Take the Home Energy Fitness Challenge on Earth Day

This year, let Earth Day inspire you to make lasting changes in your home.

This Earth Day, you can help the planet while making your home more sustainable. Take the Sense Home Energy Fitness Challenge!

Here’s the challenge: on Earth Day, April 22, reduce your home’s energy footprint by 20% for the day. You can take temporary steps or make changes in your home’s energy profile that have an impact all year long. It’s up to you. If everyone takes the challenge, we can make a big impact, collectively, on the health of the planet.

Here at Sense, we’ve brainstormed ways to get to 20% savings on Earth Day. We hope these ideas inspire you to find your own savings.

  • Start your day right by turning off your coffee maker once it’s done brewing. Make sure it doesn’t run all day! If you’re a baker use your oven on cool days so you don’t waste A/C power to keep the house comfortable.
  • Let the wind dry your laundry on a clothesline on Earth Day. An electric dryer uses 1,800 to 5,000 watts while running — and an average of 2 killowatts per drying session. Bonus: the smell of fresh air in your linens.
  • Put your hair dryer on the warm setting. Blow dryers can use twice as much electricity in the hot setting, so this is a savings that will recur every time you dry your hair.
  • Put your home theater on a smart strip. Sense integrates with the TP-Link Kasa HS300 Smart Strip. Use the Sense Power Meter or a smart strip to figure out how much energy each component uses. Pay special attention to speakers, sound bars, and gaming equipment, which can be energy hogs while active and in some idle modes.
  • Swap out your cable DVR for an Energy Star-certified model. Find out more from our blog about the vampire habits of cable DVRs.
  • Take an instant audit with the Sense app’s Power Meter in hand. Walk through your home, turning devices on and off, to find out exactly how much energy they use. Find an energy hog on Earth Day and get rid of it!
  • Replace all your incandescent bulbs with LEDs or fluorescents. Be sure to check those big “can” ceiling lights and read these stories about homeowners who’ve saved by replacing them.
  • Analyze the energy savings you’ll get from replacing old water heaters and window air conditioners. Is it time to upgrade? More efficient models will make a big impact on your home’s energy footprint. Just changing your settings can have a big impact, too.
  • Complete an Always On audit of your house using an energy monitoring smart plug. Check out various gadgets that stay on all the time to see how much of your Always On load you can identify.
  • Check the settings on your pool and hot tub. Find ways to minimize their electricity drain during the coming warm months.
  • Sense owners: Look at your usage for the past month in the Dashboard tab. See which devices use the most energy, write down three ways you can reduce that usage, and make it happen!

At Sense, we’ve noticed that customers who discover ways to reduce their energy needs will often make their changes permanent, reducing their home’s energy footprint all year long. And that’s good news for the planet!

So let us know how you reduced your home’s energy use on Earth Day. Post a comment on our Facebook page or Twitter  with the hashtag #earthhomefitness.