Playing on the Halloween theme, Best Buy has declared today Vampire Awareness Day to draw attention to "vampire power", the electricity squandered by devices while turned off. While I'm not one to parrot a company's PR pitch, I thought this was a cool way to address the costly problem. According to the company , 40% of the electricity used in a household is wasted powering turned-off electronics such at TVs and computers, costing us around $4 billion a year.

The company makes some simple suggestions about how to reduce the vampire power drain on your precious electron flow:

• Use power strips, and turn them off when the items are not in use.
• Turn off your computer when not in use.
• Unplug chargers when not in use. They continue to draw current even when not hooked up to the cell phone or other device they are intended to recharge.
• Buy Energy Star products that minimize power waste.
• There are also devices on the market that help minimize vampire power drain, although you should do the math on them to make sure the purchase price exceeds the cost of power saved.
  

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While winding down a busy day of riding roller coasters with some of our friends, one of them who regularly traveled the route home noticed that many of the big homes we were passing no longer had bright lights casting a luxurious glow on them; a change she attributes to owners cutting back on electricity costs. After discussing areas that we had cut back we wondered how tightening budgets will affect people's decision to decorate for the holidays.

The average cost of lighting up a tree for a month is close to $30 when done using traditional lights, a significant amount when money is already tight. Concerned consumers can switch to LED Christmas lights which run for the same period for less than a dollar in electricity. Switching to LED bulbs however comes with a high price tag of its own: A 50-light string can cost upwards of $20 which adds up quick on a tree with 500 to 600 lights!

While I wouldn't be surprised to see malls and other businesses also cutting back on any decorations that use lights this year fans of the massive tree in Rockefeller center shouldn't have to worry. The 600,000 light tree is still scheduled to be lighted on December 3rd this year and since the tree uses LED lights it will only cost a fraction of what it did 2 years ago before the switch was made.

I know our tree will still be lit up like a supernova come late November. My wife loves to decorate for Christmas and her tag line has become, "More Lights", much like Christopher Walken clamored for, "More Cowbell". Last year's tree had well over 1,000 lights on it and put off enough of a glow that you didn't want to look directly at it without a welders mask. Thankfully any increase in electric usage was made up for by the heat the tree put off, letting us stay bright and on budget through the holidays.

Laundry has always been a chore I have a hate-hate relationship with. It seems that no sooner do I get a load out of the dryer that I'm doing the whole darn process all over! Not only do I seem to waste lots of time on laundry but I've found that we also waste a lot of room in washer loads which translates into wasted cash. We try to always run loads of laundry which are full but since we don't have a lot of space we kept all of our laundry in one hamper which made it difficult to figure out what we had the most of as opposed to what's easy to grab.

Last week we splurged on a $20 collapsible hamper with 3 compartments and I'll never look back! After only a week I can honestly say this is the best $20 I've spent on a household item for our apartment. The new hamper takes up only slightly more space than our old hamper but the way we do laundry is transformed. We no longer need to guess at how many towels lie hidden below our work clothes; each type of laundry has its own spot which is conveniently 1 load's worth of laundry.

I don't have any hard data from my experience to back up the savings yet but the cost of one load of laundry depending on utility costs and detergent ranges from $.60 to $1 so even if I only save one load a week I've paid of my hamper purchase in 2-3 electric bills. That doesn't even factor in the reduction in time spent sorting laundry or dealing with moving a half load through the entire laundry process which I can use to do other things like write posts like this one. Finally, since the basket is collapsible it takes up less space than our old one and I feel a sense of accomplishment from finishing a load!

If you're looking to make some money-saving changes around the house, you know that kicking your thermostat up or down a few degrees is a small change that can save big bucks -- and that's just your personal electric bill. Think about the savings when we adopt the same practices in our larger buildings, like office complexes and schools.

Unfortunately, in many school buildings, it's not as simple as moving the thermostat up or down a tick. These buildings are heated by huge furnace boilers that can't be easily switched on and off -- so once they're on, they stay on. That's why a school board in Nova Scotia voted to push back the "on" date by approximately two weeks this year, to November 1.

With the rising cost of furnace fuel, this region was one of many that found itself way over its heating budget last year. This year, the school board estimates that the change will save approximately $1,000 per school in its system, adding up to approximately $24,000 in savings. Additionally, the board has asked that all cabinets and bookshelves blocking radiators in the schools to be moved so that the heating system can perform at maximum efficiency.

Sounds like a smart idea to us -- just don't forget to dress your kids in layers this year!

It's hard to figure out how to save energy in your home if you don't know how much you're using and where. That's why those who are serious about saving money or electricity are turning to electricity meters.

Formerly the province of serious electronics geeks with $1,200 to blow on a big, elaborate meter, pocket-sized electricity meters are now becoming popular with the masses.

Daniel Dern at ComputerWorld took a close look at some of the products out there, and recommends a "plug load meter" that measure the output of an individual appliance. It tracks the device over a period of time so you get high and low output numbers, then calculates how much energy it uses and how much money that costs over a typical month or year.

The Rand Corporation just came out with news saying severely cutting our dependence on oil, gas and coal is going to be harder than they intially reported. When Rand did the same study in 2006 and came out with more favorable results, it was because of an error in the computer model. Rand was calculating how hard it would be to cut 25% of our energy to renewable resources by 2025 for the Energy Future Coalition. They run the group 25 by '25, which is trying to make that metric a rallying cry and goal.

Rand says that the getting there will require "dramatic progress in renewable energy technology." They also hint that they would like to get rid of ethanol subsidies, though they aren't counting on it. They're huge fans of the potential for biomass. They'd really like to see the country to switch from making ethanol from corn--which is highly inefficient, though popular with farmers--to making it with agricultural and wood waste or switchgrass.

For many people the report will be a re-affirmation of the obvious: we can't just count on natural progress to reduce energy waste. That's the kind of thinking in President Bush's goal to cut greenhouse gas by 2025 -- but only after letting it go much higher for the next 10 to 15 years. Both major presidential candidates have indicated they're willing to be more serious about the project. Rand thinks the free market may produce some better alternatives now that gas is so expensive. The Rand report also thinks some kind of requirement for renewable energy isn't a bad idea to foster the market--as long as it's phased in sensibly. Right now only 9.5% of our electricity and 1.6% of our motor vehicle power comes from renewable sources. That is a long way to go to 25%.

Relative to the operations of my own household, rising oil prices have had little negative impact, although we have had to change the way we do some things here. We now group our motor trips better to make better use of our miles per gallon. We also think a little harder about our power usage, but that's what we Americans do, we adjust.

Basically, up to this point, rising fuel costs have increased the expense of our household operations here by perhaps ten to fifteen percent. We've absorbed that increase quite nicely by planning our driving more carefully, by making sure lights are turned off in unused rooms and by cutting out a few foodstuffs which we probably shouldn't be eating anyway. I'd like to think that rising energy costs are leading us to give greater consideration to our spending and energy usage. In some ways perhaps increased energy costs have done us a favor, yes? Personally, I estimate that my household could withstand an increase in the price of gasoline up to $6 a gallon before going into serious stress. I hope it doesn't come to that, but it could.

It's a collection of little things which make up the body of our readjustment. I pick up items or do errands on my way to work, whereas in times past we would probably have made an extra trip into town. We more closely estimate usage of certain grocery items such as bread, toilet paper and milk so purchases will last through until the next weekly grocery shopping trip. We think about what things we're going into the refrigerator for before going in there to get them and we try to keep things in there somewhat organized so we can find what we need and get out. My wife is the light switch police and she reminds my daughter and me to turn off the light as we're leaving rooms. She does it almost intuitively even before we exit. Doors get closed tightly the first time. Telephone calls have been shortened. We spend more time together in the same room. Leftovers get fed to the dog less often.

Online banking saves us trips to the bank. Paying our auto insurance quarterly rather than monthly saves us about $125 every six months. Coffee is made at home and carried out in thermal cups. We use our debit cards religiously, saving us money on the reordering of checks. It's a matter of giving logistical scrutiny to the things we had previously been taking for granted. The real upside is that fiscal, social and consumer responsibility come with their own silently compounding benefits and we're building the savings accounts to prove it.

What do I know about heating bills? I live in balmy Los Angeles, where winter weather sometimes hits the high '50s and heating your home is more about donning your Ugg boots or finding some socks to wear with your flip-flops.

But even we have to turn on the heat sometimes. And since electricity costs have doubled in the last few years, the ultimate bill can be, well, shocking.

Our sister blog, Green Daily, recently ran an excellent post on ten money saving tips for keeping your electricity bill less shocking this winter.