POWER SAVING- An analysis

Having been on Sam Nujoma campus and in everyday life we live, I personally came to a conclusion that, people barely take the prominence of power saving in their beings. On this paper I will be looking at some of the diminutive things we ignore and things we think they are just hard to get control over that will eventually lead to an inordinate loss of power.

At the outset, we are in an era of economic crisis of our country, and looking at what causes this might be a matter of several factors, but we might neglect the power saving effect to that. More costs are imposed on the government indirectly by citizens, and at the end of the day citizens blame the government to have overspend and so forth. It starts with you, it starts with me and it starts with us at the end of the day. Let’s look into how we can do this to save the power and my major concern is in University campuses with Sam Nujoma (UNAM) campus being the area of analysis.

Look around you. Can you try to notice anything that is worth power wasting but you are not using it at the moment? It happens a lot in our classrooms, bedrooms, kitchens and offices just to mention a few of them. This practices comprise, charging of cell phones, laptops and any other electric chargeable things. One thing that I’ve noticed is that, people tend to use these things when they are plugged in, sometimes fully charged but they are still plugged in. In this case the power is still running. Very simple when your phone or laptop is fully charged, unplug it and switch off the plug. The power loss is very little but, think about it on a ratio scale. For argument sake, let’s say 20 people are doing that in hostel rooms at once, then the power loss will be very high thereof.

Moving on to my observing, is the cautiousness of lights switching. Nobody cares about switching off the lights when they leave their rooms, nobody thinks about using one light output in a case of multi-lighted rooms with different switches and nobody cares about switching off the lights when they go to sleep. Double check it. It saves a lot of power when you get to counteract those practices.

Students have also a tendency of thinking that, as they are paying for the facilities they should really exploit them. Just imagine how much of power would be wasted when you leave a stove on for the whole night, without any pot on it. We seem to neglect these issues but they are really a serious case. At the end of the day the institution is charged a lot by the electricity provider. Here comes the elasticity of the price imposed on students by the university. Meaning the hostel fees would increase because the electricity costs also rose, just for argument sake. Analysing it, it’s all our fault in the end.

Moreover, boilers or kettles are one of the electric appliances that use more energy or power basically. However, people use them really in a way that does not conserve power at all. I can’t be boiling the whole of 1.7 L of water for one 300 mL cup of tea at 7 am and pour the water out, while I still have to take tea at 7 pm. This is already a waste of power, because I’ll still have to boil 1.7 L of water at that time. Mathematically, we would have about 5 cups of 300 mL of tea in one boiling time. A lot right? Don’t bother yourself, I have a very good suggestion for you. Let’s make use of hot cups to keep water hot for a long time. In this case one boil would be enough for making tea for the whole day. Hence power saving done perfectly.

Air conditioners are also in the category of power wasting facilities. I know that it is very needed in our class rooms and offices, to keep us cool when it is summer, but people didn’t notice something with them in a while. It is very easy to notice that the lights in your room are on or off when you are outside, but it is very difficult to notice that the air conditioner is on when you are out. As I said in the beginning that, these are really little things that we ignore, but it counts. Whenever you leave your office be it for lunch or you are knocking off, make sure that the air-con is completely off.

I don’t own a car in life, but let me give a very good practical example of a car since most of you seem to know how it operates. Why do you think it is always advisable and always recommended that when you park, even for two minutes you are opt to switch off the car engine? I cannot answer myself in this regard. It is just a matter of using common sense sometimes.

I am not saying that since I am writing this also don do these things. I use to. I am calling for change today. I realized that power is worth saving.

In the very end, I would like to thank you all for taking time to read this article and I hope you really took something to practice. Share this article as possible as you can.

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© JAIRUS MEDUSALEM

19 Sep. 18

University of Namibia

17BSFA Student

+26481 886 0373