Amid rising energy bills, here’s some easy tips to save power and cut costs

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - As power bills go up, many are looking for ways to cut costs and save energy.

With Wednesday marking Energy Efficiency Day, Shannan Okinish, the marketing manager at City Mill, explains some easy ways to change your consumption and switch daily appliances.

Here’s some power saving tips:

• Use an advanced power strip, a device that helps you cut power to multiple devices without having to get up.
• Use timers to cut back on unnecessary waste. Many things that use lots of energy like your water heater, cable box, computer station can be automatically set to stop drawing power for hours overnight simply by setting a timer.
• Opt for fans over air conditioning where possible. Ceiling or pedestal fans use only 1% of the energy that air-conditioning does — that’s like paying $4/hour for the AC versus 4 cents/hour for the fan.
• Switch to high-efficiency shower heads, which help reduce your hot water usage.
• Change your lighting to LEDs, which use 90% less energy than traditional incandescent bulbs and last 25 times longer. The average single-family home has 30 to 40 lightbulbs, so don’t forget to change then in places like the garage, above the stove, or bathroom vanities.

Furthermore, when purchasing appliances, look for the ENERGY STAR symbol. There are many products that have earned the certification, which means they are designed to reduce energy usage by 10% to 20% on average over other models.

For example, if a window air conditioner uses 900 watts of electricity, at today’s rates that would cost about $3 to run for 8 hours. By switching to an ENERGY STAR model of the same size and output, you’re already reducing that by approximately 50 cents a day.

For more information on cost and energy savings, head to HawaiiEnergy.com.

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