Kauai Efficient Cooling
There are many ways to cool down your Kauai home without AC to save you energy and money. With all the bright sunshine we get in Hawaii, cooling your home can be a energy hogging task if you use air conditioning.
Take Part
TakePart is a content-driven social action network driving citizen engagement, social action, and positive change on big issues like clean water, education reform, and environmental protection. This program encourages everyone to do their part by providing numerous ways to get involved in worthy causes, whether it’s volunteering for a local organization, making a donation, or voting for a charity to receive additional funding. TakePart is driven by the idea that a good story well told can inspire people to take small steps that drive big changes.
At TakePart.com you can explore today’s issues and decide for yourself where and how you would like to take action. You can vote to help decide which charities will receive funding. And every three months, five charities will be chosen to receive $200,000 each. There are dozens of worthy causes among a diverse group of categories like Arts & Culture, Community Development, Environment & Wildlife, Education, and Health & Wellness. You can also find the right volunteer opportunity for both your heart and your schedule through Volunteer Match. This program is designed to match volunteers with opportunities that meet their interests and availability and reward them for their time.
The website currently highlights five young women who prove that age is not a barrier in making a difference. From magic soccer balls that can power towns to an orphanage in Nepal that is saving lives, the projects from these young women inspire a whole new faith in the upcoming generation. Getting involved in something you feel passionate about is critical to making a positive impact in the world. TakePart will help inform, inspire, and activate you with tools to really make a difference.
Kauai Efficient Lighting
If every American home replaced just one light with an Energy Star light, we would save enough energy to light more than 3 million homes for a year. A compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime because it uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb. One bulb in every home will save about $700 million in annual energy costs, and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the emissions of about 800,000 cars. Lighting a home on Kauai only consumes about 8% of your electricity bill, but it is the easiest place to start making reductions. Daylighting, compact fluorescents, and light emitting diodes (LEDs) are bright ideas to consider.
Daylighting is the practice of placing windows, skylights, daylights, or openings so that during the day natural light provides effective internal lighting. New technologies, such as the Solatube daylight allow you to bring light into rooms that are not directly below the roof. These improvements also currently qualify for a 30% federal tax credit as well. Also, consider several small skylights instead of one large skylight for better distribution. Nature provides the best light available – and it’s free.
CFLs are miniature versions of full-sized fluorescents, and screw into standard lamp sockets giving off light that looks just like incandescent bulbs. They use 75% less electricity than out-dated incandescent light bulbs and last about ten times longer (over 8000 hours versus under 1000 hours). They also produce about 75 percent less heat, which reduces cooling costs and helps you stay cool.
LEDs are small, solid light bulbs with diffuser lenses which are extremely energy-efficient. Currently, the high cost of producing LEDs is a roadblock to widespread use, but researchers are finding new technologies to drive the price of LEDs into a more competitive range with CFLs. The benefits over CFLs and incandescents are: they use only 2-10 watts of electricity, they last up to 10 times longer than compact fluorescents, they hold up well to jarring and bumping, they produce less heat, and they are mercury free.
Buy Local Kauai Food
Buying local Kauai food provides many advantages. With the recent push in Hawai’i to move away from the dependence on imported food and return to a self-sufficient model of local food production, farmers’ markets are available around the island. These markets promote local farms and the freshest, locally grown produce. Buying locally grown food means more for the local economy. Buying locally grown food makes for a wonderful story about the farmer who brings local fruit to market or the baker who makes local bread. Knowing part of the story about your food is a personal way of enjoying a meal.
Locally grown produce is fresher. While produce that is purchased in a big-box store has been in transit or cold-stored for days or weeks, produce that you purchase at your local farmers’ market has often been picked within 24 hours of your purchase. This freshness not only affects the taste of your food, but the nutritional value which declines with time. Locally grown fruits and vegetables also have longer to ripen. Because the produce will be handled less, locally grown fruit does not have to be “rugged” or to stand up to the rigors of shipping. This means that you are going to be getting fruits and vegetables that were allowed to ripen until the last possible minute. Local food just plain tastes better.
Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons. By eating with the seasons, we are eating foods when they are at their peak taste, and the most abundant, and the least expensive. Local food translates to more variety. When a farmer is producing food that will not travel a long distance, and will have a shorter shelf life, and does not have a high-yield demand, the farmer is free to try small crops of various fruits and vegetables that would probably never make it to a large supermarket. And supporting local providers supports responsible land development. When you buy local, you give local farms and pastures an economic reason to stay open and undeveloped.
See our Kauai Events Calendar for times and locations of local farmers’ markets.
Kauai Energy Efficiency At Home
If all the households in Hawaii cut their energy bill in half, we would save one million dollars per day in energy costs. Therefore, energy efficiency in the home is the cheapest, safest, and fastest option we have available. If you want to get started cutting your home energy bill in half, you may want to do an energy audit to see where you can make the greatest difference in your energy consumption. You can do an energy audit yourself, or you can hire a professional to tell you where savings can be found.
A typical Hawai’i home uses:
40% – Water Heater
15% – Refrigerator
12% – Air Conditioner
8% – Lighting
8% – Cooking
8% – Clothes Dryer
5% – Misc
3% – Dishwasher
1% – Clothes Washer
You can find resources online for completing your own home energy audit, including the Department of Energy. New tools make it easy to measure how much energy your various appliances and devices are using, and different electricity monitors are available at home improvement stores. Many of these monitors allow you to plug in an electrical appliance, and it will measure how much energy the device is using and will tell you how much it costs to operate it. More sophisticated models can track exactly how much electricity your home is consuming at any given moment, allowing you to switch on or off various appliances and electric devices to see how much they are consuming individually. Some of these will interface with your home computer and allow you to record changes so you can track your usage over time. These are incredibly useful tools for helping you identify where you can make the biggest energy improvements and save money.
