Good for saving electricity and I use something similar along the sidewalk leading to my front door. My only wish is for the bill to be lower. I reduced my usage by 2,558 kwh for the past 12 months and only saved $240.08. Glad to be saving electricity but to keep the infrastructure working the rates will continue to go higher. If you think by switching to alterative sources of power you need to remember that the utilities also raise the rates everyone so you are still paying the cost.

A pal of mine had her husband install a motion sensitive switch in her pantry. With her hands full when she came out, it was the natural place to save. In the office building we used to be in, the light switches in the rest rooms were also motion sensitive. The switches shut the lights off five minutes after they switched on.

Mike_Kaiser...good point. It is good to go after the big users of electricity but a penny saved is a penny earned as they say. I put in a natural gas dryer in my house. Electric dryers use a lot of electricity.

Saving a penny usually just results in a collection of pennies that
takes a while to accumulate to anything significant. If one spends,
say, $5 to buy a device that eliminates the need to turn on a hallway
light, it could take 15 years break even on the investment.

The
decision on what kind of dryer to buy is a bit more complex. Any dryer
is going to use some quantity of energy to dry a quantity of
clothing. The question that needs to be asked is what's it going to cost to buy that energy? In many parts of the country natural gas is the cheaper fuel but a gas dryer usually costs about $100 more than the same model in electric. So one also needs to look at how long it will take the recoup the initial investment. Obviously a large family doing many loads per week will break even faster.

The best way to save money drying clothes is to air dry as many clothes as possible.

We do dry clothes on the line outside as much as possible but in the winter around here you can't do that.

While the above contribute to electrical savings, a major focus should be Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC), usually by far the largest residential user of electricity.

Much of the activity in the HVAC Forum is centered on energy usage reduction.

Salti,

According to the Department of Energy electrical consumption from lighting accounts for about 10% of the average American electric bill. That's about $11 per month for the average home. The easiest and most effective way to save on the lighting bill is to switch to LED or CFL bulbs.

As you said, the big savings is in HVAC and appliances. Unfortunately many people don't have the funds to upgrade, say, a HVAC system and have to borrow to do the upgrade eats into any energy savings pretty quickly.

I did not suggest upgrading. There are many things that can be done to improve heating and cooling efficiency short of replacing.

On a lighter note, my brother installed some of the motion sensor lights in his home with two light burning teens. There is one in the powder room (windowless powder room) that cannot be the 5-minute timing mentioned above as it doesn't take a full 5 minutes for me to accomplish what I've gone in to do. I'm left sitting in the dark within seconds of entering, and waving my arms does nothing to signal light to help me find the paper holder. I'm in light again as I'm standing groping for the sink to wash my hands....

Maybe your brother thinks you should spend a little less time reading. <lol> Most of the motion sensors are easily programmed, just figure out which one he has and give yourself more time before sitting down!

In most newer homes you walk through the laundry/ utility room to get to the garage. We were always turning the laundry room light on and then having to remember to turn it off, on some occasions forgetting to do so. We put a motion detector in there and it's great! No groping in the dark to turn the knight on when coming home. We also have a motion detector in our walkin pantry as the person above mentioned. As soon as the doors are opened the light comes on. Might not save a lot of money, but the convenience is great!

For one person, it seems insignificant but then multiply that by all the people in your state or your region. It makes a difference. Any saving of resources is important.

I think aside from the money/electricity saving aspect, it's also just a neat little thing to have in general and can be quite useful. I'd love to try this out!!

My local Walmart has marked down some LED lightbulbs, 4 for $10, if anyone is interested check your local Walmart stores, you might have the same deals too.

Are they a decent enough quality though? Seems pretty cheap and I am pretty warry sometimes about low prices haha.

Yes, they're GE brand LED bulbs. :-)

This is useful!

Someone referred to using switched lights to light a hall, contrasted with the motion sensitive ones.

In that case, unless one had a good memory and could switch on and then off before travel, one would need three-way switches, wouldn't one ...

... and that'd be mainly useful for only a couple of entry and exit points, wouldn't it? Four or five doors - not much fun.

ole joyful