Efficiency can be defined in several different ways. Efficiency is the production of the desired effect with a minimum amount of effort or waste. Energy efficiency is the amount of energy put into a process, compared to the usable output energy. You can see that efficiency can have slightly different meanings, depending on the context. To achieve your own results, you need to be familiar with the different kinds of efficiencies. Let's take a look at the four different kinds and how they can be used to make your home more efficient.

 

Energy Efficiency is a ratio between the output power and the input power. For example if we have a light bulb that requires 100 W of input energy, but only outputs 10 W of light energy. Then we can say that this device is only 10% efficient. The remaining 90% of the input energy goes to waste as heat.

 

Financial Efficiency is the ratio of the savings to cost of the device. This includes the hidden costs such as insulation, maintenance, and energy usage. The better the ratio of cost savings to price, more financially efficient and investment is. This will be a driving factor in many people's green home projects.

 

Pollution Efficiency is a measure that compares the output job to the amount of pollution that it creates. Some devices such as windmills, can create a lot of useful power without creating any pollution. Coal burning fire plants also produce power, but will create a lot of pollution in the process. Pollution efficiency is very important to consider when choosing a green project. Obviously the entire point of a green project is to pollute as little as possible. Often, pollution efficiency and financial efficiency are in direct competition.

 

Labor Efficiency is a comparison of how much work an appliance does to the amount of personal labor required to use it. Things like biomass stoves are a great source of energy, but require a significant amount of human effort to keep them running. Fossil fuel stoves on the other hand are almost completely automatic, and require no human intervention. It is important to consider how much human effort will be needed to run your green project, or if you will need to hire someone to complete these tasks.

 

 

Conclusion

 

So as you can see there are many factors you need to consider when defining efficiency. With all projects there will be a trade-off between the four different types. Many of these efficiencies are in direct competition. Ingenuity and smart design are crucial to having a project that is well balanced and efficient in all of these domains.

 

Sustainable Green Homes