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I did it, even in the office.

No, I am not the first to start it. During a business visit to Bangkok, Thailand, I notice offices turning off the light during lunch, when nobody around.

To my surprise, this does not limit to office space. Take hotels as example, Thailand hotel are consider “dim” compare to Malaysia counterparts. I am surprised that, even the doorstep install with lighting, if there is sufficient sunlight, the light will not turn on.

It seems Thai people has start it much earlier than the Earth Hour initiative.

After coming back from Thailand, I has start practicing this, whether at home or in the office. At first, my colleague are not use to it, especially during lunch hour : the light are off when they come back from lunch. However, slowly, everyone get used to it. Because the office has few separate air-cons, I even turn off some of the air con when nobody around. The interesting

Did I save a lot of power? Not much at home, but quite awesome for office luminance. A room that fit 8 person, with 12 compact fluorescence light (CFL), 36 watts each, it will be 36watts x 12 = 432 watts/hour

Because Malaysia subsidies the electricity heavily, the commercial rates for electricity are for RM0.234 cents per Kilowatts(KwH). This mean the electricity for 1 hours per Kilowatts are RM 0.234. And the 12 tubes lighting in 1 hour will cost
432/1000 = 0.101 cents. so even for 365 days, the saving are only 0.101×365 = RM 36.50

It sounds little, but bare in mind that, it is only happens to 1 office. Just imagine thousands government offices scatter around the country :

The electricity bills save are come close to
1,000×36.50 = RM 36,500

And this is just a conservative figures. Because Malaysia government has a BAD habits of turning on lights for MANY hours even during non office hours, Malaysia can actually save tens of millions of electricity just by a simple flip of switch.

Since most of the electricity generated in the country are using coal and gas, this practice will help conserved the non renewal energy for the coming generations.

About the bad habits of wasting electricity that instills by the government, I will discuss it in another post.