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 (or more) reduction in power usage.
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.
By turning off lights, you are setting a standard that others at Vanderbilt should follow. Click here to see how students at Dartmouth are conserving energy!
If you have your own desk lamps, 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.
Replacing a single incandescent bulb with a compact fluorescent bulb can keep up to 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere over the life of the bulb3. Watch this video from the CommonCraft Show to learn more about how replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs can reduce air pollution.
Reduce or eliminate the use of halogen floor lamps where possible as well. Halogen floor lamps can be dangerous because they use two to three times the energy of a traditional florescent bulb and operate at very high temperatures4.
The End Result
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.
For every megawatt-hour of power Vanderbilt purchases from TVA, 1,500 pounds of greenhouse gasses are emitted.
By not consuming two megawatt-hours of electricity for lighting on a particular day, Vanderbilt avoids emitting almost 3,000 pounds of greenhouse gasses that same day.
Check The Math
22% of power for lighting x 60 megawatts-hours consumption per day on peak
days = 13.2 megawatts-hours
15% of 13.2 megawatts-hours = 1.98 mega-watts-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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