Wrapping up…

Today marks my last day of the challenge — the completion of mind-altering journey, constituting a success in my book. The challenge itself, though, was not that big of a success, as making it below 4 kWh a day proved extremely challenging. But again, it’s not about the results (energy spending-wise) — it’s about the efforts made and the lessons learned.

Cooking-wise, today was better than the last entry. Instead of cooking a full meal and using two burners, I decided to keep it simple — only using a small pot on the smallest burner for cooking pasta, and using uncooked ingredients to complement my meal. Instead of spending approximately 1 hour cooking one meal, I only used a single burner for 10 minutes.

Having conserved some energy on my meals today, it was also laundry day — a big day for energy-spending. I did a single wash and set out my load to try on a clothes hanger, instead of the drier.

I found myself at the end of this week counting up my daily energy expenses and becoming disappointed in myself for struggling to make it below 4 kWh, even after making cuts and improving on many of my uses. It’s been a rewarding experience to actually account for my energy habits and getting to understand how difficult it really is to attempt going about my life with a low energy-consumption. As I said in my first post, I realise I’ve led a privileged life, naïvely unaware of the difficulties faced by those who are energy poor. Hopefully I will never get to the point of experiencing their hardships in first hand, but actually understanding how much energy is required for the simplest of tasks I take for granted on a day-to-day basis has been truly-eye opening.

• Boiling water for coffee 3m 0.068 kWh
• Using the desk lamp in my room while getting ready in the morning ~1h 0.04 kWh
• Bathroom lights 20m 0.006 kWh
• Washing machine 59 min 1.5 kWh
• Charging laptop 1h 0.87 kWh
• Charging phone 2h 0.01 kWh
• Shower 10m 1 kWh 0.028 kW
• Cooking dinner 10m 0.23 kWh
• Desk lamp (21pm-12am) 0.12 kWh
• Dishwasher 1h40 1.85 kWh
• Ceiling lights (19pm-12am) 0.14 kWh

Total energy use on this day: 4,862 kWh