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Have You Overlook An Important Area When Saving Energy?
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Written by: Michael Edwards
Total views: 18 |
Word Count: 671 |
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 |
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One of the areas that seems the least understood when using green products is the "carbon footprint". To illustrate this point about green products, a simple story about the use of CFL (Compact Florescent Lamp) bulbs may help. When in a restaurant the other day, I noticed that the spoon was missing from the place setting. I looked around and it appeared it was the same all over the restaurant.
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I asked my server about this and she told me the order had just come down from "corporate" that no more spoons were to be placed on any cleared table. I have to say it looked odd to see a table set up this way. She told me that if I order coffee, a spoon would be presented.
I asked if she knew why this change had occurred and why no green products like CFL bulbs. I was told that in order to conserve energy that spoons were only given to customers that would use them. It appears they believe that it costs a lot to clean an unused spoon. So the possibility of cleaning an unused spoon was removed. And yet how odd, no investment in green products that could save money such as CFL bulbs.
I must, say this is a little short sighted on the company's part. Most of us go to a restaurant to eat. We assume a comfortable, warm, satisfying environment, not to have to stress out trying to get the server's attention so we can get the long lost forgotten spoon. OK, a little melodrama, but the point is why should I have to ask for something that has always been there? This cost saving if there is any would be in pennies per year while using CFL bulbs would be in dollars.
On the other hand, they were still reluctant to invest in green products. As I was thinking, "I am thankful a chain of restaurants is trying to go green," I happened to look up and saw row after row of incandescent light bulbs and no green products like CFL bulbs in sight. In this restaurant alone, there were nearly 50 light bulbs visible from where I was sitting. Some were track lighting, some hanging, but mostly recessed lights, and none were green products like CFL bulbs.
It looked like each incandescent light bulb was running around 75 watts. I inquired as to the hours of this store and was told they were open 138 hours a week.
Now I know that CFL bulbs, one of the great green products, will save near 75% on an energy bill. I did a little math to see how many pennies this store would save. If I multiple the 50 bulbs times 75 watts I get 3750 watt hours. So if I multiple the 3750 watt hours, times the number of hours the store is open we get 51700 watt hours per week or 26,910,000 (27 megawatt hours rounded) for this store per year without using any green products.
From the Internet I was able to learn that they have 88 stores in their chain. So if we assume this is an average store we can multiply the 27 megawatts times the 88 stores and we see that this chain is using around 2368 megawatts per year just on lighting.
Now, what if we replaced all the incandescent bulbs with CFL bulbs? Well, a replacement for a 75 watts bulb runs 18 watts. So 50 bulbs times 18 watts would equal 900 per hour. Then we multiple 900 watts times 138 store hours and we get 124,200 watt hours per week. Then multiply 124,200 * 52 week we would get or 6.46 megawatt hours per year. Now, take the megawatt hours per year (6.46) times the number of stores (88) and we get around 568 megawatt hours per year for the whole chain using green products. If we do a little subtraction, we would get around 2,368 minus 568 = 1800 megawatt hours savings. I would say that they would be saving more than pennies if they were using green products like CFL bulbs.
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