From settings adjustments to product recommendations, Editor Eric Limer gives a thorough rundown of how to asses your energy usage and begin paring it back. Especially as summer sets in and air conditioners go full blast, these are top tips to keep in mind and put into practice.
Product recommendations and further reading to streamline your home energy usage.
Episode Navigation:
Featured:
How to Save Energy When Your A/C Is Draining It
It's Time to Check Your Surge Protectors
The Best Apartment-Friendly Smart Home Devices
The Ultimate Guide to Making Your Home Smart
The Best Smart Thermostats: Which Is Right For Your Home?
The Best Smart Plugs To Buy in 2021
Google Finally Announced a New Chromecast: Here's What You Need to Know
All the Reasons to Still Buy an Apple TV In 2021
Nick Caruso:
This is the Gear Patrol Podcast. In this episode, editor Eric Limer, in charge of our tech coverage, offers a seriously huge amount of advice about auditing and cutting down on your electricity usage. I personally learned a ton from our chat and have actually made some changes myself. For example, I think I might be a surge protector nerd now. Not totally sure, but hopefully this one helps you too. I'm Nick Caruso, and I'm glad you're here. Let's get started. Eric, it was in the mid nineties here in Brooklyn, over the weekend. You're in Queens, not far enough away for the temperature to be different.
Eric Limer:
I was like, "It's in the mid nineties?" Yeah. 25 years ago.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, were nineties kids
Eric Limer:
In more ways than one.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. I hate, hate super hot weather. And I also hate seeing my electricity bill spike every June when I turn on my window AC unit to try, in vain, to cool down my apartment. But you have some tips recently published, three of them to be specific, to pare down that bill a lot. What are they?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. So this is a story that we put together for the magazine, and yeah, it's something that I've been interested in for, I mean, a couple of reasons that we'll get into. I mean, obviously there's the first very practical reason of trying to cut down on your electricity bill, right? And so the three things that we sort of hit on, these are sort of broad pieces of advice that have a little bit more nuance than each one of them that I'm sure we'll get into, but mainly just comes down to the easiest things that you can do is to just take a audit of your gadgets and make sure that various power saving modes are enabled, especially for big things with big screens, like a TV.
Eric Limer:
The other thing is to make sure that you're not using gadgets that are overkill for certain purposes. This sort of main one there is the power draw of, say, a game console, like Xbox or PlayStation, is way higher than that of a Firestick if you're going to be streaming stuff, right? And so that's something to keep in mind, and there's some other stuff there. And the third one, which is one that I find particularly interesting in a nerd way, but surge protectors are great and fun and can be of great use to you in making sure that you have control over what your gadgets are doing at any time when they're plugged into the wall, giving you sort of a kill switch, but also just auditing what you have plugged in at any given time.
Eric Limer:
And so these are sort of meant to be very quick and easy sort of tips that you can take right now. And the sort of big thing overhanging this whole thing, which I'm sure if you've bought an appliance recently or looked into Energy Star stuff, having appliances that are up to date is the most important thing you can do to lower your electricity, full-stop. Having an air conditioner that's doesn't have free on in it because it's from-
Nick Caruso:
The mid nineties.
Eric Limer:
Right. Which is what we have in our apartment. We have a very old air conditioner that is very good, but try to use it sparingly because it is a power hog.
Nick Caruso:
Is it one of those that goes into the wall? Is it one of those wall unit things that sticks through? Yeah. I'm looking at the hole for mine in my apartment that's blocked over, very obviously a "do not use" situation. You kind of made the point to me before we started talking that you can do all of this stuff. It's not necessarily going to save you thousands of dollars next week. This is sort of a more long-term goal.
Eric Limer:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that the thing is, is that a lot of this stuff, there are situations where you can reduce a gadget's power consumption by a lot, by percentage wise, but that depending on what the cost of energy is around you and the time of day, and how much energy that thing really uses, you may not see it reflected in your energy bill by a huge savings amount. I think about this to turn into sort of a tech hippie here, but this is a good lens to be mindful about your technology and the way that you engage with it. Modern technology is designed in such a way as to be very nice and flashy when you're using it, and then to be very unobtrusive and fade into the background when you're not, which is great for certain purposes and times, but it can also lead you to sort of forget what's going on, and doing an audit, sort of like this from a energy perspective, can lead you in other directions.
Eric Limer:
So for me, an example is, and it's in the story, talking about Xbox power saving mode. And for me, going and turning the Xbox into its power saving mode, a good thing to do. It also made me realize of being like, "Yeah, I do have this Xbox plugged and always on mode as though on playing it all the time, and really, I'm not playing it that often." Also I'm subscribed to Xbox Gamepass Ultimate. And when was the last time I booted up one of those games? And maybe removing this $15 a month unobtrusive bill for my life is going to have a bigger impact in that power saving mode. But they're sort of of a piece in that they both come from this sort of thoughtful interaction with the gadgets that are sort of sometimes trying to hide from you that they're doing stuff.
Nick Caruso:
Happening in the background, yep. Another thing that you brought up is very much relevant for this kind of processes. You referred to it, I think, as the Marie Kondo-ing of not just your stuff, but just kind of how you use your stuff and energy saving modes is a good start. I like that it's the first tip. I wasn't aware even, that Xboxes and modern consoles have that always on thing. I assume that's so it doesn't boot up right away or it doesn't have to go through a boot up process?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. So I mean, I'm a Xbox user, so that's my touchdown, but I think most of this stuff also applies to the PlayStation, but yeah, so the Xbox, it started with the Xbox one, which was also trying to be a cable box or whatever, but I believe it defaults to this always on mode where it's in a sleep mode that's a pretty low power thing, but that means that when you turn it on, it doesn't have to boot up, and it means that it can download updates and stuff for you in the background, which is great. But in another way, is sort of this similar thing of, especially if you have a data cap, maybe you don't want the Xbox to download all 300 gigabyte updates to whatever, et cetera. So, it's good to audit these things in your life generally, and the lens of what is using power is a very useful, useful lens to look at that through, because it's, well, everything, in one way or another.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. And yeah, you could turn that function off and just wait until you go over to your buddy's house and plug into his wall and download everything, using his electricity. It's another way to save energy.
Eric Limer:
There were basically two different kinds of energy saving modes, as far as objects that are plugged into your wall go. This also sort of applies to mobile gadgets, but when it comes to electricity bill, those don't really factor in cleanly. But so you have a situation with the Xbox. You have the always on mode where it stays on so we can do this stuff in the background, and you can have it in energy saving mode. It'll actually turn off when you're not using it and it'll have to boot up or whatever. But so that is the difference between something hat being on a sleep state and something being off. And so, that's the, sort of, one thing of just being like, "Well, how often do I use this thing? If I don't use it that often, I can just turn it all the way off."
Eric Limer:
The other thing, and this is where TVs come in. TVs have energy saving modes that will behave that way, of sort of auto off. You can set TVs with sleep timers and stuff where it's like, if you fall asleep with the TV on, maybe that's useful you, but there are also this other benefit that you can have is, maybe you don't need X variable of your TV at full blast all the time. So for example, your TV is going to take more energy being on maximum brightness, which is going to make it easier to see if you're in a very bright room. But what you can do is you could also turn down the brightness on your TV and close the curtains, and you're going to have the same relative contrast in your home, but your TV isn't going to be using all of that energy to fight the sunlight that you could just block with some curtains.
Nick Caruso:
And you can also cut down on freeloaders, your neighbors just using binoculars to watch the game. Before we got into all this, you mentioned Energy Star. And that is not the same thing. I want to kind of make that distinction. Energy Star is not a mode. That is a certified product, by the government.
Eric Limer:
Yeah. So Energy Star, I don't have the specifics exactly on hand of whether Energy Star is a binary thing or whether there are tiers of Energy Star, but essentially, Energy Star appliances use less electricity, right? So, this is something that we didn't really get into in the piece too deeply, because it's sort of a whole other the can of worms, but especially when you're dealing with big appliances, that is the situation where you do some of your own research on this. If it's something that's feasible for you to do, but when you have large appliances that are a constant power draw, if you have a refrigerator from forever ago, replacing that with a newer, more modern refrigerator, that either requires less power or has better insulation or both.
Eric Limer:
Which, it would be upgrading from a non Energy Star appliance from the mid nineties to a modern day Energy Star appliance. That's where you get into actually big savings, which is an investment. It's not cheap, which then the scope of this post was a little bit more cheap stuff. But if you if you do do that, you can save a lot of money, and such that some of these upgrades arguably pay for themselves. A sort of sidebar hot tip there, but about refrigeration specifically, here's a nerd fact, but chest freezers, wildly energy efficient, especially when they open from the top, because since cold air sinks, when you open a chest freezer, none of the air gets out, so it doesn't have to cool that often, versus your refrigerator, when you open the door, all of the cold air effectively falls out of it, but so, chest freezers. They're good.
Nick Caruso:
I suppose you could probably turn a refrigerator on its back too, but that might be a little more, your ketchup would go all over the place.
Eric Limer:
Yeah. That seems like more of an engineering project than a life hack.
Nick Caruso:
Right. I did look up a little bit on Energy Star. So it's a program run by the EPA. Essentially, they use just super transparent evidence-based criteria to certify products, those big ones, especially. Yeah. I mean, it saves billions of kilowatt hours and billions of dollars. But that also, that's a kind of a good segue into the second tip of yours, and I think that the heading on that was something like the right tool for the job. What does this mean? Is this a calculus? Is this a specific product you're recommending?
Eric Limer:
It's a little bit of both. So, there's a couple of products in this story, which are sort of examples as much as they are specific recommendations. So I sort of run through, we were talking about, we alluded to this one before, but especially when you're doing a lot of screen stuff, watching a lot of TV or whatever, thinking about being mindful about the way all of the pieces of equipment that are used in that process can pay off. So this sort of Energy Star fact that sort of kicked off this and got me down this road, was that using a streaming stick or a built-in software on a smart TV, because they're low power draw, can reduce the amount of power you're using when you're streaming something by up to 15 times, right? So significantly.
Eric Limer:
Now, this is another one of those situations where it's like, yeah, it's 15 times and that, but it is something to think about when it comes to what products you're using for what. And I think a sort of additional thing here is thinking about whether you're using the TV versus whether you're watching something on your phone or on a tablet, these smaller devices that require a lot less power than a TV by virtue of the fact that they're a lot smaller. Obviously there's great benefit to watching TV with a spouse or roommates or whatever. But if you're watching something on your own, it might be a better idea for you to watch it on a smaller screen, like an iPad or something similar.
Nick Caruso:
I don't have kids, but if I did, making them put on a play for you is way cheaper energy wise, right? You just give them a couple of juice boxes and send them off to the races.
Eric Limer:
Absolutely. I mean, well, one of the things about that, again, this just comes back to sort of being aware about things and the way that some of these gadgets try to fit themselves into your life, that you should maybe, it's good to put up a little bit of resistance to. My house, we use a Chromecast for our streaming, and we've used it for a long time. Use it for basically everything. Chromecast will do this thing where you turn on the TV, you boot up the Chromecast, you Chromecast something, you stop casting it. And then when you're not casting, the Chromecast will show you a rotation of lovely pictures on your television screen.
Eric Limer:
And what I realized is that without conscious effort to be like, "Oh, we shouldn't leave the damn TV on all the time." That was an incentive to be like, "Oh, we stopped casting something." And the TV would stay on for hours, and it was just something that noticing that was like, "Oh, okay. Maybe we should turn off the TV." But also being like, "Oh, we could also, instead of staring at a TV that's not on, we could be listening to music or something."
Nick Caruso:
One thing at a time. You don't want to get in over your head. But now actually would be a good time to take a quick break for an ad. We'll be right back. You also mentioned a few other products. I mean, I think a very obvious one in terms of efficiency, are LED light bulbs, and you mentioned not just getting LED light bulbs, that you actually mentioned some sort of a dad products in here too, right?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. So the LED light bulbs are great. At this point, I think we're fortunate to be living in a place where not just physically, but in a place as a society, where I think led light bulbs are pretty much all that you're going to get. LED light bulbs are good, and for people who are into it, smart home stuff in general is very cool for people who are into it, and for people who want to be able to change the light temperature of the lights in the room on the phone, or I think there's some really good practical use cases about being able to control things in your house from other places. But I also to highlight the sort of dumber smart gadgets, which are still very cool. And in some ways, I think cooler and more practical.
Eric Limer:
So one of the things I called out in this post is just, there's a number of different companies that make these, but there are motion activated LED light bulbs, right? That are light bulbs that have a motion sensor built into them. And so they are smart in a way that doesn't require you to pair them with your phone over Bluetooth, but are a very simple solution for, this is again, not a theme here, because this feels very mid nineties to me. But you can take these light bulbs, which don't cost much more than the average light bulb. I don't know how much light bulbs go for these days. It's been a while since I bought them, because LED light bulbs lasts forever.
Nick Caruso:
You're like an out of touch billionaire with milk prices.
Eric Limer:
Yeah, right? How much could it cost, Michael? $20? But yeah, so I mean, these light bulbs are a simple solution to, you just screw this into the fixture and it will turn on for 30 seconds if somebody comes close to it, and then turn off when it's gone, which I think, as not sophisticated as that is, that is very clearly, to me, the best use case for having lights in garages and basements and other places that you don't frequent and you don't want to leave the light on forever, which with LED light bulbs, leaving the light on forever also isn't that bad a thing as it used to be, but still.
Nick Caruso:
This is probably TMI for anyone listening. And this will be the first to go if I decide to, when I'm editing, but you and I both have probably experienced the same motion sensing light bulb problem in the GP office. Do you know the one I'm talking about?
Eric Limer:
Right, right, right.
Nick Caruso:
The bathrooms just go off.
Eric Limer:
You got to keep moving in the bathroom, otherwise the lights will turn off on you.
Nick Caruso:
But it's absurd. It's 15 seconds or something. You get in there, you turn around, and it's darkness.
Eric Limer:
It's over.
Nick Caruso:
This is how I go out. So let's get to the one you said, I believe, up top, you said was fun? And that's surge protectors, right?
Eric Limer:
Yeah. I might've said fun.
Nick Caruso:
You did say fun.
Eric Limer:
But yeah. I mean, the thing about surge protectors is to go back to the recurring theme here of sort of, thinking about the products that are in your life and the way that you're interacting with various technology, surge protectors are actually the junction point for looking at that because it's where everything attaches to the wall, right? Sort of the energy saving thing here is that there are, what you may have heard referred to as vampire loads, which are basically when devices are plugged into a wall that essentially, they pull electricity, whether or not they are being used, right? And they can pull over a long period of time, if you have a lot of things plugged into a wall, all of these little things pulling energy that they're not using, can add up to pretty significant amounts.
Eric Limer:
So I found something from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is a sort of akin to Energy Star, but estimated that vampire loads can cost you up to $200 a year. And so surge protectors are useful there because you can turn off a surge protector, right? And then you are physically cutting it off, and there's one thing going to the wall, and you can unplug the surge protector, right? And so you can limit the amount of devices that are pulling these sort of vampire loads.
Nick Caruso:
There's a lot in there, right? You're literally just throwing away that money if you leave these things plugged in. And I think listeners would be forgiven for thinking, I hope they would be, because this is what I have thought for a long time, until very recently, when I was sort of turned on to these, no pun intended, to these kind of surge protectors, is that I've just kind of always thought of a surge protector as a power strip. It makes more outlets for more stuff. Turning off a surge protector is one option, but you have other suggestions, right? things that just do this for you.
Eric Limer:
Right. So, yeah. So there's actually a decent amount of surge protectors that have various different smart use cases to varying degrees. There are straight up smart surge protectors, right? That have an app on your phone that you can control remotely. But there are simpler ones, sort of like I was talking about with the light bulb, that are dumber smart tech, but one of the ones that I mentioned a couple in this story, but there are power strips that have what are known as master controlled outlets. And so you'll have a power strip that has the one commander outlet, right? That you would plug the TV into. And the power strip can actually detect whether or not there was a power draw coming on to the TV or not. It can tell whether the TV's on.
Eric Limer:
And these power strips will say, "Oh, the TV's on, let me enable all of these other sub outlets." Right? So the idea there would be, yeah, you plug your TV into the command outlet, and then you plug your stereo system, your game console or whatever into the subordinate outlets. And so all of the things will go off and on without you having to manually control these little things.
Eric Limer:
Well, let me do a sidebar here. The difference between a power strip and a surge protector is that a power strip does do what you described before, which is duplicates outlets, right? And surge protectors have some sort of mechanism in them to protect from surges, right? So that if a lot of power comes through the wall, for whatever reason, lightning strikes, some other sort of power problem, that the surge protector takes the hit, not your devices.
Eric Limer:
But yeah, another surge protector thing was the Trickle Star motion sensor power strip, which is a power strip with a motion sensor on it. So, I mean, this is the sort of thing where this is maybe also best used for a garage sort of basement situation, something like that. I was looking at these, and some of these programmable power strips, because they're relatively low tech, the amounts of delays you can set on them are sort of limited, but the Trickle Star here, you can set it so that outlets go off after a period of stillness between a minute and a half an hour.
Eric Limer:
And so, how exactly you can use that? I don't know. It would depend a lot on the specific use case, but it's an option that's out there. That was one of the things that I came across here that I thought was the most interesting and unique from a option offered. But yeah, I was struggling to find a place where it was like, "Oh, this is the obvious application for that in my life." But I'm confident that somebody has that. And if it's you, I want to hear from you. I want to know what the person is who has a brilliant idea for this, or who has an extremely weird life. Either one is cool.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. Yeah. If you constantly move while you're watching TV and you have a motion sensor power strip, by all means. But yeah, I was going to welcome people to chime in too. If you're using any of these types of products that are aimed to save energy, or if you have one to suggest to us, interesting use cases or other tips, by all means, get in touch. We're going to link a buying guide, or yeah, buying advice for power strips, or surge protectors rather, specifically down below.
Eric Limer:
Yeah. So the surge protector thing came before this article about saving energy and was sort of part of what got me thinking along these lines. But you may or may not be aware that surge protectors, they do not offer permanent protection, right? The way a surge protector works is that it has a certain component in it that essentially takes the hit when excess power comes through and it diverts the power to ground. And this is a device that it can only take hit so many times, right? Taking that energy and diverting it to ground is something that necessarily diminishes the ability of the surge protector to do that thing. And so to that end, talking about sort of doing an audit, a good thing to do is if you don't know when you got your surge protector, if your surge protector has very important stuff plugged into it, it's a good idea to replace it. Some sort of protectors have options that they can tell you when they have protection, they have a little light that goes out when they're running into trouble. And then just the other thing about surge protectors, man...
Nick Caruso:
Yeah, you really do. You think this fun.
Eric Limer:
It's nuts. I don't understand why I find it to be so interesting, but surge protectors come with various insurance policies, which are good to know about. Some surge protectors will be like, "If this breaks down on you, we will insure thousands of dollars of equipment," which is great. But those warranties will run out because surge protectors get old with time. And it is a situation where you're getting really deep into the nerd stuff. You kind of need to read the manual for your surge protector because the warranty stuff is, "Well, this doesn't apply if you're plugging it into a bad outlet, or it doesn't apply if you're daisy chaining your surge protectors," et cetera. But yeah, there's some stuff in there that could really save your bacon in an off case. So it pays to know a little bit more about it than you probably do.
Nick Caruso:
It's kind of like a, lightning does strike twice, policy. Right? I thought that that was going to make you laugh. That felt like the best joke I had the whole episode.
Eric Limer:
No, it's if lightning does strike twice, you're on your own, because you should have replaced your surge protector after it struck the first time.
Nick Caruso:
That's right. And collected that sweet, sweet warranty money. Number one, your top recommendation in terms of this conversation, if someone really wants to cut their bill, be more conscious of this stuff, what was the first thing you tell them? I think
Eric Limer:
There's a reason why, in this story, that the power saving mode stuff comes up first. And that's because that is the thing that is the easiest to do. It requires nothing but a little bit of time and a little bit of knowledge, and sort of gets you down the road. The sort of caveat there is, if your ultimate goal is to save a bunch of money, that's not going to get you there immediately. It's more of a long-term thing. And if you want to use that as a way to get some money back fast, go and check out the settings and engage power saving mode on your gadgets. And then also ask yourself, "Do I need this? Or could I maybe sell it?" That's probably the way to really get your money. But yeah, I think that I'm a big advocate of knowing what's in the settings for your various devices.
Nick Caruso:
That's solid advice. And frankly, I've been thinking about, as we've been talking, I swear I've been listening, Eric, but I'm also kind of walking through my apartment in my head like, "What can I unplug immediately?" So maybe that's a good place for me to start, at least. And if anybody else is not sure what their situation is in terms of power draw, do a little survey of your home and start ripping things out of the wall. That's my top tip. So, great. That's a great rundown. Again, we're going to link everything down below, but let's save everybody a little bit of electricity and call it quits right here. How about that?
Nick Caruso:
Eric, thanks for your insights and your recommendations. And listeners, everything we talked about, like I said, is going to be linked in the show notes below or in the site post, wherever you saw this, there is going to be a lot there. I'm ticking through those things in my head too. So really eager to share all those links. Make sure you're subscribed to the GP Podcast. And if you liked this episode and any others in the past, and think you might in the future, give us, how about a five star energy? Energies? Five Energy Star? I don't know quite how to say that.
Eric Limer:
Five Energy Stars of review power.
Nick Caruso:
Right. The EPA gave this podcast five Energy Stars. So hopefully you can give us five too, and jog the algorithm to keep people listening. So like we said earlier, any questions or comments hit us up on social media. Our handle everywhere is @gearpatrol, or you can email me about anything you'd like at podcast@gearpatrol.com. Eric, thank you again. I hope you can weather the mid nineties.
Eric Limer:
Yeah, I did it once. I can do it again.
Nick Caruso:
Yeah. And everyone else, I hope you can stay cool, too. Thanks for being here. And until next time, take care.