How do we begin? You can begin however you want to.

Saving the earth isnt as complicated as everyone thinks. A great way to start is by saving electricity! Read down below to find out more.

Electricity is becoming a dangerous resource to use humans. We are starting to become a lot more reliant on it than we think, we leave light switches on, leave our AC running at a temperature cooler than we need, dont turn our fans off, this is all part of slowly destroying out earth, but the good thing is, it can be prevented easily! Caoimhe OReilly a Grade 8 student from ISKL, decided to take a stand and change the way her family uses electricity. Caoimhes family and her did this by, turning off the lights in rooms that they werent needed, using less AC and turning it off when it wasnt too hot, switching fans off in rooms that nobody was in, only using one television in the house instead of 4 family members each using a separate TV. This might not seem like a lot, but if you take a look to the image at your left you will see that in 9 months she had made an obvious impact to her monthly electricity usage. It was quite a simple job really, Caoimhe stated. The only challenge about trying to save electricity, is remembering your family members to turn off the switches when they leave the room. Other than that, I havent had to do anything simpler!

Malaysia is located near the equator, which means that temperatures range from around 22 to around 40. The hottest parts of the day are usually around 11am-3pm after that, it starts getting cooler well at least for Malaysia. So I find it understandable that we might need our AC on and our fans, but as soon as the sun starts to go down a bit more, and the temperature starts decreasing, I think thats when we can turn our temperature up higher on our AC, and maybe not even use it at all. Caoimhe said.

Trends In Caoimhes Electricity Usage

If you take a look to your bottom right, you will see a graph showing Caoimhes Electricity Usage Reduction. Overall there was a downhill slope, but in some places the amount of kWh jumped back up. Caoimhe lives in a family of 4 with a live in helper in a 5-story house, which is why she will have a larger amount of kWh per month. Caoimhe and her family in August, which was her first month of her tracked electricity usage, were using about 5,966 kWh. In October, Caoimhe and her family had been three months into their tracked electricity usage and they had brought their amount of kWh down to, 2,987 kWh. There were a few places in her graph where the amount of kWh had increased, and this was due to Caoimhe and her family just simply leaving some lights on and their AC running when it didnt need to be. For example in October Caoimhes family was using 2,987 kWh, but then in November they had brought it up to 4,567 kWh. There were occasions when we would all just simply forget to turn the lights off, and the AC too. Which was disappointing for us because it meant that we werent always decreasing our amount of kWh. Caoimhe stated. In their final month of April, Caoimhe and her family ended up using 3,786 kWh. The difference from the beginning of the reduction in August, to the ending results in April was 2,180 kWh! I was really proud of my family and I, Caoimhe exclaimed. I thought that together we worked really hard! Reminding each other to help save electricity and to turn the light off was something that we never really did before, now we are doing it a lot more often! If every family could try and do this, then we would make a huge impact to our world and definitely help grow a healthier and safer environment!

If you take a look to your right, you will be able to see Caoimhes Yearlong Electricity Reduction. Caoimhe was able to get her kWh down to 3,786. But how long would it take her to bring it down to 300 kWh? As you can see, a fitted line has been inserted to the graph to set a consistent trend. The equation for Caoimhes graph would be y=-500x + 5,996. This is because the coordinates for Caoimhes graph are (2, 6,000) and (6, 4,000). So first she took the y axis numbers and subtracted them so, 4,000 6,000 = -2,000. So that is her numerator for your slope. Then you take the x axis and subtract and that will be your denominator. So 6-2 = 4. So her slope is -2,000 over 4. Simplified your slope is -500. Since her line intercepts the y axis at 5,996, that will be her vertical intercept of the equation. To find out how long it would take her to get to 300 kWh we have to substitute y for 300. So first we have to subtract the vertical intercept from each side. So we isolate 500x. So 5,996 5,996 is 0, and 300 5,996 is -5,696. So her new equation now is 5,696 = -500x. Then she divides each side by -500 to isolate the variable and ends up with 11=x. So it would take Caoimhe around 11 months if she kept reducing electricity the way she is, to get down to 300 kWh per month.

What was the lowest amount of kWh? How can I get there?