October is Energy Awareness Month

October is Energy Awareness Month.

The U.S. Department of Energy says that appliances and home electronics account for 20% of your energy bill.

To help you save a little green while becoming more green, you can look into new rebates to purchase ENERGY STAR-qualified appliances when you replace your used appliances in late 2009 or early 2010.

The types of appliances that will probably be eligible (varies by state) are:

• Boilers
• Central air conditioners
• Clothes washers
• Dishwashers
• Freezers
• Furnaces (oil and gas)
• Heat pumps (air source and geothermal)
• Refrigerators
• Room air conditioners
• Water heaters

Rebates will likely range between $50 and $250 based on type of product, price, etc.

If you are planning to make a purchase like this soon, be sure to look into your state’s rebate plan and you could save yourself some green.

Is your refrigerator as SMART as mine?

Green energy and smart-grid technology is all the rage these days, but there is definitely something to working smarter and not harder.

GE is creating a new line of “smart-grid” enabled appliances to help homeowners tap into lower energy use. According to their release “residential housing consumes 37% of the electricity produced in the US. Appliances, Lighting and HVAC represent 82% of electricity consumed in the home.”  This means that improvement in these areas can make a large impact on not only energy use nationwide but also homeowners bottom lines.

Some of the appliances being developed by GE and others are “demand response appliances” that means they have the ability to temporarily reduce power or delay some normal operations without interfering with the consumer’s daily needs because the consumer can override any of the appliance’s actions.

Some examples of how demand response appliances will operate during peak times are:

• A refrigerator will delay its defrost cycle – a cycle that takes more energy than normal operating mode – until the energy load is lower;

• A dryer will reduce the wattage used by the heating coils

The first of GE’s demand response appliances – the new Hybrid Electric Heat Pump Water Heater will be available later in 2009. In its normal operating mode, termed “Hybrid Mode”, the new water heater will require about half the energy of a standard electric water heater and will save about $250/year in energy costs.

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Universal Mobile Phone Charger on the Horizon

The mobile phone industry has finally decided to create a universal phone charger by 2012, according to GSMA, an industry organization.

Currently, chargers can be brand or phone specific, generating more than 51,000 tons of waste as consumers get new phones that are incompatible. For more information on recycling phones, click here.

Another aim is to create an energy-efficient charger to reduce stand-by or “vampire” energy consumption by 50%. The group wants to create the “UCS” or universal charging solution  to use Micro-USB for charging.

Among the companies involved in this initiative are LG, Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and T-Mobile.

Now if we can just get the printer companies to standardize those blasted ink cartridges.