Wasted street lighting...

I don't see what difference LED's would make astronomy wise if they put out the same lumens. Now, having them shielded for full cut off is of course important. They should be somewhat more energy efficient but that doesn't really help anyone who wants to look at the night sky.

Some light pollution filters can be used at the scope to darken the background, but that doesn't change one's naked eye view of anything. And the filters also eliminate some of the light you want. They work best on Low Pressure Sodium lights, less so on High Pressure Sodium and even less so on the Mercury vapor lamps.

Line filters work well at the eyepiece on specific emission nebula, but you lose much of the rest (e.g. stars become much dimmer) except the nebula itself. Typical line filters are O-III and H-Beta. The O-III is by far the most useful, especially when using my 20" f/5 to look for star forming regions in other galaxies, and for picking out planetary nebula.

There is no substitute for a dark sky. Security lights are a travesty in the countryside (as are most of those elsewhere.)

 

They finally had an opportunity to fix the four light sensors this past week (folks had been out and the weather was windy with ice/snow storms.) So I'll take credit for ~2,600 kwh reduction for the year--which is about how long at least one of them had been running continuously.

 

You are preaching to the choir. The only ones I really have use for are ones that illuminate street corners/business drives.

Unfortunately, such things have to be taken in baby steps. If we can educate folks and regulate to get full cut off fixtures standard, then folks will be weaned away from seeing the actual lit bulbs. That would be a key step in convincing folks to use less lighting in general.

A major part of the problem in many areas, particularly rural is the utilities and insecurity lights. Not only do they encourage the damned things in areas where they aren't needed, they refuse to allow actual switches (fought that battle) on insecurity lights. So when I want to observe on some family property I have to "make the bulbs inoperable"--and I ain't shimmying up a pole to do it gently...although I did do that once at a campground along the Buffalo National River where the pole was short enough.

 

I was expecting this update from you. I'm envious of that number, nice work. I've got too much fixed overhead to do that at present...some silly vampire loads like the garage door openers sucking up 6 kwh/month, several old electronics that can't be effectively power stripped costing me 8 kwh/month excess, and a Radon mitigation blower using 40 kwh/month. Then there is the security system and UPS's that are adding another 19 kwh/month.

I'm of course paying the price of the extra square footage and a few selfish amenities like a large fridge, small chest freezer, and wine cellar. (Tack on an extra 37 kwh/month for those last two combined.) Then there is the blasted HVAC air handler--what a pig it is. And I'm still using the dishwasher, plus the sani-rinse cycle (heats the water to 150...but I airdry so the higher temp does help in this regard.) I also still use the dryer for most clothes.

I was hoping to close in on the 400's this past monthly period for electric, but we got three weeks of below average temps forcing the old 1 hp blower to run more, adding 50 kwh more than anticipated. Haven't gotten the statement yet so I don't know what day the meter was read, but it will likely come in around 540 kwh for 31 days. I've got a couple of small partial month load reductions that will begin to fully show up in April.

For perspective, the previous owner used over 1100 kwh in this same period last year and somehow used 1400 kwh the year before (probably a long billing cycle, but still...it was unusually warm that month so they might have actually run the AC a few days. ) In much smaller homes with decent CFL conversion I was using about 700 kwh/month, so I'm reducing my own use despite the radon system and some additional refrigeration appliances.

How many therms did you use for the month? What flow rate on the shower head?

I've been a bit disappointed in my gas use for the winter, but it still comes in ~10% below the previous owner's for the same OAT. Keep in mind that I've cut out enough electrical usage that I should have used ~100 therms more than them over the season just to make up for lost electrical heat gain. Plus, during some of the coldest weather I was still doing various sealing/insulating projects, fixing a problem with the thermostat location, figuring out how to balance the system...and I was adjusting to my first real winter in nearly two decades.

The big remaining energy efficiency project for me is updating the HVAC with a new variable speed air handler, two stage 95% furnace, sealed combustion, and debottlenecked evaporator coil. Should save me about 75 kwh/month average on blower operation and about 150 therms/year in gas.