|
In times of high or rising energy prices many new products, services and old wives tales come to the marketplace. Many of these are useful and have value, but many are not. There are product claims all over the place. Sometimes there may be a grain of truth in the claim, often they aren’t really true or grossly over-rated and some are outright lies. Here are a few examples:
- Energy Saving Practice Myth
Water heater timers or turning off your water heater during the day will save you money. This is typically of little or no value since water heaters cycle on a thermostat and typically run about 3 hours out of a 24 hour day. In order to realize a savings, a water heater would need to be set to come on less than 3 hours per day and if you ran out of hot water and overrode the timer you would override the savings too. Cutting off water heaters if you are leaving for the weekend or vacation does make savings sense.
- Energy Saving Practice Myth
Set and forget the AC thermostat. This is old school thinking from the 1960’s when energy was cheap. Those days are long gone. Energy saved from a setback or setup has been shown to be 10-15% greater than energy used to recover to the desired setting.
- Energy Saving Practice Myth
Ventilate your attic to get the heat out. This worked in the old days when attics were not well insulated and many homes were not air conditioned. However in today’s homes this can be counterproductive. Properly installed attic insulation is pretty effective at minimizing heat transfer into the home. If you exhaust air from the attic, this creates a reduced air pressure above your ceiling pulling conditioned air from the home causing your AC to run longer to compensate for this air loss.
- False Product Claim
Surge suppression devices do help protect sensitive electronics from surges. Since surges only occur for a few milliseconds any energy that may be saved will be insignificant. These are protection devices not energy savers.
- False Product Claim
Power factor correction for home use is of no value since residential customers are not billed for power factor. Only about 200 of JEA’s largest commercial/industrial customers are metered for and are billed for having a poor power factor. Check out the discussion on ENERGY STAR® for more information.
|
