Energy Cutting Plan-3

It’s the tenth day we established the Energy Cutting Plan for our house.

Day2–3

iCut:

If you still remember, you should know that I’ve got 4 rules in this part. They are the following:

1. Heat mineral water to 40 Celsius instead of 100 Celsius.

2. Use a normal toothbrush instead of an electric toothbrush.

3. Send online messages instead of using my sticky note printer.

4. Reduce the time of using high-power bedroom lights.

I got rid of using the devices for a week. Then I realized that it’s very hard to go back to the old lifestyle. I’ve received many conveniences from using these kinds of stuff. Also, more importantly, they are more functional and powerful. Without using my electric toothbrush, I found some food residual in my mouth serval times. Without using my sticky note printer, I experienced a relationship crisis with my girlfriend.

Also, after researching all the electric devices in my house, I found that what I’ve tried for reducing energy consumption could only help me save only less than 10 percent of all energy consumption. You can check the details in the following energy mapping of my house.

As you can see, heating for hot water or space and cooling for storing food are the main energy consumption activities. It’s the same in many other houses if you could check others’ mapping on this website:

Energy Map (padlet.com)

energy mapping screenshot

But given the popular co-living situation among students, living with 4kWh a day is an achievable goal.

Based on the experiences of others and secondary research, I found that to reduce energy consumption, we should propose that sharing is not only useful but also environmentally ethical. Also, reducing unnecessary waste and improving energy efficiency, such as adding insulation to houses and buying led lights instead of incandescent bulbs, are good measures.

When talking about sharing, a social activity, I have to mention weCut. We also have 4 rules here.

weCut:

1. Cook for all as much as possible.
2. Do laundry together to reduce the use of the drum washing machine.
3. Lower the maximum temperature of the bathroom water heater from 80 Celsius to 60 Celsius.
4. Close all the lights after using them immediately.

Let’s check what difficulties we will meet in this part.

First of all, cooking for all is more like a slogan rather than a standard of conduct for us. After we decided to cook together, we went to Chinatown and bought a lot of raw materials like 2kg pork, 1kg pig heart, and liver which are normal cooking materials for Chinese food. The meat is enough for us to eat for a week. If someone could stay at home without going to school, then he is the one that cooked for us. This is also a good way for us to break the ice between us and know each other better.

The plan sounded perfect. But it’s not! At first, it was gooooood! Everyone got interested in it. We cooked a lot together and talked a lot after eating and drinking to know each other.

2.5 kg Pig heart and pork

But it changed quickly. Sometimes the one who should cook will go out for a party or just work on his homework without spare time. Also, the ones who should come back to enjoy the dinner eat outside with their teammates. Not to mention that we all have different tastes. What had been a good idea turned out to be something nobody wanted to talk about. They are still some meat in our fridge now!

The same thing happened in doing laundry together.

But, to my relief, we are doing well on rules No.3 and No.4. Sometimes we even closed the water heater and only used it when taking shower. But the dramatic thing is that it’s not about saving energy. It’s because home power tripping stops work and games! It’s so funny but realistic!

To conclude, I want to say that going back to old low-energy consumptionis unacceptable for modern people. For designers, how to painlessly improve people’s energy habits is the design challenge of our time.