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How I’m saving over $100 on my Energy Bill this Year with the BC Hydro Team Power Smart Challenge
Everything in life is expensive right now and that includes paying for electricity. This is why I wanted to share how I’m saving money on my energy bill with the Team Power Smart Challenge. The first time I saw BC Hydro email about their Team Power Smart Challenge I actually dismissed it thinking there’s no way I could achieve the targets they set out. Turns out I was wrong! And I’m glad I am giving the challenge a try so I can (hopefully) earn my $100 at the end of the year. What is the Team Power Smart Challenge? BC Hydro has a program you can opt into where, if…
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10 Practical tips to save money on heating this winter
Introduction If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then winter is slowly taking hold for you as it is for us here in Southwestern BC. Winter brings with it cozy sweaters, hot cocoa, and…cold! As temperatures drop, energy bills tend to rise, leaving everyone searching for ways to stay warm while staying on a budget. With some simple changes and a bit of planning, it’s possible to keep warm while keeping our wallets happy. And an important bonus to reducing energy use is a reduction in our carbon footprint as well! In this blog post, I’m exploring ten practical ways to reduce energy use and save money on heating this…
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Residential solar panels: 2022 year in review
Why solar panels? In study after study, it has been found that our planet is warming. And a significant part of the emissions that are causing this change in climate can be traced to the energy used to warm and cool our homes. Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others. The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity. UN.org…
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Learning About Sustainable Energy Choices
From making my morning coffee to streaming my favourite TV shows to doing laundry, I use energy in a ton of different tasks during my day. Excessive energy consumption can impact not only our budgets, but also our environment. One of our fellow Climate Change Collective Bloggers shared an amazing list of ideas for reducing energy consumption. I’m continuing this conversation on sustainable energy choices this week. The recent “How You Can Reduce Your Energy Consumption and Save Money by Saving the Planet” post is a part of our Climate Change Collective series. In this series, one blogger writes a topical post and the Climate Change Collective participants write a response to their…
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Summer 2022 Solar Update
It’s been some time since my last solar update, so thought it was due! I find it endlessly fascinating to analyze the data from our panels and so wanted to share some of the 2022 metrics with you. Year over year, month to month it’s amazing to see how even our generation can be. I had expected more variation, but we really have come in at a fairly regular annual production. This year, with several additional panels brought online around April, we had expected to see a lot more energy production. But as you can see on the graph above, it wasn’t until late June/early July that we saw a…
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Residential Solar Project: Solar Panel Update 2021
Why Solar Panels? In the past months we have been sharing ways we can reduce our carbon footprint in light of the reports released this year indicating that our planet is well on the way to at least 1.5C warming. At COP26, it seemed that what needs to be done to keep warming to 1.5C is in progress, but not guaranteed to occur. One of the main issues was the use of coal for power generation with several key nations unwilling to commit to eliminating the use of coal from their energy generation processes. So, in light of these impactful decisions of nations, what can we as individuals do in…
