Turn off the light when you leave the room.
Lighting accounts for about 22% of the energy use at a typical university, according to the U.S. Department of Energy1. Decreasing demand for power by decreasing lighting demand can go a long way in reaching our overall goal of a 15 percent reduction (or more) in power usage. Some suggestions for curbing our energy usage related to lighting are listed below.
Have you heard the myth that it uses more energy to turn a light on and off frequently than to just leave it on? MythBusters set out to bust this myth and were successful! Turning off lights is the way to save energy, even if the room is unoccupied only for a few minutes. Click
Here to get Mythbusters' details on how "lights off" trumps "leave lights on".
Turning off lights during summer afternoons is especially important, when the demand for electricity is at its peak. Turning off lights and utilizing day-lighting strategies can reduce energy demand by up to 50 percent2.
Switch to Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs wherever possible. Energy Star-rated CFLs use 75% less energy than normal light bulbs and last up to 10 times longer3. There are many different kinds of CFLs available, and Vanderbilt recycles CFLs that (eventually) burn out.
It's never a bad time to switch to CFLs. Click here to see a story about college students in Rhode Island that switched out bulbs in local neighborhoods.
Reduce or eliminate the use of halogen floor lamps where possible as well. Halogen floor lamps can be dangerous because they operate at very high temperatures; they also use two to three times the energy of a traditional fluorescent bulb4.
Can energy conservation occur in offices and cubicles? Absolutely! Watch this video on how Marriott Hotels is conserving energy in their office spaces, along with other earth-friendly tips.
If Vanderbilt decreases its lighting demand by 15%, it could avoid consuming almost two megawatt-hours of electricity in a day on peak demand days!
But what does this mean? Two megawatt-hours of electricity is the same amount of power consumed by 46 average-sized homes in Nashville in a day. That's a lot of juice, Commodore Fans.
Check The Math
22% of power for lighting x 60 megawatt-hours consumption per day on peak days = 13.2 megawatt-hours
15% of 13.2 megawatt-hours = 1.98 megawatt-hours
Energy consumption of one average house in Nashville for a day = 0.043 megawatt-hours5
References
1 U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office, Building Technologies Program. "University Buildings", 01/27/06.
2 Energy Center of Wisconsin, "Energy Savings from Daylighting: A Controlled Experiment", Report No. 233-1, May 2008.
3 Energy Star web page "Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs", 2008.
4 California Energy Commission web page "Lighting Efficiency Information", 07/01/08.
5 Nashville Electric Service web page "Residential Rates", 2008.
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