Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
KENNEDALE - The sound - or lack of it - is the first clue David Murray's car is different.
When he turns his ignition there is almost no sound. There is nothing wrong with his 1993 Eagle Talon with more than 192,000 miles.
It's now an electric car. He bought the car for $750 from a junkyard in November and spent the past six months and about $6,000 turning it all electric.
"It's great not to have to ever fill up at the gas station again and pay those outrageous prices," Murray says.
Before he leaves for work he unplugs his car, from just a regular tree-pronged outlet. He says his electric bill is about $7 more a month than before and he saves about $40 a month in gas.
Nine batteries power the car for about 20 miles. It can go as fast as 54 miles an hour, enough for his commute and to run errands.
"Since I drive only in town, I don't ever get on the highway for my daily commute, it wasn't important [for the car to dive at higher speeds]," he said.
The car takes about three and a half hours to fully charge. It slows down going up hills. "I hate this," he says going up the biggest hill in his neighborhood. And there is no air conditioning, power steering or power brakes, he plans to add the last two.
Then there is his family, who was skeptical when he first wanted to convert a car to electric.
"They didn't think I could do it," he says. "But now that they've seen it work, they're a little more supportive of it."
In fact his wife says she'd like Murray to make a more powerful version for her and he's thinking about mass producing electric car conversions.
"I could probably convert one in a week if it was the same car over and over again," he says.
He has the words "electric vehicle" on the rear bumper and often gets questions from other drivers when he's stopped around Kennedale. He wants other Texans to know they can convert too.
"It's an opportunity for me to share with them that hey, yeah you can do this, this can be done, you don't have to buy gasoline," he says.
