Category: Uncategorized

Are Your Appliances Draining Your Wallet?

~ jo-anngarbutt ~ Leave a comment

Many homeowners are surprised to learn that their appliances are silently draining their wallets. Appliances like space heaters, water heaters, and home air conditioners are the biggest culprits. But don’t worry, there’s a solution!

By making smart choices about the appliances, you buy and how you use them, you can significantly reduce your energy costs while helping the environment.

Energy Efficiency: Your Pocket’s Best Friend

Electricity is measured in Watts or Kilowatt (kW)  and electricity bills usually show charges by kWh – as it is a measure of electricity used over hours.

What are the benefits of paying attention to energy efficiency?

  • Cost Savings: Energy-efficient appliances consume less electricity, leading to lower energy bills per month and per year. Energy labels can help compare various appliance models being considered for purchase to help you save in the long run.
  • Product Longevity: Energy-efficient appliances often have longer lifespans, ultimately saving you money as fewer replacements may be needed during 10 years for example. It also lowers electric and electronic waste, benefiting the circular economy – less waste is generated!
  • Environmental Impact: Reducing your household’s energy consumption helps to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Do you know which household appliances are secretly draining your wallet? It’s time to shed light on your energy thieves. Before buying new appliances, understand their energy consumption. A little knowledge can save you a lot!

The following graphic illustrates typical energy consumption for common household appliances under high and low usage conditions. By analyzing this type of data for appliances you plan to buy, you can identify potential areas for energy savings over the coming years. You achieve this by making informed decisions about appliance usage and upgrade options and implementing the best energy-efficient alternatives!

Energy Labels

Energy labels are your secret weapon against sky-high energy bills. These handy stickers reveal how much energy each appliance guzzles. By choosing appliance models with the best energy ratings, you’ll not only save money but also help the planet.

How to read energy labels

Source: SEAI 2024

Energy labels reveal how much energy an appliance guzzles, helping you choose wisely. Look for the energy efficiency rating (usually A-G) – the closer to A, the better. This label (see example to the left) shows energy use in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per 1,000 hours. Multiply this by your electricity rate to see the appliance’s cost for every 1,000 hours it is in use. Knowing that, you can pick the appliance that saves you money over the coming years by reducing the amount of energy used!

Let’s do the math!

Imagine your new fridge has an energy label showing it uses 400 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity a year. If your electricity costs 30 cents per kWh, that fridge alone could add up to €120 to your annual bill. Yikes! This is why choosing energy-efficient appliances is a no-brainer.

Calculation example

Kettles might seem harmless, but they can secretly drain your wallet. These little appliances often cause energy spikes that can be easily spotted on your energy monitor. Let’s compare two kettles: Kettle A, an older model, and Kettle B, a newer, energy-efficient one.

The Kettle Challenge: Which Model Saves You Money?

Scenario: Boiling one cup of water (250ml)

Kettle A: Older model, less efficient, with a power rating of 3000 watts.

  • It takes 2 minutes to boil the water.

Kettle B: Newer model, more efficient, with a power rating of 2000 watts.

  • It takes 2 minutes and 30 seconds to boil the water.

Energy Consumption Calculation:

  • Energy (kWh) = Power (kW) x Time (hours)

Kettle A:

  • Energy consumed = (3000 watts / 1000) * (2 minutes / 60 minutes) = 0.1 kWh

Kettle B:

  • Energy consumed = (2000 watts / 1000) * (2.5 minutes / 60 minutes) = 0.083 kWh

The energy usage for Kettle B is less than the energy usage calculated for Kettle A.

Conclusion:

Even though Kettle B takes longer to boil the water, it consumes less energy due to its lower power rating. Over time, using a more energy-efficient kettle can result in significant energy savings.

The link below gives you free access to a simple calculation sheet for calculating the cost of using an appliance you have been thinking of buying. The sheet comes prepopulated with some numbers to illustrate how it works. Just type over the numbers in the blue blocks in the sheet using your own information per device/appliance – using your energy costs and the appliance/device energy label information. Use the sheet more than once if you want to compare more than one appliance or device based on energy efficiency ratings.

202408 Energy use calculation sheetDownload

Choose Wisely, Save Significantly

Investing in energy-efficient appliances is like planting a money tree in your home. They can slash your electricity bills without breaking the bank. Plus, you’ll be helping the planet one watt at a time. So, next time you’re shopping for a new fridge or washing machine, look for those energy-saving labels. Your wallet (and the Earth) will thank you!

How good are your meetings? – Exercise

~ jo-anngarbutt ~ Leave a comment

Most teams have challenges when it comes to ensuring optimal collaboration and effectiveness during meetings. It is true that many people are not fond of meetings and the list of pet peeves include that meetings are too long, do not reach any outcomes or agreements, are one-way conversations etc.  The tool I am sharing today can help teams become more aware of their particular downfalls and habits which contribute to having less effective meetings.

The exercise requires the assignment of an observer to help make behaviors, team dynamics, habits and meeting inefficiencies visible to the team by simply observing them during a meeting.

The assigned observer can be a team member (rotate the assignment to other team members for multiple team meeting observations) or it can be a trusted outsider (typically from Human Resources or Training & Development). The resource includes a template for the assigned observer to use when capturing impressions of the team during a meeting. The process of capturing observations, presenting observations and dealing with observations as a team is also described in the shared resource.

team-process-review-exerciseDownload

Reflections:

  • It does not really matter which specific questions are considered for observations or how exactly the team receives the feedback, the important part is to give the team a way to see themselves through the eyes of someone who is not participating in the meeting and thereby learning about themselves. The feedback information can be used for team improvements and also for individual learning. Individuals can learn how their own behaviors are contributing to team successes or inefficiencies and have the opportunity to consciously choose helpful behaviors going forward.
  • Typical team improvement actions that comes from using this kind or review are: having a concise set of team meeting rules which is either permanently displayed in the team meeting room or displayed on a screen at the start of each meeting to remind them of the behaviors they have decided to emphasize or eliminate in team meetings; implementing specific roles such as for example a time-keeper for each meeting to ensure that meetings, discussions and agenda topics are not dragged out too long and that an additional meeting be set instead to complete some topics which were too complicated to solve during a regular team meeting.
  • If you have used team measurement tools on a team you may also have a session where the team becomes aware of the likely blind-spots it may have due to the presence of specific personalities and styles in that team (based on the specific team effectiveness tool you have used with the team). The sum of the individuals present in meetings can lead to the greater team having specific blind-spots, which can be mitigated once the team becomes aware of them and are able to take actions (i.e. assign someone to take on a specific role which may be “missing ” in the team due to its specific contingent of members).

Building Squares – Team Activity

~ jo-anngarbutt ~ Leave a comment

building squares

The basic learning points of this activity would include the importance of communication in teams, helping others develop by letting them make their own mistakes (and learning from them), and recognizing the importance of the contribution by each team member (vs taking over an activity/project and not allowing all team members to participate in important team activities).

This is a team activity which you can either use as an ice-breaker or an energizer between two other agenda items. It does not take much time to execute, but it does require some upfront preparation. The upside is, once you have made these squares and the puzzle pieces you can always re-use them in future with other groups and teams. (Remember to store the pieces in separate envelopes to keep the different puzzles from getting mixed up).

The instruction sheet (which you can download below) details how to make these squares, how to set up the activity and offers some debriefing questions to use afterwards. The activity does not take long to complete and does not typically create a lot of anger/frustration or resentment between people or teams leading to the need for longer debriefing and discussion sessions.

instructionsforbuildingsquaresDownload

Variation options:

  • If you have more time and would like to get more points across to the teams you could consider moving the puzzles to other tables for additional rounds. Each team then has a new puzzle to complete. This way the challenge is different to the teams for further activity rounds and the additional instruction or activity handicap you introduce could take them deeper into the experience of working together as a team. For example: you could lift the rule around “no talking” to see if the teams find the challenge easier or harder?
  • You could also give them the same puzzle they had in the first round and let them practice to see how fast they can complete it (with or without talking as per your instruction). Then when each table/team feels that they have optimized their ability to complete the puzzle you can take one person from each table and have them join a new table. Each team would then have one new team member and no time to practice with the new team member. Then ask the tables to compete seeing who can complete the puzzle the fastest.