Cut Your Energy Costs Day 2025 is on Friday, January 10, 2025: how to save energy and water? [whoever gives me the longest list gets best answer]?

Friday, January 10, 2025 is Cut Your Energy Costs Day 2025. Electricity Skyrocketing‎ Lock in a lower fixed rate to avoid expensive bills from PECO

A wonderful Brand-new Year's resolution could be to lessen your power consumption, and to conserve money in the process. Cut Your Energy Costs Day is everything about using less electrical energy (and hopefully paying much less cash as a result).

20 Energy Saving Tips To Cut Your Energy Bill

1. Always wash your clothes in cold water. Many laundry detergents have been developed to work best with cold water. The major cost of running a washer is in heating the water.

2. Hang your clothes on a line. In fair weather hang your clothes outside nothing beats the smell of laundry dried in the summer breeze. Sunlight can also have a natural bleaching effect on your whites. In the winter or on rainy days hang your laundry in the house on a small drying rack and set up a fan to quickly dry.

3. Only wash full loads in your dishwasher. When only a small load of dishes needs to be done hand wash which will save water. However if you have a huge load it can be more water efficient to use the dishwasher.

4. Turn your PC off. There is no point in leaving your PC on all night turn it off before you goto bed or before you go to work.

5. Turn down the air conditioning in summer and spend more time outside. During the hot days of summer spend more time outside make a nice shady spot in your backyard and relax you can even buy a baby pool to soak your feet in! Use fans instead inside of the house.

6. Turn down the heat in the winter and put on a sweater. During the winter months turn the heat down and put on warmer clothes you will be surprised how much of a difference this will make on your bill. Get a timer for your heater so that the heat will not be on all day when you are not home.

7. Don’t use a wood fireplace. Wood fire places although lovely to sit by in the colder months can be very inefficient. The heat that is created by this type of fireplace is generally sucked back up the chimney and out of the house. Gas fire places are proven to be 80% efficient as opposed to be -10% to +10% efficient in heating your home.

8. Lower your shades during the hot times of the day. Keeping the hot rays of the sun out of your house can reduce solar overheating and reduce cooling costs for your household. Shades that are light coloured on the outside work best because they will reflect the most solar energy back outside whereas darker colours will absorb and allow heat into the house.

9. Lower your water heater’s thermostat. Your water heater thermostat is a box located low on the front of your water heater. It is generally recommended that you leave your water heater thermostat at around 120° F. This not only saves energy, but prevents scalding.

10. Think twice before turning on your oven. Smaller appliances use half the energy of your oven. Try using toaster ovens, microwaves, barbeques, and crock pots as an alternative when and if possible.

11. Make new appliance purchases wisely. Read the labels and carefully investigate your new appliance purchases. ENERGY STAR label products in addition to saving up 50% more energy than conventional products can also be eligible government tax credits and rebates.

12. Use compact fluorescent light bulbs. These bulbs may cost a bit more but are worth it not only do they last longer they also use 75% less energy than your standard bulb.

13. Turn off the lights. Turn lights off when you leave a room; leave the house for the day or simply if it is not needed. Use motion detection lights outside so that they turn off after 3 or 5 minutes. Painting your walls a lighter colour and selecting your lighting wisely to train on specific areas instead of overall lighting of a room are also ways to cut your costs.

14. Take shorter showers. Use a shower timer and try to keep showers to five minutes sometimes just being aware of the time you take in the shower will help you keep your shower time shorter. Using a low flow shower head will also help keep that bill down.

15. Take fewer showers. Limit yourself to one shower a day. It’s all right not to shower everyday. In fact it is not all that good for your hair and skin to use soap everyday it can dry you out and make you flakey.

16. Keep appliances in good working condition. Keeping your appliances clean and in good working order will allow them to work more efficiently and not as hard. This can be accomplished by larger tasks like cleaning refrid

17. Take shorter showers or don’t shower every day. Save some of that hot water! Don't spend too long in the shower, and if you don't need to, don't shower every day!

18. Phantom Loads. Take some time to learn about Phantom Loads. Even when your appliances are "off", they are still using energy!

19. Solar Lighting for your garden. There are some nifty solar powered lights nowadays for your garden and pathways. Try some of those out!

20. Seal up your window with weather stripping. You'd be surprised at how much heat and cool air you lose through the cracks around your windows and doors!! Use weather stripping to close off any of those gaps!

and there are lots more at !

What would you think of a 4 day working week?

I used to work 3 10 hour days. It was mt choice in an attempt to spend more time with my then little girl ( not little now ..).

In a strange way it was both one of the worst and best things that ever happened to me. Worse because the impact on the whole family was misery , we were just drudges living to work. The best because the whole experience was so dreadful it forced an epiphany within me.

I went from thinking we couldn't possibly survive without my wages for 'nice' things to realising that being at home with my little one WAS the nicest thing above everything else. I literally got off the bus I was on on my 1 and half hour commute got home, closed the door and never went back.

We still don't have 'nice' THINGS but we have a great family life. If I were single I think the idea might appeal but sometimes people see the 3 days off and fail to see that you will be that knackered you won't be able to enjoy your first day off anyway.

I'm not sure about the 'green' side of this argument either. Most peoples idea of fun on their days off is to go shopping....

Isn't it possible to cut down the cost of space rockets?

Fuel is a more compact way to store energy than a flywheel.

Also remember you would have to carry the flywheel up all the way too while you only have to carry the fuel until you burn it.

The main cost to launching rockets is not the fuel.

It is in fact a very small percentage, if I were guessing I would say less than one percent.

The main cost is building a rocket that does not explode on the way up and ends up where you want it.

It takes a small army of people to build and launch one rocket into orbit.

Some people are working on using helium balloons or airplane as launching platforms and one or the other might one day be standard.

There is one company whose goal it is to reduce lanching costs by a factor of ten by using less people to build and launch a simplier system, check them out at spacex.com.

Here is a couple of companies working on plane launch systems

www.scaled.com

www.transformspace.com

or look up the x prize for other ideas people are trying

www.xprizefoundation.com