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Lorraine Gauthier – President, The Now House™ Project : One of the least expensive ways of reducing your energy cost is simply changing
your behaviour. And one way to do that is you can get a simple energy monitor at any hardware store, and you can take it around your home
and plug any number of appliances into it, and you can see. Interesting: my toaster uses this much, or that computer and my printer
and everything that’s hooked up uses this much. It just gives you the information that you need to understand that if you remember to turn these
things off, you’re going to be cutting down on your electricity bill. Lighting takes about 20 percent of the electrical usage in your home,
so if you imagine that’s 20 percent of your electricity bill, then there’s a lot you can do. Most of us have heard of CFLs these days, compact
fluorescent lights,and what a CFL does for you is really dramatically reduce the amount of electricity you require for the lighting in your
home. So the average CFL, for example, you could have a 13 watt CFL, which is really the equivalent of a 60 watt incandescent bulb,but it provides
the same amount of light. So while it costs a little bit more, it will last about 10 times longer than an incandescent light bulb and really
reduce your electricity cost. People are familiar with LED lights, which are also super energy efficient. Many of us are using them in our
holiday lighting, but they're coming up with some super LED lights that you should have a look at, because LEDs actually even use less wattage
than CFLs, so you can use an LED light that uses three watts and actually produces something like 45 watts and the equivalent lighting of 45 watts,
and they last for something like 20 years. So one light may cost you $50, but imagine, you don’t ever have to change it, and it lasts for an
enormous length of time.