UPDATE: Home Energy Lab

This semester, we have been continuously working on our wonderful home energy labs! Our challenge was to create a unique lab that focused on changing our lifestyles to save energy in our households and therefore, saving money on our electric bill! We started collecting data in February, so thus far, I have about two three months of solid data! I received my electricity bills for the months of February and March, but have yet to get my bill for April! Hopefully I get it before the project is due!!

For my lab, I decided to change three electricity-related habits of my family to alter in hopes of reducing my electricity usage!

1) Do nightly sweeps of the house to make sure our family is not unintentionally wasting energy!

2) Wash laundry only when you can fill the machine up to the top!

3) Reduce television time to 3 hours a day!

I made calendars for the months I was experimenting on so that I can keep track of my data! I would mark yes or no for nightly sweeps, "full" on days we washed clothes, and the number of hours for television time. This helped me understand my data and provide a conclusion! Keeping up with my original plan didn't go quite as easily as I hoped (maybe because we usually watch a lot of TV), but nonetheless, I think our family's inconsistency helped to show how the altered habits changed our electricity usage. In January, our bill was about the $210, in February, it was about $196, and in March, it was about $202. According to our bill and my calendars, February was the most regulated month regarding the changes in electricity habits in comparison to March and January.

I think data would have been clearer if I took down data and kept a calendar for the month of January without changing our habits (as a comparison month for the subsequent months).

(View from the home that is being tested)

Another tip to save energy is to study by the light of the sun! If you have the sun lighting up your study area, you don't need to use electricity!

Save energy!!