There are many ways to reduce electricity usage during this time of higher temperatures.  Doing so will certainly help your wallet by reducing electric bills, but it also diminishes greenhouse gasses and pollution from power generation.  That has the added benefit of doing at least a small part in trying to circumvent catastrophic climate change.  Oh, and did I mention it will make the air a wee bit cleaner?  It will.  Every bit helps.

An immediate and easy way to do this is to set the thermostat a few degrees higher in the summer and a few degrees lower in the winter (assuming your heat is electric rather than gas).  Depending on your tolerance for temperature variations, doing this could make a small to dramatic difference in all the ways that count.

You can also replace incandescent light bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.  That saves a tremendous amount of energy since normal bulbs waste 90% of the electricity they consume by converting it to heat.  Only 10% of the power used becomes light.  Fluorescent bulbs don’t carry this handicap.  By reducing the number of incandescent bulbs in use within a household, heat generated inside the home is likewise reduced and will subsequently lower cooling costs.  One very interesting comparison is this: if every household in America replaced just one regular bulb they use on a normal basis with a fluorescent bulb, it would be equivalent to removing 1,000,000 cars from the roads by reducing the load at coal-burning power plants.

There’s something else you can do that promises to reduce your power consumption by up to 60% (mileage will vary based on specific circumstances).  What is the magic wand that can save you money and help the environment without affecting your everyday life, and do it on such a large scale?  It’s quite simple.  In fact, it’s so simple you’ll want to kick yourself in the ass for not thinking of it.

Unplug electronic equipment when not in use.  What many people don’t understand is that electronics in “standby mode” consume anywhere from 40% – 60% of your monthly electricity usage — while they’re powered off.  When you turn your television and VCR off via the remote or button on the front of the equipment, they don’t actually turn off; they go into standby mode continuing to consume electricity at a rate only slightly less than when they are powered on.  This is true of televisions, VCRs, stereo equipment, cable/satellite receivers, and computers (all the most common devices).  Microwave ovens don’t consume as much electricity when not in use, although they can reduce by a small fraction the amount of energy needed on a regular basis.

If you unplug normal electronics, that extra energy consumption actually stops rather than just slowing down.  Remember, as long as they’re plugged in, they’re consuming energy.  That’s 24 hours per day every day that they suck up juice that’s essentially wasted.

Let me tell you how this has worked for me.  I began doing this about three weeks ago.  At the beginning of that process, my electric bill was $150.  In the month since, our temperatures went up and stayed up, yet my electric bill went down by $15.  I’m confident it will go down again in the next month with an entire billing period falling under those circumstances rather than just most of it as was the case with the recent bill.

There are, of course, some drawbacks with this approach.

VCRs won’t show the correct time.  That shouldn’t be much of an impact since the vast majority of them are blinking 12:00 anyway; most people don’t know how to set the time on their VCR.  In addition, with the advent of DVD and DVR technologies, VCRs are no longer as prolific or necessary as they once were.  When you need to use the clock to program a recording, set the clock for that session only.  Otherwise, this issue is moot.

Cable and satellite receivers get their program guide data while they’re plugged in.  When not plugged in, they lose the television schedule.  The impact from this is short lived as it generally takes about 5 minutes for the receiver to download the new program guide.  This is also the case with DVRs.

Those two items are the extent of the impact I’ve seen.  Most stereo equipment stores settings in non-volatile memory, so unplugging them doesn’t lose station presets, amplifier settings, or any other user-controlled options.  The same is true for most televisions.

Accepting these issues, the only other problem is remembering to unplug the equipment as necessary.  For me, that means flipping a switch on the surge protector to which all of the entertainment center equipment is connected.  When it comes to plugging it in, I’m reminded to do that when I start punching buttons on the remotes and nothing happens; that’s a simple one to figure out and remember.  Turning them off has simply become a normal part of my “shutdown” procedures but is the most important part you’ll need to remember.  Failing to do so makes all of this extraneous.

The added bonus of keeping such equipment unplugged is that it reduces the heat generated inside the house.  This may be a little or a lot, but cumulative savings can be substantial given both benefits.  Besides, any reduction in cooling costs in this time of increased temperatures must be a welcome treat.