Video: Watch Out for Energy Vampires

We've posted on this blog before about the danger of energy vampires when it comes to your power bills each and every month. There are a number of ways to save electricity and lower your payments, but one of the easiest and least intrusive ways to do so is to watch out for these vampires.

What is an energy vampire, you ask? While your appliances may have on/off switches, many of them continue to draw power from their outlets while they are off. You would be surprised by just how many appliances in your home join in on the vampire fun. Just think of the prongs of the plug as their little monster fangs, taking your energy away.

To provide a bit of advice about this very subject, Alabama Power Company has provided a new video, the latest in its series of consumer education shorts.

What are your strategies for saving energy around the home? Do you watch out for energy vampires?

New ESL Bulbs Combine the Best of CFLs, LEDs and Incandescents

What if you could combine the best qualities of incandescent, CFL and LED light bulbs to create the ultimate bulb? Wouldn't that be great? Well, Vu1 think they have done just that with their new ESL bulb.

The ESL, or Electron Stimulated Luminescence, bulb creates light by accelerating electrons to stimulate phosphor, which in turn makes the surface of the bulb glow. By creating light this way, the ESL bulbs eliminate many problems faced by other types of bulbs.

Here are some of the benefits of the ESL:

• The quality of light produced rivals that of incandescents and avoids the problems faced by owners of CFLs and LEDs

• Energy usage is estimated to be around 70% more efficient than an incandescent

• There is no mercury inside and the bulbs are easily recyclable

• Unlike CFLs, they are fully dimmable and achieve full brightness as soon as they are turned on

• Predicted lifespan around three times that of a incandescent

So, what's the catch? Well, the only strike against the ESL for now is the price. While no where near as expensive as an LED bulb, they are a little more expensive than a CFL at around twenty dollar per bulb.

Vu1 has just secured UL approval for the bulbs and plans to have them on the market early next year.

Image via Vu1.

Would You Buy an Empty Bottle of Cleaner?

It turns out that only a fraction of the liquid in the cleaning products under your sink is actually cleaning chemicals. Water is the primary material in most cleaners, typically making up around 95% of the bulk.

When you buy a cleaner like that, not only do you have to pay for the water, but that water has to be transported to the manufacturing plant, then to the store and then to your home. That's a lot of wasted energy. It may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but if you add up all the fuel burned in order to move all of that water around for all of the cleaning products sold in the world, it adds up pretty quickly.

Another common source of waste with cleaning products is the bottles they come in. Those plastic bottles are not only made from petroleum products, but require fuel to be burned to produce and ship them. We usually just toss them in the trash once the cleaner is gone, which is silly if you think about it. After all, it's not like a bottle of cleaner is going to get dirty.

To help cut down on all of this waste, Replenish is selling a new line of cleaners with empty bottles. They come with concentrated pods of cleaner that snap onto the bottom of the bottle, completely cutting out all of the waste from the water. The bottles are designed to be reused for years, which further cuts down on waste. You just buy one kit at first and then buy refills as needed, filling the bottles with tap water.

Not only do you get to slash lots of waste, but you'll actually save money, too. Each kit costs eight bucks and contains enough cleaner for four bottles worth of water. Once you run out of cleaner, new pods cost just four bucks. If you do the math over a few years, that means each bottle's worth of cleaner is costing you around one dollar each.

Image via Replenish

Find the Best Offer for Your Old Cell Phone in Seconds

I don't know about you, but when I get a new cell phone, I just throw the old one in a box and forget about it. I'm not sure if it's that I want to keep it as a backup or if I'm slowly turning into one of those hoarders you see on TV, but that's just what I've always done.

The other day I was cleaning out some boxes in the garage and came across the mother lode of old cell phones. Between my wife and I, we'd amassed a collection of about 15 phones! Some were broken, some had been replaced when they became obsolete and some neither of us could remember owning (cell phone fairy?). It was a sorry pile of forlorn electronics and it got me thinking.

I knew the old phones could (and should) be recycled, but I was wondering if there was a way of getting a little cash in the process. I took to the Internet to research the topic, and came across EcoSquid. Just like how WhiteFence lets you compare offers on home services from multiple providers at once, EcoSquid lets you compare offers for your old cell phones from multiple buyers and recyclers at once.

Just head to EcoSquid, enter the details about your phone(s) and you'll get offers in just seconds. Depending on the age and condition, you may find that there are companies out there willing to pay you for your old phone. If not, the site will show you a variety of ways to easily recycle your cell phone locally or by mail. Either way, you can get a little clutter out of your house and feel good in the process.

As for my stack of old cell phones, about half are actually worth something, with a total value of around $50. The other half are too old or damaged to have any value and are due to be shipped off to various recyclers. While it may not be a fortune, I'm certainly happy to find $50. Maybe I can use it to upgrade my cell phone...

New Hybrid CFLs Reach Full Brightness Instantly

While millions of Americans have taken the plunge and swapped their traditional light bulbs for compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), there are still a few issues with the bulbs keeping everyone from making the switch.

Two of the most common complaints are aesthetics and the time it takes the green bulbs to reach full brightness. We learned earlier this month that CFLs don't have to be ugly, and now GE has announced a new type of CFL that takes care of the brightness issue.

GE's solution is actually quite familiar to fans of eco-friendly consumer goods; it's a hybrid. There's no easy way to get the fluorescent element to brighten up any quicker, so this new design incorporates a second halogen element. Both elements turn on when you slip the switch, and once the fluorescent element comes up to full brightness, the halogen element shuts off. Quite an elegant solution, really.

There's no cost to energy efficiency for the new "instant on" feature, with the 15 and 20 watt bulbs planned for launch able to replace 60 and 75 watt incandescents, respectively. Product life shouldn't suffer either, with GE claiming the bulbs should be good for 8,000 hours. As a bonus, these new bulbs also have much less mercury than a standard CFL.

The new hybrid bulbs should be available next year, but there is no word on pricing yet.

Image via GE.

Control Any Device's Power Consumption With the Belkin Socket

Over the last year, I've told you about Belkin's cool Conserve series of green products with articles on the Valet charging station and the Insight energy monitor. They're back again with another cool new product that can slay even more energy vampires.

The Conserve Socket is a simple gadget that plug in between your wall socket and a device you want to control. You set a timer and once that timer is up, it will cut off all electricity to whatever you have plugged in. It has three different settings: 30 minutes, three hours and six hours.

The applications are pretty diverse. For traditional energy vampires like a cell phone charger, it functions the same way as the Valet charging station by cutting off the small trickle of power that flows through a charger when it's not charging. But you also can use the Socket with things like lights and fans, leaving them on for a little while without having to leave them on indefinitely.  You can even use it with curling irons and hair straighteners to prevent fires.

The Conserve Socket is available now for $9.99 from the Belkin store.

Image via Belkin.

Turn it Off - Saving Energy When You Leave Work

Over the last couple of years, I've tried to become more energy conscious, both at home and at the office. One of the things that I've made a habit of doing is to turn off my computer and my monitor when I leave work, and hibernate my computer constantly at home.

If you've ever wondered how much energy a little process like this saves, amateur filmmaker Nigel Upchurch has created a video to demonstrate. Turn if Off takes a look at the habits of workers in different countries, and the kind of energy consumption these habits entail. It's actually astounding to consider the effects that all of these computers and their monitors have on the environment.

To see more about how these statistics were put together, or just to see more of his work, visit the video page for Turn it Off. What about you guys? Do you turn your monitor and computer off at home/work when it's not in use?

CFLs Don't Have to Be Ugly

While the traditional incandescent light bulb isn't exactly beautiful, the design does have a certain purposeful charm. One common thing people that switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs tend to miss about their old bulbs is that simple look. CFLs typically have a tightly coiled look that can be a little unsightly.

To address this concern, the folks at Hulger have designed a new CFL with aesthetics in mind. The Plumen untangles the elements of the bulb to create a more organic appearance that looks different from every angle.

All of that style doesn't come at a cost to the benefits of a energy saving bulb though, with Hulger claiming the Plumen uses only 20% of the energy a equivalent incandescent bulb with an eight year operating life. It will come at a bit of a cost to your wallet however, with a price point somewhere around $30.

While it may not be quite to everyone's taste, it's still nice to see someone giving consumers an option. Perhaps this is just the first in a new generation of designer CFLs.

The Plumen bulb is on sale now in Europe and will be available in America soon.

Image via Hulger.

The Pros and Cons of CFL Lighting

Over the last few weeks, we've been trying to find new ways to save money around the household. For some reason, the spending has gradually gotten out of hand, so now we want to take a step back and make a better budget.

One of the areas that we want to cut back on in particular is our home energy bill, and perhaps one of the easiest starting steps is to switch over to using compact fluorescent lights, or CFLs. However, as much as I want to save money, I do have some concerns about the process of switching over.

While doing some research about the pros and cons of CFL lighting, I actually came across this video by the guys over at Microsoft Hohm, which talks about this very subject. It's got some great information, and will probably teach you a new thing or two about traditional lightbulbs versus CFLs.

So, who else out there has made this switch or is thinking about making the switch? Tell us in the comments!

New Green Window Stickers on the Way

A while back, I told you about new lighting facts labels that will start showing up on light bulb packaging in 2011. They will make it easier for consumers to understand the specifics on each bulb and help them be able to easily determine which is the most eco-friendly option. Now, the EPA is considering similar labels for new cars.

This is still very much in the proposal phase, with the EPA considering two basic layouts. One layout would be a redesign of the horizontal stickers we've had for years with additional information about fuel costs and energy efficiency along with some tweaks to make each car easy to compare. The other layout being considered is radically different, with a vertical shape, much more information and new letter grades.

Back when every car used to to run on gasoline, simple MPG ratings were enough for consumers to compare cars. However, now that hybrid, electric and other types of green cars are showing up on dealer's lots, things are a little more complicated. The vertical concept label seeks to make it easy for consumers to make easy comparisons no matter what cars they're considering.

In addition to the big grade at the top, there's an estimate of how much the average driver would save over five years over five years compared to the "average car." The labels also aim to show technical details for the new cars such as all-electric range and kilowatt-hours per 100 miles.

However, citing that they have no standard to measure them by, the EPA is not including charging times for EVs and plug-ins on the proposals. There's also no mention of "upstream" carbon emissions, which are emissions related to manufacture and transport of the vehicle.

So, how do you feel about letter grades showing up in car windows? Do you think it will make it easier for you to choose your next car? What about letter grades showing up on other devices such as appliances or computers? Let us know in the comments.

To see more examples and let the EPA know your thoughts on the proposals, check out the official EPA fuel economy label page.