We’ve shown you lots of ways to save money on your power bills, from the drastic to the simple and easy, but the biggest energy sinks around your house are probably the big ones you use most often. This quiz helps you see which of your appliances or comforts uses more energy, and explains how much.
You can take the quiz embedded below, but we’d suggest hitting the link below to jump over to Constellation Energy, who built the quiz, and read more about exactly how different the energy consumption between the options in each question really is. Most of the questions are pretty self-explanatory and the answers will be pretty obvious, but some of them are a little trickier, and the detailed explanation leans into what you should know before you, let’s say, run out and upgrade your fridge or washer and dryer.
For example, it’s pretty obvious that a laptop will consume less energy than a desktop computer, but if you’re looking for energy savings, you should pay attention to your system’s power management controls, and make sure it’s set to sleep when it’s not in use — that’s where the real energy savings lies, regardless of the type of computer you use. Anyway, even that’s an obvious example, so try the quiz yourself, then hit the link below to read more about how you can save money — and energy — at home.
Take the Energy Efficiency Quiz [Constellation Energy]
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6 responses to “This Energy Efficiency Quiz Offers Easy Ways To Save Money On Your Electric Bill”
I got 88%. It wasn’t exactly hard. I mean, an air con versus a fan? C’mon.
The only one that really stumped me was the washing machine one. Front loader vs Top Loader. So I guess I know now that when I buy a new washer, I should lean towards a front loader.
It’s all a bit subjective and dependant on use, some aren’t even comparable, like a slow cooker and an oven, they’re used for different things! Also it doesn’t specify what kind of oven it is.
Not sure about the side by side and top mount fridge either, again, it would be entirely dependent on the models compared, instead of the design, and you can’t really get the same size fridges in both designs, so comparison isn’t really appropriate.
How do I see which one I got wrong?
the thing that frustrated me was laptop vs pc – because its the PSU size. ive seen pcs run lower than laptops and vice versa. same with oven and crockpot, ive seen both be higher than the other, and same with microwave vs stove. oh well.
Sleep mode on a PC saves less energy than you may think. The majority of the power savings – at least with cheap PCs that have onboard video – kicks in when the monitor turns off. Not sure how a video card would affect those numbers.
I did a bunch of power comparison tests a few years ago when we were looking for ways to save power overnight a my workplace. The PCs were burning something like 50W when idle. In Sleep mode that went down by only 5W or so.
The big savings were when the system hibernated (i.e. the CPU shut down) for which power usage dropped to 2W or thereabouts.
I got 8/9 but I’m not sure which one I got wrong. Some of them didn’t seem comparable