The most effective way of saving electricity

The most effective way of saving electricity is, without doubt, not to use it at all. Just last week, news around the globe including Yahoo News, BusinessWeek, and even Arab Times had this headlines: Philippines to shut down malls to save power. I have never been a good engineer in power plant operations so I could not comment on what happens in the power plants when a big chunk of its consumers is going to shut down. Do power plants have batteries to store electric energy? Or do power plants automatically slow down fuel oil consumption? Or do they automatically slow down the flow of water from their dams? Either ways, my high schools physics tells me that energy is going to be preserved if we stop consuming them, either in the form of stored electric energy in batteries (by the way, if ever power plants have batteries that can store Megawatt-hours of electricity, they must be very huge! shame on me if power plant engineers would ever see this :)), or in the form of chemical energy in fuel oils, or probably, in the form of stored potential energy in dams.

Anyway, saving electricity by not using it is obviously a joke! Who could imagine living in your household without electric lamps or working in the office without computers and air conditioners? By the way, I am not saying that shutting down malls is a joke. The Philippine Government probably have good reasons to do so. In fact, I believe they have a very serious reason to do so. Actually, it got me curious when the headline used the term "power". Since power is the "rate" of energy consumption or generation, I think what the government meant is to reduce the rate of electricity consumption so that power plants would not need to operate at it's full capacity which may prone them to power failures. Or, the reduced demand for electricity may allow them to shut down few power plants and use them as backup in case the main operating power plants would fail. Do I get it this time? I am just hoping I am getting close to it.

Anyway, back to our homes and offices, there is no need to shut down electric equipments just to save electricity, unless those equipments are not needed at all. We can still use air conditioners, refrigerators, lighting, and computers and still save electricity. The key thing here is efficiency, being able to use only what is actually needed and minimize wastes as much as possible. In my next posts, I would like to make them a journal of energy conservation measures that I have done or am planning to do at home and in the office.