I just checked the power consumption on my computer and there are some startling results.
Just using the computer under normal circumstances, no peripherals, 200 watts.
With second monitor on, printer on, not printing, speakers on but not playing, 375.
Running everything at once, including playing TobyMac loud, and printing peaked at over 1300 watts for a second, then dropped to 6-700 until the printer stopped. To be fair, I do have a HP office size laser printer, so it uses a bit of power getting warmed up and printing. Fortunately it only uses 15 watts while in standby, and it remains completely off the vast majority of the time.
Right now, blogging and listening to some music I'm pulling about 270 watts which is far far too much. I bought this computer originally some time around 2001 and have continuously upgraded it from time to time since then. So even if I turn off the monitor (I don't have a screen saver to save power) it still sucks 130 watts. My puter never got the energy efficiency upgrades that all the new ones have like quiet fans and new processors. So we are saving up for a new desktop anyway, I just didn't know how much energy efficiency would play into it. No wonder this room is always about five degrees hotter than the rest of the house.
Another thing to remember is that any power generated in your house also has to be removed by the air conditioner in the summer. So with average energy efficiencies, my 270 watt computer is actually consuming more like 360 watts when you include the AC. An even more complicated system is the refrigerator. It uses 200 watts which means while it's on, it is pushing perhaps 500 or more watts of heat into the house which then also must be removed by the AC at a further cost of nearly 200 watts. Fortunately it doesn't run constantly. As you can see, energy efficiency is especially important in the summer because your air conditioning automatically adds another third to the energy used by any appliance, except the water heater, most of that just goes down the drain.
Think about it, if you have just three 100 watt light bulbs, you are actually using more than 400 watts. It takes only two and a half hours to rack up a kilowatt hour at that rate.
Sam's is very slowly expanding their repertoire of LED bulbs, and they are even better than the CFL's because each bulb saves something like $130 over its lifetime.
More news: I saw a new OLED tv at Sam's the other day and though they still are around $2600, I will have one one day. I walked up to the screen (which was playing Madagascar 2) and my jaw dropped open. It was literally the best picture I have ever seen on a TV ever. It was so clear and vivid and fast. You could see every whisker on all the animals, there was no blur or artifacts at all. The best part is that they are very energy efficient as well as having a wide viewing angle. I have got to get me one'a deez!
Holy crap that was a nice TV.
WiredForStereo
Showing posts with label Energy Efficiency. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Energy Efficiency. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Hotel Case Study: Peer Pressure's Impact on the Environment
By Marina Krakovsky in Scientific American
Most travelers staying at hotels have encountered a bathroom sign asking them to help save the environment by reusing their towels. Daily laundering makes a large hotel go through several million gallons of water a year, and detergent and energy use take a hefty toll, too. New research shows, however, that appealing to people’s green conscience is hardly the most effective way of convincing guests how best to dry off.
In experiments whose results ultimately confirmed what persuasion experts long believed, a team led by Noah Goldstein, now at the University of California, Los Angeles, created two types of professional-looking signs: one with the standard environmental message and the other telling guests that most of their fellow guests had reused towels. “It’s one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book,” says Goldstein, citing the plentiful research showing that in ambiguous situations people tend to follow the pack. Sure enough, as the investigators describe in the October Journal of Consumer Research, the social-norm message worked about 25 percent better than the standard environmental one. In a follow-up study that tested different tweaks to the social-norm message, Goldstein’s team got even more remarkable results. Telling guests that those who had stayed in this room had reused towels worked better than saying that other guests at the same hotel had done so—even though all the rooms were alike.
Savvy travelers realize that hotels save on laundry bills if guests reuse their towels, so environmental appeals could appear disingenuous. After all, a hotel could decide to give back that money to guests. One problem with such financial incentives, though, is logistical: according to the American Hotel & Lodging Association, tracking the number of towels reused per room could be difficult. But there is a bigger problem. If financial incentives are not high enough, Goldstein suspects, they could backfire.
That is the idea of “motivation crowding,” a theory predicting that monetary incentives push away the drive to do things for other reasons. “A good example is sex,” says Uri Gneezy, an economist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the effect of incentives. When you make a sexual overture, your partner may or may not accept, but if you offer to also throw in $10, you will strike out for sure. “When you introduce money, you completely change the meaning of the interaction,” Gneezy explains. “Instead of a communal relationship, where we’re just nice to each other, now it’s an exchange relationship.” In a frequently cited study, Gneezy found that when an Israeli day care center started fining parents 10 shekels (about $3) for picking up their children late, tardy pickups actually increased because parents saw the fine as the price for being late. Similarly, Gneezy says that offering guests, say, a $1 discount for reusing towels will make them reason, “For a dollar, I might as well get fresh towels.” Of course, a sufficiently high incentive would boost towel reuse but at prohibitive cost to the hotel.
Estimates of towel reuse range from 35 to 75 percent, depending on how reuse is measured; to increase reuse, Gneezy suggests that hotels keep money out of it but signal sincerity with donations to environmental causes. Goldstein cautions, though, that there must be no strings attached to hotels’ donations. His team found that promising to donate money in exchange for towel reuse did not increase reuse. But when hotels said they had already donated, towel reuse rose by 45 percent. The norm of reciprocity, Goldstein believes, obliges many guests to be more green themselves.
There was also a story on NPR this evening about this story that mentioned a pilot study that compared your energy usage to others and listed it on your energy bill. The plan got nothing but negative feedback, however, it does work. The negative feedback came from those who were doing worse than the average by the way. There is also the effect of those doing better than the average relaxing their standards, however, if you think about it, the people using more than the average are more likely to use less which will lower the average, resulting in a net reduction, I think.
If you have been reading my home energy consumption updates, from time to time I mention a comparison between my home energy usage and the national average. I have been using around 73% of the average of homes. The difference is I use primarily electric heat, have electric stove, water heater, and dryer. Were I to be using gas for those things, I'd be using far far less electricity. Soon, I plan to incorporate water usage into my calculations, though I already know I use far less than average, I like solid numbers.
I'm not mentioning these things to brag, I'm just trying to be an example and trying to show people that it can be done and how to do it.
WiredForStereo
Monday, January 5, 2009
Hotel Review, The Ramada off 430 and 630 in Little Rock
This is my first hotel review. I don't stay at hotels often, but we stay at this one about four times a year for three days at a time due to my wife's work. This isn't really about complaining about things that aren't "green" or that are unsustainable, it is about pointing out things that need to be and should be changed, both now and in the future. So, I guess this is not so much a review of the Ramada, but of hotels in general, and recommendations of what I believe a hotel should look like, internally that is.
My first criticism is what assails me every time I enter a hotel room. It's the air conditioner. It's always on. In fact when I got to the room yesterday, it was on and it was set to cool even though it was just above freezing outside. That means the air conditioner was not only sucking heat out of our room, but by the laws of thermodynamics, it was sucking the heat out of the whole building. This unit is a massive waste of energy that is made worse by poor management and even worse, there's one in every room.
Secondly, the bathroom could use some help. The toilet is not a low flush unit. It is loud and uses tons of water. A big problem is how long it takes to get hot water. In fact, there are signs in some rooms that tell you just to let it run if you don't get hot water at first. The shower is not of the low flow variety.
The TV is an old Zenith like my grandparents had back in the early nineties. All the light bulbs are incandescents. The window is thermal pane but is obviously not that good since it sweats badly and it's only 0C outside. Another problem is the cold air blowing down the hallway. I checked the thermostat and discovered it was set to "cool" and 56 F, it probably hasn't been changed since before summer. Sad.
Here's what a good hotel should look like with sustainability in mind. Done right, the changes made will pay for themselves and make the hotel more profitable. Such an investment is more viable in a large commercial minded building like a hotel. Additionally, the opportunity is good because hotel chains are large and can afford a larger initial investment.
First we have to change the paradigm of how the whole system works. We can't think of a hotel as a hundred tiny houses conglomerated into a single building. Fewer larger systems are more efficient than tons of small systems. An easy fix to the heating situation is to incorporate radiant hydronic heating. Each room has its own loop of heating coils in the floor with its own pump controlled by a thermostat that draws water from the main hot water system, so the heat source is as large and efficient as possible while still giving individual control to each room. The heat source should be a primarily solar system with a heat pump backup. The heating system should double as the hot water system to save piping and costs. With a well insulated main line on each floor that constantly slowly circulates, hot water is never more than a second away wasting little water.
Cooling is just a little more difficult to figure out and in a state like Arkansas, it is important. This could be solved as simply as a single small window type air conditioner unit per room, or there could be a central water chiller that provides cooling, it would depend on the size of the hotel. The point is, with a super insulated and correctly sun oriented building, cooling would be a minor affair. That brings me to my next point, super insulation. Good insulation and thermal mass keep the building at a pretty even temperature year round.
A hotel's lighting has limited demands, the rooms are small, and some areas often not used for a while. This seems tailor made for what Walmart has been experimenting with lately, motion sensing LED lights. LEDs are naturally focused bulbs, therefore wasting little energy shooting light in places where no one is. Imagine walking down a long hallway and only four meters in front and behind you are lit, and the light moves as you do. I've had this idea especially for libraries, the U of A library runs many tens of thousands of watts around the clock just to light books that no one is reading. In the future I'd like to see it as an annoyance to have to actually turn the lights on when you enter a room. Lazy you say, no, efficient.
Another convenient form of hotels is multiple toilets on different floors virtually on top of each other. This is a perfect form for Clivus Multrum type composting toilet systems. As we know, composting toilets can lower water usage by 40%. Another water saving feature is low flow showerheads. Sure, you can use cheap ones, but I can tell you from experience, the more expensive and quality ones are so much better. My showerhead uses the water pressure to mix air with the water so it feels like much more water is hitting you than actually is.
With as much as this hotel is used (and not used, it's virtually empty now) there are lots of ways to save energy, money, and to not be wasteful.
WiredForStereo
My first criticism is what assails me every time I enter a hotel room. It's the air conditioner. It's always on. In fact when I got to the room yesterday, it was on and it was set to cool even though it was just above freezing outside. That means the air conditioner was not only sucking heat out of our room, but by the laws of thermodynamics, it was sucking the heat out of the whole building. This unit is a massive waste of energy that is made worse by poor management and even worse, there's one in every room.
Secondly, the bathroom could use some help. The toilet is not a low flush unit. It is loud and uses tons of water. A big problem is how long it takes to get hot water. In fact, there are signs in some rooms that tell you just to let it run if you don't get hot water at first. The shower is not of the low flow variety.
The TV is an old Zenith like my grandparents had back in the early nineties. All the light bulbs are incandescents. The window is thermal pane but is obviously not that good since it sweats badly and it's only 0C outside. Another problem is the cold air blowing down the hallway. I checked the thermostat and discovered it was set to "cool" and 56 F, it probably hasn't been changed since before summer. Sad.
Here's what a good hotel should look like with sustainability in mind. Done right, the changes made will pay for themselves and make the hotel more profitable. Such an investment is more viable in a large commercial minded building like a hotel. Additionally, the opportunity is good because hotel chains are large and can afford a larger initial investment.
First we have to change the paradigm of how the whole system works. We can't think of a hotel as a hundred tiny houses conglomerated into a single building. Fewer larger systems are more efficient than tons of small systems. An easy fix to the heating situation is to incorporate radiant hydronic heating. Each room has its own loop of heating coils in the floor with its own pump controlled by a thermostat that draws water from the main hot water system, so the heat source is as large and efficient as possible while still giving individual control to each room. The heat source should be a primarily solar system with a heat pump backup. The heating system should double as the hot water system to save piping and costs. With a well insulated main line on each floor that constantly slowly circulates, hot water is never more than a second away wasting little water.
Cooling is just a little more difficult to figure out and in a state like Arkansas, it is important. This could be solved as simply as a single small window type air conditioner unit per room, or there could be a central water chiller that provides cooling, it would depend on the size of the hotel. The point is, with a super insulated and correctly sun oriented building, cooling would be a minor affair. That brings me to my next point, super insulation. Good insulation and thermal mass keep the building at a pretty even temperature year round.
A hotel's lighting has limited demands, the rooms are small, and some areas often not used for a while. This seems tailor made for what Walmart has been experimenting with lately, motion sensing LED lights. LEDs are naturally focused bulbs, therefore wasting little energy shooting light in places where no one is. Imagine walking down a long hallway and only four meters in front and behind you are lit, and the light moves as you do. I've had this idea especially for libraries, the U of A library runs many tens of thousands of watts around the clock just to light books that no one is reading. In the future I'd like to see it as an annoyance to have to actually turn the lights on when you enter a room. Lazy you say, no, efficient.
Another convenient form of hotels is multiple toilets on different floors virtually on top of each other. This is a perfect form for Clivus Multrum type composting toilet systems. As we know, composting toilets can lower water usage by 40%. Another water saving feature is low flow showerheads. Sure, you can use cheap ones, but I can tell you from experience, the more expensive and quality ones are so much better. My showerhead uses the water pressure to mix air with the water so it feels like much more water is hitting you than actually is.
With as much as this hotel is used (and not used, it's virtually empty now) there are lots of ways to save energy, money, and to not be wasteful.
WiredForStereo
Monday, December 29, 2008
Conservation and a Different Way of Life
I spent a few days after Christmas with my in-laws. They live in a new house, but they were raised in a different time. I cannot remember how many times I shut of lights in empty rooms as I meandered through the house.
I don't mean in anyway to insult or denigrate my in-laws, but this stuff got me to thinking about how we think about things. We can require all news houses to be super insulated and have zero net energy usage, but we still have virtually all people living in sub-standard (energy wise) housing. Worse, we still have most people who don't really care about anything other than energy bills, and not that much even then. People care about making more money, and when you make more money you can pay more bills.
I'm not saying I have solution for this, but this is the problem. Older people don't have the same concerns and cares about the environment and energy usage as some of the younger of us do. The older you get, the more you are stuck in your ways and beliefs. From the era of cheaper power, some just don't care about whether or not the lights are on. When I go on vacation for more than a day, I turn off a bunch of the breakers and everything not necessary and turn the thermostat down to 40 but I don't know anyone else who does. And I sure don't personally know a single person willing to go so far as to make the change necessary to stop crapping in drinking water. I mean, I save a thousand gallons a month from an already quite low water bill by using the sawdust toilet, but I don't even know anyone who has what I consider to be a true low flow shower head.
So the problem is resistance to change. What can we do? We could raise the cost of energy, but that hurts the poor more than anyone, they are least able to make the changes necessary. Maybe some sort of progressive tax based on how much a person makes.
Or maybe it could truly work with just awareness and personal responsibility. Right.
No, it will probably come about with the end of fossil fuels, some sort of energy drought or something like that. It's already become uncool to be greedy thanks to the recession, hopefully it will become uncool to be wasteful and environment ignorant. Maybe if the recession gets deep enough, we'll get both birds with one stone.
Hard, I know. It takes hard stuff to get the change we need, not exactly like voting for a black guy or a woman or something...
WiredForStereo
I don't mean in anyway to insult or denigrate my in-laws, but this stuff got me to thinking about how we think about things. We can require all news houses to be super insulated and have zero net energy usage, but we still have virtually all people living in sub-standard (energy wise) housing. Worse, we still have most people who don't really care about anything other than energy bills, and not that much even then. People care about making more money, and when you make more money you can pay more bills.
I'm not saying I have solution for this, but this is the problem. Older people don't have the same concerns and cares about the environment and energy usage as some of the younger of us do. The older you get, the more you are stuck in your ways and beliefs. From the era of cheaper power, some just don't care about whether or not the lights are on. When I go on vacation for more than a day, I turn off a bunch of the breakers and everything not necessary and turn the thermostat down to 40 but I don't know anyone else who does. And I sure don't personally know a single person willing to go so far as to make the change necessary to stop crapping in drinking water. I mean, I save a thousand gallons a month from an already quite low water bill by using the sawdust toilet, but I don't even know anyone who has what I consider to be a true low flow shower head.
So the problem is resistance to change. What can we do? We could raise the cost of energy, but that hurts the poor more than anyone, they are least able to make the changes necessary. Maybe some sort of progressive tax based on how much a person makes.
Or maybe it could truly work with just awareness and personal responsibility. Right.
No, it will probably come about with the end of fossil fuels, some sort of energy drought or something like that. It's already become uncool to be greedy thanks to the recession, hopefully it will become uncool to be wasteful and environment ignorant. Maybe if the recession gets deep enough, we'll get both birds with one stone.
Hard, I know. It takes hard stuff to get the change we need, not exactly like voting for a black guy or a woman or something...
WiredForStereo
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Fall Update, Life on the Farm, Home Resource Consumption Etc.
A lot of stuff has happened this year, so I thought I'd put together a post to tell you what I've been up to and the changes that have taken place around here.
I kinda expanded the farm, I brought back 5 beehives from Oregon, I also brought a rototiller, a table saw, and quite a bit of beekeeping stuff to expand my stock. Oh, I built the trailer from scratch too, and brought it back too.
The Banana trees have grown quite well this year, they are handily fulfilling their purpose of shading the heat pump to make it more efficient in the summer. They multiplied too. I need to whack them down, dig them up and move them inside for the winter in the next few days before it freezes.
Just installed a new window this past Saturday, it is quite a bit more efficient than the old ones. It is vinyl framed, low-e and argon filled, the best Lowe's has, but not apparently the best there is.
Here's the only pic I took of the tiller, it had been sitting in a chicken coop for nearly a decade, I got it purring like a kitten. Also on the farm this year is the mower, the 48 inch deck makes collecting grass clippings for mulch worlds easier.
Here's what I'm doing with the clippings, card board or paper goes down first, then the clippings on top. This is the start of my no-till gardening project. What's the tiller for you say? Preparation and for removing some bumps in the lawn.
This simple wire compost bin has been full several times this past year, but it quickly processes down. Here you see a trash can load of used tissues, they compost just as good as anything else.
Some fruits of our labors, a little round water melon. This melon was executed and eaten shortly after the picture was taken. It was then finished off in the worm bin.
A pretty big tomato.
A pretty big tomato worm. He also was promptly executed after the picture was taken. I didn't eat him though, he got composted.
This is the tomato where all the above action took place. To be fair, I believe there are four separate plants in this group, they were fed by composted horse manure.
This is my main apple tree. It looks a little weird because it had never been pruned til I did it the first time, and naturally, it will be a few years before it looks proper, but it did produce like a factory this year. I had people stopping by to pick apples and even offer me money for them. I also use the grass clippings to mulch under the trees as well.
This is where the beehives are now, shaded in the hot mid day sun, but not shaded in the winter. Curiously, even in high winds, the trees also seem to keep the hives from falling over.
Got some taters this year too, these were started from some that started growing in the fridge, they did quite well considering the fact that they were completely uncared for, and I actually accidentally mowed them once or twice to boot. Yes, that one is quite big.
Rebuilt the engine in my pickup, not the whole thing, just replaced the head, cam, clutch, pressure plate, starter, transmission, and all gaskets thereof.
This is my step-grandfather's cement mixer in Nesika Beach Oregon. 'Bout the coolest little thing I've ever seen. I like electric stuff. No wheel barrow necessary.
Hauled some manure from a local horse enthusiast family from church. Way overloaded, I couldn't go over 50 mph. Shortly after this, I undid the lowering I had done previously on the truck.
Blackberries. These things aren't thriving. I think I need more manure.
I tend to be an organic guy, but I'll spray me some poison ivy.
The garden in full bloom. Not very fertile soil yet, corn didn't thrive, peas failed, beans did ok, squash got eated by vine borers, pumpkins too, broccoli fine, cauliflower no. See if you can spot the garlic, carrots, and taters.
This is the hammock that got stolen from my little campground in the making.
Two new apple trees. I hope to add a few more next year. Finally got the deer to leave them alone, they both got practically stripped.
Just today I got my new worm bin, a Worm Wigwam. According to the feeding instructions for the WW, It should eventually be able to handle 20 lb. of material a day, producing 75 lb. of vermicompost a week. This totals to 7300 lb. of material processed into 3900 lb. of compost per year. Of course these are probably VERY ideal conditions, but I have heard of successful productions like that using this unit. If I plan to do anything like that, I'm gonna need a whole pile of manure and whatnot to supplement because I just don't make four tons of kitchen scraps per year. However, the Can-O-Worms wasn't doing the job on a number of levels. It's for sale by the way. I can't seem to add any more images, so you'll just have to Google "Worm Wigwam" to see a picture, it's not very exciting to look at, and none of the pictures do justice to the color, it's a nice dark forest green.
Also, power consumption is looking quite good for this year since we installed the on-demand water heater. August and September showed usage of 13.1 and 16.4 kWh per day respectively and this compares quite favorably to last years numbers of 29.8 and 21.1. August was probably so low because we were in Oregon during the heat wave, and some should be factored in for the mild rest of the summer, but September should be about where it's at. That should put August somewhere in the 20-23 range which is still quite favorable especially for the middle of the summer. Oh, and I just remembered, the radiant barrier insulation in the attic probably also helps substantially.
We'll see how it goes this winter, I hope to replace a few more windows. I hate drooling windows.
WiredForStereo
I kinda expanded the farm, I brought back 5 beehives from Oregon, I also brought a rototiller, a table saw, and quite a bit of beekeeping stuff to expand my stock. Oh, I built the trailer from scratch too, and brought it back too.
The Banana trees have grown quite well this year, they are handily fulfilling their purpose of shading the heat pump to make it more efficient in the summer. They multiplied too. I need to whack them down, dig them up and move them inside for the winter in the next few days before it freezes.
Just installed a new window this past Saturday, it is quite a bit more efficient than the old ones. It is vinyl framed, low-e and argon filled, the best Lowe's has, but not apparently the best there is.
Here's the only pic I took of the tiller, it had been sitting in a chicken coop for nearly a decade, I got it purring like a kitten. Also on the farm this year is the mower, the 48 inch deck makes collecting grass clippings for mulch worlds easier.
Here's what I'm doing with the clippings, card board or paper goes down first, then the clippings on top. This is the start of my no-till gardening project. What's the tiller for you say? Preparation and for removing some bumps in the lawn.
This simple wire compost bin has been full several times this past year, but it quickly processes down. Here you see a trash can load of used tissues, they compost just as good as anything else.
Some fruits of our labors, a little round water melon. This melon was executed and eaten shortly after the picture was taken. It was then finished off in the worm bin.
A pretty big tomato.
A pretty big tomato worm. He also was promptly executed after the picture was taken. I didn't eat him though, he got composted.
This is the tomato where all the above action took place. To be fair, I believe there are four separate plants in this group, they were fed by composted horse manure.
This is my main apple tree. It looks a little weird because it had never been pruned til I did it the first time, and naturally, it will be a few years before it looks proper, but it did produce like a factory this year. I had people stopping by to pick apples and even offer me money for them. I also use the grass clippings to mulch under the trees as well.
This is where the beehives are now, shaded in the hot mid day sun, but not shaded in the winter. Curiously, even in high winds, the trees also seem to keep the hives from falling over.
Got some taters this year too, these were started from some that started growing in the fridge, they did quite well considering the fact that they were completely uncared for, and I actually accidentally mowed them once or twice to boot. Yes, that one is quite big.
Rebuilt the engine in my pickup, not the whole thing, just replaced the head, cam, clutch, pressure plate, starter, transmission, and all gaskets thereof.
This is my step-grandfather's cement mixer in Nesika Beach Oregon. 'Bout the coolest little thing I've ever seen. I like electric stuff. No wheel barrow necessary.
Hauled some manure from a local horse enthusiast family from church. Way overloaded, I couldn't go over 50 mph. Shortly after this, I undid the lowering I had done previously on the truck.
Blackberries. These things aren't thriving. I think I need more manure.
I tend to be an organic guy, but I'll spray me some poison ivy.
The garden in full bloom. Not very fertile soil yet, corn didn't thrive, peas failed, beans did ok, squash got eated by vine borers, pumpkins too, broccoli fine, cauliflower no. See if you can spot the garlic, carrots, and taters.
This is the hammock that got stolen from my little campground in the making.
Two new apple trees. I hope to add a few more next year. Finally got the deer to leave them alone, they both got practically stripped.
Just today I got my new worm bin, a Worm Wigwam. According to the feeding instructions for the WW, It should eventually be able to handle 20 lb. of material a day, producing 75 lb. of vermicompost a week. This totals to 7300 lb. of material processed into 3900 lb. of compost per year. Of course these are probably VERY ideal conditions, but I have heard of successful productions like that using this unit. If I plan to do anything like that, I'm gonna need a whole pile of manure and whatnot to supplement because I just don't make four tons of kitchen scraps per year. However, the Can-O-Worms wasn't doing the job on a number of levels. It's for sale by the way. I can't seem to add any more images, so you'll just have to Google "Worm Wigwam" to see a picture, it's not very exciting to look at, and none of the pictures do justice to the color, it's a nice dark forest green.
Also, power consumption is looking quite good for this year since we installed the on-demand water heater. August and September showed usage of 13.1 and 16.4 kWh per day respectively and this compares quite favorably to last years numbers of 29.8 and 21.1. August was probably so low because we were in Oregon during the heat wave, and some should be factored in for the mild rest of the summer, but September should be about where it's at. That should put August somewhere in the 20-23 range which is still quite favorable especially for the middle of the summer. Oh, and I just remembered, the radiant barrier insulation in the attic probably also helps substantially.
We'll see how it goes this winter, I hope to replace a few more windows. I hate drooling windows.
WiredForStereo
Friday, September 5, 2008
Synthetic Oil for Engine Awesomeness!
You've probably seen commercials for synthetic oil on TV. Of course you know commercials never tell the whole story, that's why there's so much of that tiny print at the bottom, top, sides, and if it is a car commercial, pretty much across the whole screen.There's another problem with these commercials, and that is because in America, Chevron sued to be allowed to tag the "synthetic" name on hydro cracked oils made from crude oil. So now virtually every "synthetic" oil is actually just modified crude oil, and it should be pointed out that the rest of the world do not consider these substances to be synthetic oils. These are classed by the American Petroleum Institute as "Group III" oils, and they are not the ones I'll be talking about.
The oils I will be talking about are shown in the pictures on your screen, these are API Group IV and V oils, true synthetic oils. Group IV oils are produced by making polymers from alkenes, essentially the same as regular oil, but one end of the molecular chain is different. Group V oils are made from acids and alcohols.
The brands I'll discuss are Amsoil and Mobil one, but only the Extended Performance Mobil 1, not the rest because they like most everybody else switched to cheaper to produce Group III base stocks. Amsoil also has a line of Group III oils, but these have significantly less performance than Group IV PAO (polyalphaolefin) oils and they are designed for a specific re
quirement and market.I use Amsoil in just about everything, and Mobil EP in everything else. I use their motor oil, grease, oil filters, transmission fluid, chain lube, two stroke oil, bar and chain lube, gear lube, food grade grease, and one day maybe their anti-freeze too. I use Mobil for breaking in lawnmowers or anything that uses alot of oil, like the lawnmower I just gave away.
The reasons why I use these products are several. First, like all my green stuff is money. Amsoil lasts about 25,000 miles in cars with the proper filter, which is also Amsoil because they have the best filter media. This means I can bypass five to eight normal oil changes which saves a significant amount of time and money because I do all our oil changes at home. You might find it interesting that our car with nearly 80,000 miles on it has just had its fifth oil change. A normally oiled car should have had 15 to 30 by now.
The second reason is the crude oil use and waste. Most cars use over a gallon of oil per change and somewhere in the range of five changes per year if someone is taking care of them. Tractor trailer rigs use somewhere in the fifty gallon range, but they don't change theirs as often. For the hundreds of millions of cars all over the US and somewhere in the range of a billion in the world, that adds up to alot of oil that gets used and has to be discarded somehow. Plus that oil has to come from somewhere, and much of it comes from countries that deal in religious oppression and violence. The more I can do to avoid both of those problems the better.
Thirdly, synthetic oil just works better. Lots of people brag about how well their car works and all, but synthetic oils have proven to get better gas mileage which helps the problem above. It keeps engines from wearing out as fast and that means less energy is put into production of new vehicles. For me, the proof is in the clarity. For most of you using regular oil, you'll notice that your oil is black within a thousand miles and is mucky black by the time you change it. At 20,000 miles the oil in our Corolla is still see through though slightly darker than when it was put in. When I change it sometime between there and 25,000 miles, it is still much clearer, and you can easily see light through the stream coming from the drain hole. Another proof is the tail pipe. My push lawn mower still after three years doesn't have the characteristic ring of black soot around the exhaust pipe. And small engines work absolutely wonderfully on synthetic oil, they start MUCH easier, and they idle much better at lower rpm's. When I brought my bees back from Oregon, I had to rebuild the hubs on my trailer. My dad warned me to be careful to check to make sure that the hubs didn't get too hot on the trip. I put synthetic grease in them and was quite surprised and delighted to find that during the whole trip the tires were warmer than the hubs. After my second fill of synthetic oil on my motorcycle, I still have not seen a noticeable hint of darkness in the oil. One downside, it makes it difficult to check the oil sometimes because it's so clean you can't easily tell where it is on the dipstick. That cleanliness translates to less wear in the engine.
And the fourth reason is because I want stuff to last longer. Like I said before, the longer stuff lasts, less energy is required to make new stuff. Metal work is a very energy intensive process, that's why metal plants are almost always located quite close to power plants.
In the end I guess all these things boil down to efficiency. Efficiency is something severely lacking in our society and that needs to be remedied. I do try to convince people from time to time that synthetic oil is better, not that much convincing needs to be done, it's obvious, but most people are just too lazy or cheap to do it. The thing is, it saves so much time and energy, like many things, it just requires an outlay of resources at the onset. It amazes me that people still want to pay so much in finance charges and things so that they can have a lump sum of money now, that's what credit cards are about. It's a huge waste, and I'm against waste.
WiredForStereo
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
How much does a shower cost?
I was taking a shower this morning, and I wondered how much it actually cost to heat each gallon of water as I was using it, so I got on the internet and looked up some handy unit converters and came up with some numbers.
First, the assumptions.
Assume 33.3 C rise in temperature of the water.
Assume $.10 per kWh of electricity.
Assume my shower head uses one gallon per minute.
Actually, the last two assumptions are known quantities, only the first one is a real assumption, based on raising the temperature from 50F to 110F. In the summer time, the temperature raise is lower, in the winter it is higher, so it's an estimated average.
Anyway, I came up with about 1.5 cents per gallon. Combine that with 2 cents per gallon for the water and I get 3.5 cents per gallon, that means if I take a 6 minute shower, it costs me 21 cents, or twice that for my wife.
If we were using the old tank water heater, it would be different, we'd have to add at least one third for the inefficiencies of the heater itself, then add additional costs for the temperature loss over 60 feet of copper tubing under the house.
So, now we know how much it costs to take a shower.
WiredForStereo
First, the assumptions.
Assume 33.3 C rise in temperature of the water.
Assume $.10 per kWh of electricity.
Assume my shower head uses one gallon per minute.
Actually, the last two assumptions are known quantities, only the first one is a real assumption, based on raising the temperature from 50F to 110F. In the summer time, the temperature raise is lower, in the winter it is higher, so it's an estimated average.
Anyway, I came up with about 1.5 cents per gallon. Combine that with 2 cents per gallon for the water and I get 3.5 cents per gallon, that means if I take a 6 minute shower, it costs me 21 cents, or twice that for my wife.
If we were using the old tank water heater, it would be different, we'd have to add at least one third for the inefficiencies of the heater itself, then add additional costs for the temperature loss over 60 feet of copper tubing under the house.
So, now we know how much it costs to take a shower.
WiredForStereo
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Another Update on Energy Consumption Resulting from our Seisco Water Heater.
Last month I reported usage down to 25 kWh per day, this month it is down to 22. This is below November, but not quite at October yet. Due to a couple of cold streaks, we have still been heating from time to time, but the nights are starting to be warmer, 60 tonite, so hopefully we won't have to heat anymore.
I am also encouraging the use of the clothes line outside to further save energy.
Another report in a few weeks.
WiredForStereo
I am also encouraging the use of the clothes line outside to further save energy.
Another report in a few weeks.
WiredForStereo
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tough Times... for Everyone but the Oil Companies.
It's hard to miss mentions of oil company profits in the news these days, every quarter it's worse.
Read into the California energy crisis, the same thing is going on today as it was then, now, it's just a different form of energy. Then, money making middle men played strobe light with the power plants, turning them on and off to be able to sell the most energy for the best price on the free market, until it got to the point where they were making more and more money on less and less energy until there was none for people to use and therefore had to be shut off at times.
The difference now is that the energy supply really is dwindling, we can't exactly build more oil refineries, we actually need more oil, of which there isn't any. But what there is, supply is being restricted to jack up the price, and since demand isn't being reduced, a very few people are making a vary large amount of money.
I'm not into making a lot of predictions, but I predict $200 per barrel of oil inside of five years, and $300 before my son learns to drive. I will enter one exception, that is if there is a radical change in where our energy comes from, that being electric cars. Unfortunately, there are a few restrictions on that too, number one being that there is just not enough time for the new energy technology to catch up with the dwindling energy that we have. One good chance, for drivers and producers is if a good battery technology is released to the public so that we can make our own electric cars. But, Lithium won't be available to the public for a while because the car companies will be using it, and the NiMH large format patents won't expire until 2015, and Chevron is not letting anyone use them. Thier loss inevitably.
The fuel is running out, read my post on Peak Oil. In fact, more than the concept of peak supply of oil is peak oil per capita which happened some time back in the 80's.
The solution: Plugin series hybrid electric cars and shorter range plugin electric cars with diversification of the power producing infrastructure, and further extensive efficiency gains in all parts of society. I've not been a big global warming theorist, but I do appreciate the effect the subject has had on people, even if they need to be more worried about real pollution rather than CO2. If we eliminate CO2, other pollutants will follow. A car that uses less gas creates less of all types of pollution. The technology is here to mitigate coming problems, and there will be a time when we must live on drastically less gasoline.
With the current technology, most people can do it. Most people can do it on an inexpensive electric bicycle. I live six miles from anything I need to get to.
Think about this, if gasoline were to virtually disappear tomorrow, the electrical grid would still be up, unless there were riots and it got destroyed, but other than that, it would be there. Lifestyles would change, look at what happened to Cuba when the USSR fell. Big cities with electric busses would still be working, though likely completely overloaded. Things would change and quickly, but I'm not preaching the apocalypse here.
What can you do? Not much, just be aware. You can't hoard gas, it spoils. Maybe look into electric cars, education is really the key to alot of things. But don't freak out.
WiredForStereo
Read into the California energy crisis, the same thing is going on today as it was then, now, it's just a different form of energy. Then, money making middle men played strobe light with the power plants, turning them on and off to be able to sell the most energy for the best price on the free market, until it got to the point where they were making more and more money on less and less energy until there was none for people to use and therefore had to be shut off at times.
The difference now is that the energy supply really is dwindling, we can't exactly build more oil refineries, we actually need more oil, of which there isn't any. But what there is, supply is being restricted to jack up the price, and since demand isn't being reduced, a very few people are making a vary large amount of money.
I'm not into making a lot of predictions, but I predict $200 per barrel of oil inside of five years, and $300 before my son learns to drive. I will enter one exception, that is if there is a radical change in where our energy comes from, that being electric cars. Unfortunately, there are a few restrictions on that too, number one being that there is just not enough time for the new energy technology to catch up with the dwindling energy that we have. One good chance, for drivers and producers is if a good battery technology is released to the public so that we can make our own electric cars. But, Lithium won't be available to the public for a while because the car companies will be using it, and the NiMH large format patents won't expire until 2015, and Chevron is not letting anyone use them. Thier loss inevitably.
The fuel is running out, read my post on Peak Oil. In fact, more than the concept of peak supply of oil is peak oil per capita which happened some time back in the 80's.
The solution: Plugin series hybrid electric cars and shorter range plugin electric cars with diversification of the power producing infrastructure, and further extensive efficiency gains in all parts of society. I've not been a big global warming theorist, but I do appreciate the effect the subject has had on people, even if they need to be more worried about real pollution rather than CO2. If we eliminate CO2, other pollutants will follow. A car that uses less gas creates less of all types of pollution. The technology is here to mitigate coming problems, and there will be a time when we must live on drastically less gasoline.
With the current technology, most people can do it. Most people can do it on an inexpensive electric bicycle. I live six miles from anything I need to get to.
Think about this, if gasoline were to virtually disappear tomorrow, the electrical grid would still be up, unless there were riots and it got destroyed, but other than that, it would be there. Lifestyles would change, look at what happened to Cuba when the USSR fell. Big cities with electric busses would still be working, though likely completely overloaded. Things would change and quickly, but I'm not preaching the apocalypse here.
What can you do? Not much, just be aware. You can't hoard gas, it spoils. Maybe look into electric cars, education is really the key to alot of things. But don't freak out.
WiredForStereo
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Update on Energy Consumption After the New Water Heater
This last month, our electricity usage was down to 25 kWh per day. This is the lowest level since November before we started heating, but we are still heating some.
It is really hard to tell exactly how much of a change there is due to the fact that we were not living here this time last year. Next month may be a better indicator as we will be heating even less, and not yet using the air conditioning. That will give us a better comparison to last October which had very similar conditions.
However, the conclusion thus far is that it is helping, maybe as much as 5 kWh per day which would equal out to about $15 a month or $180 per year which is good news for the payback period analysis.
More news to come.
WiredForStereo
It is really hard to tell exactly how much of a change there is due to the fact that we were not living here this time last year. Next month may be a better indicator as we will be heating even less, and not yet using the air conditioning. That will give us a better comparison to last October which had very similar conditions.
However, the conclusion thus far is that it is helping, maybe as much as 5 kWh per day which would equal out to about $15 a month or $180 per year which is good news for the payback period analysis.
More news to come.
WiredForStereo
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Don’t Get a Water Heater with a Tank
Not so long story short, there used to be a water heater in that part of the house. There isn’t now. Moral of the story, don’t get a water heater with a tank.
For a long time, I’ve espoused the wonders of tankless water heaters. Having no (in actuality very little) tank, they don’t need to keep a bunch of water warm all the time on the off chance that you’ll be needing it. Think about it, you use hot water to shower once or so per day, your dish washer (be it you or your wife or that machine under your counter) needs hot water every day or so, and your washing machine may need it every day or so if you lean toward using hot water for washing. Characteristically, your tankie water heater is doing nothing but keeping water warm for about 22 and a half hours per day. There is no such thing as perfect insulation, so that means some of that heat is escaping into your house. My old tanked water heater had only a single inch of insulation, which means it was heating the utility room. Heating with electric resistance is inefficient as is using your air conditioner to remove that extra heat in the summer.
You may read past posts here where I had said I wanted a tankless water heater, I was just waiting for the old one to die, and what a grand exit it was. I’m gonna have to replace a bit of the subfloor in the utility room now. Who knows how much else I’ll have to fix. Anyway, my brand spanking new Seisco RA-28 came in the mail today, yes, you can send a water heater in the mail. It’s about the size of a briefcase, about 16x16x5 or so. The only snafu in installing tankless water heaters is the power requirement. My old 40 gallon electric water heater used at max 4500 watts, but all the time. It heated rather slowly because of the limited power usage. Though it works slightly faster, a gas water heater is the same way. The Seisco uses at max 28,000 watts. Of course it wont need that much all the time, it will only heat the water as much as is necessary at the time it is used. To install a water heater with such requirements means new power hookups for it because the old ones wont work. Herein lies the added cost, I had to buy 75 feet of #1 copper wire, and 50 ft of #8. That totals up to about $150 and add to that the heater itself at $750 and the rest of the wiring and conduit and plumbing and I’m looking at about $1000.
This may seem like a lot at first, but my little EPA sticker on my old water heater said that it would cost me over $500 a year just to operate. A tankless water heater is supposed to shave about 30% off that and I expect a bit more because I no longer have to push hot water 50 feet across the house through the cold crawl space. The water would lose about 20 degrees on the way, that’s a lot of energy wasted for a shower. So I’m expecting to save about $200 off that expected water bill per year, and that means that the tankless water heater will actually pay for itself in five years or so, not a bad investment by any means especially since it is expected to last for better than 20 years. Additionally, its functionality to be able to “top off” pre heated water will make it easy to install a solar water heater later on if I get the chance. Additional savings will come from our low flow faucets and ultra low flow (1 gallon per minute) shower head.
My calculations conclude that this water heater will be able to, during a shower, heat water from well below freezing to well above scalding temperature. I’ve accidently installed a valve on the hot water line to slow it down for running baths in case the heater can’t keep up with something like 6 gallons per minute that the tub faucet uses. It’s one of those ones with only a single valve so you can’t limit the flow if necessary. You see, a tankless water heater has a certain ability to raise a certain amount of water to a certain temperature at a certain speed, and a tub faucet is designed to drain a pre heated tank as quick as possible so I need to make them work together.
For your benefit, I am going to detail some of the install with pictures and descriptions here and of course, I’ll answer questions and give updates on energy usage after a month or so. After February’s power bill, I’m hoping to be able to make some adjustments to our energy usage. It was the highest in KWh’s per day since we’ve lived here. I did adjust the furnace to use less propane because that’s several times as expensive as using the heat pump so we are saving some money there.
Here is the installation, I won't add a whole bunch of useless details, it took about 7 hours to do. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section, I always answer comments.
Here's what the Seisco looks like right out of the box, I put my RAZR on it for a size comparison. About the size of a really thick square briefcase.
Here's what it looks like right out of it's own box, you can see the four chambers for the heating elements and the big wires that go to those, and you can also see the circuit board and all the sensors with white and yellow wires.
The pictures I have here are the ones taken after everything was done, so you can see that the wiring is finished. One thing I'd do differently is to use black wire instead of white because white is usually recognized as being neutral which is definitely not the case here.
The black oddly shapen little boxes are the relays when themselves run on 24VDC which I assume is made by the transformer to the left. The silver things underneath the wires that are hooked to the intake pipe are called TRIACs. They are kind of like switches for the less electrically enclined, they are bolted to the tube so the incoming water can cool them directly.
I used 3/4" flexible blue conduit with the snap in ends you can buy with it. They snap directly into the water heater side plate. To attach them to the wood wall plate, I used threaded ones, drilled a 1" hole and hand screwed them into the hole, they fit almost perfectly and look professional. When the wall around it is finished with drywall, it will fit in well.
Here is the subpanel I installed to handle the power, it is rated for 125 amps which is what it will handle, make sure you dont get the six space one that is identical but says you can't use the 7th and 8th spaces. I don't know why they are there if you can't use them. There are four 30 amp breakers, one for each heating element. The heater specs call for #1 copper wire to the box which is quite expensive especially since I bought 20 feet too much. I did the same thing here with the blue conduit, one end snaps into the box, the other end screws into the wood at the top of the wall the heater is mounted on. I used standard 1 1/2" gray pvc conduit to carry the thick wires to the main box.
Here you can see the 125 amp main breaker for the subpanel as well as the 200 amp main breaker for the house. Follow the directions, make sure your house can handle the load. For this heater, you need at least 200 amp service. This is no problem for a new house, but some older ones may have a problem.
This is what it looks like with the cover off. I had expected it to fit differently which is why the pipe ends are where they are. This actually works better however because there are no sharp bends in the hoses. I used 18" braided plastic hoses because they are black, very flexible and look good. I thought of using stainless ones but they cost about 50% more, and I thought they'd lose more heat.
Insert drywall around the edge of the wall plate here and it will be finished. This is about the cleanest installation of anything I've ever done. Not that anything else was dirty, I just wanted this to look as professional as possible for the sake of longevity and convincing others to do the same.
Here is the final result. Add drywall and it will be finished. It is very close to the shower which eliminates the vast majority of the heat loss between the utility room and the bathroom where the prime use of the hot water is. The pipes are also insulated and as I discovered yesterday, the pipes will stay warm for quite a while, I don't have to wait and dump a bunch of cold water in the bath when I am topping it off.The shower works beautifully, though my wife and I have been very careful with it to get used to the new quirks of the system. Actually, the water gets warmer a bit more gradually, instead of just slamming us with the hot stuff.
One thing I did have a problem with last night was when running a bath, it just wasn't getting warm enough even when I turned down the flow. I thought this was very strange considering the shower only uses about 2/3 of a gallon per minute from the heater and it has no problems. I adjusted the temperature up on the control board and it fixed the problem even with a higher flow rate. I am not sure if the problem was the flow rate or the temperature of the incoming water (it snowed last night.) However, the problem was remedied with no issues resulting. I'll just add that to the "getting used to new technology" sheet.
One of the benefits I like especially is the fact that the heater doesn't even keep the water in the chambers very much heated. It maintains a slight temperature gradient between the various sensors, you can barely tell, it is maybe just a few degrees above room temperature. But the less heat there is, the less there is to be lost so this is a very good thing.
At the end of March when we get the power bill, I'll give you an update on how that goes. Until then I'll be enjoying my shower.
WiredForStereo
Monday, February 4, 2008
Environmental Hypocrites, and Energy Efficient Mansions
I was researching some stuff because I wanted to do a blog post on how I thought Al Gore was a hypocrite because of his global warming message and yet he lives in a 10,000 square foot mansion, but what to my wondering eyes did appear but the monstrous house of John Edwards. Great goblet of fire Harry Potter, this thing is 29,000 square feet. I once worked manufacturing metal roofing in a warehouse that was 27,000 square feet, and we could drive trucks all up in that thing.
John Edwards has been running for president for a while, and he ran for vice last time if you remember. He has run on a campaign of help for the poor. Since I read the New York Times article last year about how he set up a non-profit organization to cure poverty and then used the millions of dollars to jet around the world, I have not trusted him. He appeared with Hillary and Barack in the Sojourners/Call to Renewal non-debate thingy about poverty, and by the sound of what he had to say and the way he said it, I thought he might have had a conversation with his aides back stage before the thing that went something like “What is their big issue? Poverty? For or against? Against? I can do against.” And now I find out he has a six million dollar house that could house the poor populations of some cities. He is not just a hypocrite, he’s a freaking jerk. What a load. There is not much that disgusts me more than people who preach help for the poor, but neglect to actually do anything for them. Jesus was different, he preached for the poor all the live long day, but he was poor himself, and he healed them, and he fed them, and I am pretty sure he actually touched and spoke to them face to face.
So back to Al Gore. Forget “An Inconvenient Truth.” He travels the world as an environmental evangelist and yet his home is massive, and has equally massive utility bills. He is shuttled around in SUV’s and other equally massive vehicles which would be unacceptable to any honest environmentalist. Oh, I see.
The thing is, any house can be green. Any home can be low energy or zero energy building or ZEB. How? Easy. First thing to do is insulate it well, plug all the holes, and install quality low embodied energy insulation (not fiberglass.) Secondly, orient it so as to take best advantage of warming sun in winter. Thirdly, install energy efficient appliances like solar water heaters and low water use plumbing stuff like low flow showerheads and the like. Fourth, generate energy to offset what you use. Any house anywhere can have solar panels in place of standard roof, or solar shingles in place of standard shingles. Rich people like slow Al and slick Eddie can do this stuff. Bill Gate’s mansion, while it dwarfs both Al’s and Eddie’s in size and cost, is quite efficient. It is an earth sheltered home built into a slope at the edge of a lake.
But, some say, Al Gore buys carbon offsets so that all the carbon he creates with his obscenely wasteful mansion gets absorbed somewhere else. This is true. But let me get through this carbon neutral bogusness and expose it for what it really is. It is a way for people with too much disposable income to buy their conscience clean. That’s right, BUY their conscience clean. Like the indulgences Martin Luther so despised, carbon credits do nothing but make rich wasteful (or sinful in Luther’s case) people feel better about stomping all over the rest of the world and hogging energy that could be used to refrigerate vaccines or heat the homes of the less fortunate. Let me ask this question: What else comes out of a power plant besides carbon dioxide? Mercury, sulfur, lead, cadmium, and a whole bunch of other toxic nastiness.
Where are the mercury offsets, where are the acid rain offsets, where are the testicular cancer offsets? I don’t see any of these rich people paying to offset the really important pollutants they create. I can breath carbon dioxide every day of my life, in fact, I produce it as a byproduct of simply being alive. If I breathe heavy metals, I’ll be retarded pretty quick, and dead not long after that.
Gore also pays extra to get green power from the Tennessee Valley Authority. What does this really mean? It means he subsidizes green power, it doesn’t mean he actually uses green power. Power comes from the nearest plant or two, no matter what kind of plant those two are. It’s like having a giant water tank to supply a town, and one supply to the tank comes from the lake, and the other comes from a natural mineral water spring, but here is only one outlet pipe. How long do you think it would work if we said “Pay us more and you can have the mineral water.” It doesn’t make any logical sense, the truth works like this: “Pay us more and we’ll think about putting more spring water in the tank.”
I want to make it clear that I have no problems with rich people as such. I have problems all day with people who are liars and hypocrites. However, I know of very few wealthy people who do not drive giant SUV’s and live in very large houses or large multiple houses. In fact, the only celebrity I know of who lives what they preach is Ed Begley Jr. He lives in a completely solar powered house, is a vegan and rides bicycles and stuff. But the biggest problem I have with the situation is that the world’s global warming evangelist has done very little to actually help the problem, other than just talking about it that is.
Everything I talk about I do, or try to do, or plan to do when I get more money. Al has all the money he needs and all he can do is buy carbon credits from his own company. The key to minimizing the future energy crisis is efficiency and conservation, two things Al Gore’s house lacks.
Now the oil companies say that prices will have to stay high because demand has dropped, go figure.
WiredForStereo
Monday, December 10, 2007
Starve the World to Feed Your SUV
If you've not read it already, read the article in the post below this one.
Done? Ok, lets do this.
The argument that biofuels can cause starvation in third world countries and even in our own is a valid one. So what do we do about it? Find new fuel sources. If you look to the left, you will see a Tesla Roadster. It's an electric car, not a biodiesel car, not an ethanol car, not even a hydrogen car. And Electricity we can get from other places than crops and fossil fuels, but it will take a lot of work. In order to operate this or any other country on electricity, we must have either vast amounts of generation, or we must curb our current usage.
I for one am trying to do both. Curbing usage is the quickest way. Obtaining efficient appliances and extra insulation and better windows is quite a bit cheaper than buying solar panels or wind turbines to make more electricity.
Our next big fixes are two main things, a new refrigerator, and much more insulation in the attic. Our fridge is old, real old, it collects water on the door seals and runs all the time. I don't know how much power exactly it is using, but I would submit that it is a significant amount. A more efficient one would pay for itself in a reasonably short time. As for the insulation, that would pay for itself in a reasonably short time as well. There is only about 6 inches of rock wool insulation in the attic. What I need is according to my calculations, about 14 inches of blown cellulose. That should more than double my current R value in the ceiling, enhancing comfort, allowing temperatures to dwindle slower when the programmable thermostat turns the temperature down ten degrees at night, and most importantly, allowing us to expend smaller amounts of energy.
So what about the real problem of biofuels? As a Jesus Freak, I must be concerned about people first, always people first, and people are gonna die of starvation before they die of most other things. In America, we can stand to eat less food in general, we have plenty of unused land, and we can stand to eat less corn fed chicken and beef, because farming meat wastes resources anyway. But in other countries where an ear of corn can keep you alive another day, I cannot see how it helps anyone to let people die, whether for the cause of energy independence or for simple profit.
People come first, always people first.
WiredForStereo
Done? Ok, lets do this.
The argument that biofuels can cause starvation in third world countries and even in our own is a valid one. So what do we do about it? Find new fuel sources. If you look to the left, you will see a Tesla Roadster. It's an electric car, not a biodiesel car, not an ethanol car, not even a hydrogen car. And Electricity we can get from other places than crops and fossil fuels, but it will take a lot of work. In order to operate this or any other country on electricity, we must have either vast amounts of generation, or we must curb our current usage.
I for one am trying to do both. Curbing usage is the quickest way. Obtaining efficient appliances and extra insulation and better windows is quite a bit cheaper than buying solar panels or wind turbines to make more electricity.
Our next big fixes are two main things, a new refrigerator, and much more insulation in the attic. Our fridge is old, real old, it collects water on the door seals and runs all the time. I don't know how much power exactly it is using, but I would submit that it is a significant amount. A more efficient one would pay for itself in a reasonably short time. As for the insulation, that would pay for itself in a reasonably short time as well. There is only about 6 inches of rock wool insulation in the attic. What I need is according to my calculations, about 14 inches of blown cellulose. That should more than double my current R value in the ceiling, enhancing comfort, allowing temperatures to dwindle slower when the programmable thermostat turns the temperature down ten degrees at night, and most importantly, allowing us to expend smaller amounts of energy.
So what about the real problem of biofuels? As a Jesus Freak, I must be concerned about people first, always people first, and people are gonna die of starvation before they die of most other things. In America, we can stand to eat less food in general, we have plenty of unused land, and we can stand to eat less corn fed chicken and beef, because farming meat wastes resources anyway. But in other countries where an ear of corn can keep you alive another day, I cannot see how it helps anyone to let people die, whether for the cause of energy independence or for simple profit.
People come first, always people first.
WiredForStereo
Friday, May 4, 2007
Sweet Light Bulbs
I've been listening to the debate about light bulbs recently, and I think I need to insert some hardcore-ness into the conversation. A lot of people really like CFL's, and I would agree, but there is that mercury problem and all that, but let's see where we can go with this.
Incandescent bulbs are outmoded, that much is sure. Think about this, you live in an average house, you have air conditioning. When you use a regular 100W incandescent bulb, a good majority of the energy that bulb is using is being converted directly to heat. Where does that heat go? It must be removed by your air conditioner, and that costs money. For every 100 watts of power you use in your house that doesn't get washed down the drain, you use another one third as many watts to remove the left over heat from the house, so suddenly now instead of using a 100W bulb, you are using a 133W bulb.
Enter compact fluorescent bulbs CFL's. They use one fourth the power of an incandescent bulb for the same light production. That means one fourth the heat because remember, for every watt you use, it gets turned into heat somewhere in the process due to the law of conservation
of energy. So for the same amount of light, you have to remove from the house one fourth the heat. A 100W equivalent bulb is now 25 watts, which due to air conditioning is now about 33 watts. Unfortunately, with CFL's comes mercury, a highly poisonous vaporous or liquid metal. If you were to break a CFL in your house, it would expose you to somewhere in the range of six times the recommended dosage of mercury. On the flip side of that same arguemtn is the mercury created by the generation of electricity from coal power plants. Each CFL saves far more mercury from being dumped into the environment than would be released if it were improperly disposed of. So the conclusion here is, use them, but just don't break them.
Enter light emitting diodes, LED's. LED's are to CFL's as CFL's are to incandescents. LED's use in the range (wide range) of one fourth or less power for the same amount of light as does a CFL. 
Congruently, they cost in ratio to CFL's as CFL's cost to incandescents, but the price will come down. LEDs on the other hand produce virtually no heat, they operate at quite a low temperature, and to think that they use only a couple of watts, it's no wonder. I have LED taillights in my little pickup, and they replace 23 watt incandescents while using only about 4 watts and they are so much more intense than the originals. I can look in the rear view mirror and see intense red light reflected all over the place.
More and more house style LED's are coming on the market, and all you need to do to find them is just do a search. Also, if you get creative, you can make your own fixtures with LED's because they run at very low voltage. I know of a guy who made custom LED taillights for his electric car that tell him when it's plugged in, or charged. Like I said before, the price will come down, there is alot of research going into LEDs right now, jumbo trons, LED computer monitors, and a great new idea, LED head lights for cars.
Conclusion here, push for LED's, they are the sustainable solution for lighting.
WiredForStereo
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)