Like death and taxes, the rising price of energy of in the Aloha State is a constant that we have to live with. The other day I went over to Home Depot with the good intention of buying some energy-efficient light bulbs and power strips. I knew that I was wasting electricity and understood it was time to do something about it. Walking down the aisle, I saw no less than 37 different kinds of light bulbs. I stood there like a deer in the headlights. What to buy? CFLs? LEDs? Dimmable? Nondimmable?
We want to do the right thing, but we’re not sure how to go about it. Before the first solar panel gets installed on your roof, it’s crucial to understand how efficiently you’re currently using both electricity and water.
Enter Pono Home is a startup company that specializes in assessing your usage of energy and water, and provides you with devices and guidance that will save you money.
Here’s how it works:
Someone from its staff, in our case a woman named Jen, shows up at your door with a rolling tool box. Her job begins by determining how much energy every appliance in your house is using. For example, I soon learned the meaning of "phantom load" — electricity that is siphoned from your system by appliances that appear to be just sitting there. I had no idea my microwave, simply by displaying the time, is sucking up $3 per month and that the toaster oven is using about $1.50 doing the same thing. The solution? If possible, cluster all your appliances on a power strip and turn on when needed.
Not only did Pono Home gauge how much that flat-screen TV is extracting from my wallet, it also did some practical things with a brush that I never would have thought of. That included cleaning out my refrigerator condenser coils (which were laden with cat hair and gunk) and removing the lint in my dryer out of the duct (under the lint trap). This makes for an efficient flow and cuts down on a fire hazard. (Did you know lint is highly combustible?)
Seems like common sense, but even folks who think they are smart miss out on energy savings right under their nose. When was the last time you measured the temperature of your fridge? Pono Home does. If a fridge’s freezer is running 10 percent colder than it should be, it’s sucking up 25 percent more electricity than it has to. (The solution? Adjust the temperature gauge.)
Being too frugal is also not a good idea. Holding onto an incandescent bulb — just because it hasn’t burned out — will cost you about $56 a year versus $12 a year for a CFL. Multiply the savings by 20 and you’re talking real money. With rebates available for CFLs and LEDs, it’s no-brainer to trash those old bulbs.
Saving on water is also addressed by Pono Home with high-efficiency fixtures that it will sell you at the same price as your hardware store. Showering with high-efficiency shower heads, for example, can save an average of 10 gallons per shower, which is about $250 per year per shower head — literally thousands of gallons per year.
The list goes on.
The price for the service is $80 plus whatever devices you need. The good news is that anything you purchase will pay for itself in short order. The faucet aerator I needed will pay me back in a little over a week. You can contact them at www.ponohome.com. It sure beats hanging out at your big-box store.
Mike Meyer, formerly Internet general manager at Oceanic Time Warner Cable, is now chief information officer at Honolulu Community College. Reach him at mmeyer@hawaii.edu.
