Featured Member Archive

My name is Donna Baur. I have lived in Jackson since 1989. I have been working in local government for 13 years and was elected as the Teton County Treasurer in 2006. My husband, Dennis Jesse, and I live in a 1,475 sq ft home in Cottonwood Park subdivision in the Town of Jackson. We were asked by Sarah Mitchell of the Pursue Balance Group last April 2007 to participate in the Kill your Watt! program.

We have always been conscious of energy efficiency, but in the past two years, the awareness level of energy consumption has been brought to the forefront as a result of the global warming issue and the increasingly spikes in the cost of energy and consumption.

When we built our home in 1991-1992, we participated in the Lower Valley Power & Light program called Super Good Cents. The program offered reimbursement for costs in super insulating your home. The foundation walls were insulated with R-11 and the floor with R-19 insulation. The walls were insulated with R-22 insulation. The roof was insulated with R-49 insulation. All of the windows, doors, electrical outlets and other cracks were foamed and sealed. There are a series of fresh-air vents to allow air circulation in the home. The result was an energy efficient home with some of the latest technology in 1991.

When the Kill your Watt! program asked us if we wanted to participate, I thought it would be a great idea to re-evaluate our present energy consumption. Also, I secretly wanted a new, more energy efficient refrigerator to replace our old one that we purchased in 1991. By actually showing my husband how much energy the old refrigerator was consuming, he might actually be convinced that buying a new one was a good choice. The program supplied us with a Power Cost Monitor that had a wireless read to the Lower Valley electric meter.

We placed the Power Cost Monitor on our kitchen counter to easily observe our electric consumption. The results were amazing. The toaster was a total power glutton. When the refrigerator would kick on, the meter would increase significantly. The desktop computer, which is only one year old, also consumed power. The washer also was notable. It was fun and extremely educational to examine the many energy uses in our home. Power consumption was highest in the morning before work. This is a fact that is well known by the Power Companies and we validated it.

After the first month of monitoring, we did purchase a new refrigerator (it worked!). We did not upgrade to a larger refrigerator due to the space limitations in our kitchen; therefore, we could actually compare the old one to the new one. The new refrigerator barely made a blip on the monitor compared to the old one. Energy Savings accomplished!

We then decided to participate in the Lower Valley Energy program in which you exchange your incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent bulbs for $25. We were hesitant to do the switch in past years. We never really liked the type of light that fluorescent bulbs illuminated. But, with newer technology in the development of compact fluorescents and with our Kill your Watt! Power Monitor, we decided to do the switch and examine the energy consumption difference. We switched 23 bulbs in our home. We omitted the three bulbs that were on dimmer switches. I did not realize we had so many light bulbs. The compact fluorescent bulbs do not flash on instantly, but after two weeks, you do not even notice it anymore. Actually, it's kind of nice to have the bulbs build intensity slowly when you first hit the switch in the early morning as opposed to the flashbulb effect. Once again, the result was a reduction in the number of watts we were using in our home.

Participation in the Kill Your Watt! Program was very beneficial to us. We compared our electrical energy consumption for the past two years (2007 & 2008) for a period of six months. We have reduced our electricity use an average of 73 kilowatts per month over the six month period. Not only are we saving energy but we are also saving money. This is a fun and educational program that is effective in understanding your own individual energy use and is very easy to participate in the program.