Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

This is a shot of Daddy and the two kids at Hong Kong Science Museum during our most recent trip there in December last year.

We were at this particular ‘How to Save Energy at Home’ exhibit area for a LONG time.

And the main reason was, … the kids THOROUGHLY enjoyed playing with the laser guns!

You see, there were different ‘settings’ in the hall (eg. Living room, dining room, home office, etc) and we had to point the laser gun to different ‘targets’ set around the area! And when we hit the target (eg. the round thing just below the air-conditioner, pictured below), more info on how we could save energy at home (eg. Consider using a fan instead of switching on the air-con all the time) will appear on a computer screen next to laser gun.

I thought it was a GREAT way of educating visitors and introducing them to the many different ways we can actively conserve energy!

Even our 4yo Vai could remember (until today!) how we should ‘save electricity’ at home.

Personally, I feel we should all consider doing (or start introducing) simple little energy-saving actions at home for two main reasons.

1) For the good of the environment

Each time we switch on the air-con, the TV or our computers, the Singapore power plants generate the electricity we need by burning fossil fuels (eg. oil and natural gas), which consequently releases carbon dioxide (CO₂) which is a greenhouse gas. Excess CO₂ traps more heat from the sun via the greenhouse effect, causing climate change. And we all know how weird our weather patterns around the world have been in recent years!

[Click HERE to read more on this ‘climate change’ issue on the E2 Singapore website]

…

2) To reduce our overall electricity bills

I don’t know if many of you are aware that our electricity tariff has recently gone up (refer to the Media Release above, or click HERE to read the PDF version).

Frankly, this is something I’ve just recently realised, and it does make our little actions / adjustments around the house (ie. To better save electricity) more … justifiable. I mean, the ‘savings’ may not be in ‘thousands of dollars’, but hey … even if we could save just a few hundred dollars a year (eg. less than $300), it still means we’re making good use of the money we have.

Anyway.

Here are three practical ‘energy-saving’ tips (and the respective costs we could’ve saved) that I’d like to share with you today!

1) Use a fan instead of the air-conditioner!

Interesting info:
A fan uses less than 1/10th of the energy used by an air-conditioner!

Savings:
About S$55 a month or $665 a year!

[When it’s warm, we switch on our ceiling fans in our dining / living room, and we usually just leave bedroom windows wide open. Btw, we have wrought-iron window grilles at home, for safety reasons, especially when we have kids at home)

…

2) The lower the air-conditioner temperature setting, the MORE energy used.

Recommended:
Set the temperature at about 25 deg Celsius.

Savings:
For every degree raised, we save about S$20 a year!

[We occasionally switch on the air-con at night, and when do, it’s usually set at either 25 or 26 deg Celsius, and we always have the timer on too, ie. To automatically switch off after a good 4-5 hours]

[One of the things we teach the kids is to make sure that the refrigerator door is SHUT properly whenever they open it. I’m glad our fridge comes with this ‘beeping’ sound that goes off if the door is not shut well in a few seconds]

…

3) Go for energy-efficient appliances (eg. air-con, refrigerator) by checking the energy labels.

Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) has this Database of Registered Goods on its website! (For air-cons, refrigerators and clothes dryers). This means, you can actually check how ‘green’ a particular product and brand is and calculate the estimated overall cost of using it at home! SO useful!

Click HERE to go to that NEA page!

And, click HERE to read a whole list of other useful energy-saving tips shared by E2 Singapore!

…

Here’s one last thing I’d like to bring your attention to!

There’s this Energy Challenge Online Game on the E2 Singapore website where you can win Best Denki vouchers!

Basically, game participants will:

– Be given ‘$5000’ to replace their existing home appliances with those from a shopping cart

– Go around the ‘home’ to : turn off appliances and turn down consumption to achieve ‘maximum savings’ in electricity consumption within the shortest period of time

Game participants who can save the most energy within the shortest period of time will have their chance to win the vouchers!

Click HERE to start playing the online game!

…

Have fun everyone, and happy ‘cost and energy-saving’ too! =)