on an old DC transformer that tends to overheat. I have started reducing electric consumption there by changing the timer so the foundation lights are not on during the earliest morning hours. But if anybody reading this post knows of higher efficiency foundation lighting systems that I can use to replace my archaic system, please tell me.

Measure… Don’t be afraid of the feedback, it might make you feel really good about yourself.

Assuming this blog remains active, I will report to you annually on my success in reducing household electricity consumption, and share with you my additional plans. I hope that this will also inspire others to take similar inventories. After all, our nation is readying itself to commit to a 17% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020, and if each household can reduce their electricity consumption by twice that amount, we will have taken a measurable step to help ourselves and “the tired, the poor and the down-trodden.” We will be making a difference.

For those who care, I estimate that the 7 exterior CFL’s I recently installed will reduce my energy bill next year by over $150, and that if the LED’s work out, it could reduce my bill by an additional $200! Now I still need Phillips to reduce the cost and improve the lumen output of their LED bulbs, but the payback (based on 12 hrs / day average usage) will still be < 1 year!