Day 1: Changing Eating Habits
Before I started my 4Kw energy saving journey, I counted my electricity consumption in my daily life so that I can make a more targeted experience and planning.
My statistics showed that I mainly consume electricity in the following scenarios:
1. Refrigerator freezing food: 1500w/Day
2. Cooking and heating food: 1200w/Day
3. Washing clothes: 500w/h, 800w/Day
4. Water heater for bathing: 700w/Day
5. Lighting: 40w/h, 400w/Day
6. Kettle: 500w/Day
7. Hair dryer: 400w/Day
8. Computer and cell phone charging: 8–10w/h, 100w/Day
So my total daily electricity consumption is about 5.6Kw.
It can be seen that my daily electricity consumption is mainly related to food and electrical appliances, so I began to think about how to start from these two aspects of my energy-saving journey :)
Day 1 Challenge: Changing Eating Habits
Since I share the refrigerator with my roommate, I started to think about how to reduce my personal electricity usage from heating food.
Method 1: Switch to cold meals every morning
When I first came to Milan, I was used to the Chinese breakfast pattern, and preferred a hot breakfast. Therefore, I would cook myself every morning. Sometimes I would make a fried egg, or pancakes.
So I’m going to change my morning eating habits, I use milk + biscuits/cereal as my breakfast, this helps me save about 1/3 of the electricity used for daily cooking, that’s 400w, and at the same time, I found that this also helps me save time, and I can sleep more in the morning!
Method 2: Cook once for multiple meals
I find that when I reheat the food a second time (to make it warm), it takes less time than re-cooking raw food, and naturally consumes less power. As I prefer porridge, I started trying to cook a big pot of porridge in the middle of the day, and after eating half of it in the middle of the day, I simply reheat it again in the evening. I found that this also saves me 1/6th of the electricity, which is 200w.
By simply reheating less food, I was able to save 600w of electricity per day, which also helped me save some time in cooking. I’m not forcing myself to eat raw food and I still enjoy every meal I have.
Today I used about 5Kw of electricity, I didn’t reach my 4Kw target but it’s a good start, I think my energy saving journey is starting to pay off and I hope to build on it tomorrow.
