Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

In a couple cases recently, I have heard people talking about how the Jevons Paradox will undermine efforts to use energy more efficiently — and it certainly seems like it would fit, but it doesn’t apply to our current energy problems for several reasons: conservation, and improved efficiency are still our best options.

Or, so started a post that I began writing a couple weeks ago. Then, in some sort of karmic mind-meld, Peter Troast at EnergyCircle.com wrote a post about Jevons, with almost the same conclusion as I was going to draw. Yeah, right, I hear you say.

So anyhoo, I think this topic is important to the larger discussion of energy, especially renewable energy, so here’s a link to Peter’s post on energy efficiency, which already has a nice thread of comments and observations — take a look, it’s a good read — and, add your thoughts!

Yesterday, a massive failure of a water pipe serving my home, and two million of my neighbors, threw Boston into disarray. Some sort of car bomb in Times Square (that didn’t go off) has disrupted many and alarmed many more. I have been writing about the BP Oil Spill this week. All are connected — they are more than “catastrophes”: they all help remind us how connected and dependent upon technology we are … and I hope perhaps makes people think for a moment (or longer) about what that means.

Connecting With Nature

I have been a hiker and camped in the wilderness since I was a boy — when you’re climbing a mountain you know how precious water is, but also learn how little of our technology we actually need to survive. This said, I prefer my modern tent, clothing, water purifier, backpack and clothing to what I had forty years ago. But stepping into real, pristine wilderness almost instantly connects me to the systems of the source. I think my strong environmental bent is mainly linked to this life experience.

Millions of us living in the Boston area are using backup water now. It’s far from a catastrophe — the water we’re able to use from other reservoirs is untreated, so we have to boil it to kill the bacteria that might make us ill. I found it remarkable and somewhat heartening to see how quickly we came together to deal with the problem. But for a few days at least, we’ll all have to develop some new habits, put up with some inconvenience, and suffer some economic loss. Will we also stop to think, if only for a moment, that two million of us could have our water supplies and lives affected due to the failure of one pipe? I can imagine much worse scenarios.

The attempted car bomb in Times Square was disruptive in a different way. Little will change, but one can only think the residents of Manhattan had a little chill run up their spine, recalling the impact of terror from 9/11.

In the Gulf of Mexico, a single failure has created a widespread environmental disaster. It will affect the livelihoods of many, and disrupt a sensitive eco-system, likely for many years to come.

Climate Change

We have been talking about climate change for decades now. In the first phase in the 1980′s we began to realize that our domination of nature, through technology and energy was causing a problem. In the second phase by the 2000′s, we realized we had to act immediately to deal with it. Now in the third phase, we are realizing that we have missed our chance to solve the problem and we now also need to take steps to deal with the inevitable consequences.

So let’s consider these current disasters. Needless to say, the events in Boston and New York were trivial compared to the BP Oil Spill. But each stemmed from a single failure of technology that supports our complex infrastructure. Each resulted in a near immediate change in the way we live our lives, whether just for a moment, or perhaps far longer, but change our lives we did. Conveniences and necessities are affected — the impact is greater and longer depending on the scale. Now in 2010, five years after Katerina tore apart New Orleans, the city is beginning to come alive again. It could take years to reverse the impact of the oil spill.

But compared to impacts of climate change that scientists predict, all of these events will be forgotten as blips.

We’re Not Just Surface-dwelling Resource Extractors, We’re People

Take a moment to realize that we survive only when we live as a part of the earth, not just as surface dwelling resource extractors. Our dependence on the proper function of the earth is largely in our hands, and absolutely a matter of life and death. We must take significant action now. Yet we’re dithering on even the most trivial changes.

We can and do come together in times of crisis, and we accept change because we have no other alternative.

The magnitude of the crisis of climate change is vastly larger and longer than any of these current disasters. Yet of course each of these events will cause us to ask, “What could we have done to prevent…” the oil spill, the car bomb, and Boston’s water problem. Committees will investigate. We’ll make changes. These problems are concrete, current, and real.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

The problem with climate change is that it hasn’t really “happened” yet, and never will, in any single event. It is abstract, difficult to measure, and hard to tie to any given event. It’s only in the aggregate … after we start seeing patterns (or see something more dramatic and visual), that climate change will become real to most people.

I fear that as we try to figure out how to prevent oil spills, bombs, and water failure, we are missing the much bigger opportunity to take action. If we reconnect with nature, and look around, perhaps it would be evident that the way to stop oil spills is to find a different form of energy. I fully recognize that this will not happen overnight. But I think we under-estimate ourselves if we say that we can make change happen overnight, or even in 10 years.

We’re pretty good at responding to problems. But we’re terrible at doing what it takes to prevent them. Take a moment to think how powerful nature is, on this lovely spring day, and join in the movement of people who are willing to take action and understand that we need to deal with climate change.

A while back, I had started a project of insulating the heating pipes that run through my basement — we have an old house that was designed for a gravity-fed hot water heating system — iron pipes and big old radiators.

Unlike a modern system, using copper pipe that run through baseboard radiators, we have a system that appears to be one step beyond the old steam-heat systems: big, heavy cast-iron radiators that take up a lot of space; and big, heavy cast-iron piping that runs through the basement and upon which I regularly knock my noggin.

Insulating my pipes was, to use an indelicate expression, like pissing in the wind. Or at least it was then. Today, I finished that job. But it took 13 years — insulating my heating pipes was probably the only thing I did that I should have done last. But I am getting ahead of myself. (more…)

In the Spring of 2009 I hired energy auditor Flemming Lund to do an energy audit on our house — I posted pictures and the full report — it was pretty amazing. I had some work done this summer (air sealing and insulation), and did some more on my own this fall — mostly caulking and stuff. Then I asked Flemming to come back and re-do the test. I told him he would have endless fame, fortune and that I would continue to refer customers to him, so he graciously waived the re-audit fee (thanks Flemming!)

And here are the results. Well, actually, the results are on Energy Circle — they have real editors and a wider audience than little ol’ Five Percent, and it was Energy Circle that helped me find Flemming and learn about a lot of this stuff from the start.

I hope you’ll take a minute to pop over and read my story. Our savings from the whole process, from an energy audit, air sealing, insulation, and good old caulk are pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. (more…)

A Beginner’s Guide to Home Energy Conservation

by Marcy Tate
 
Energy conservation is not only good for the planet, it’s also good for your pocket. It’s pretty simple to conserve energy at home and you’ll notice the savings right away. Still, changing your energy habits isn’t easy for every homeowner. Start by picking a few energy conservation techniques and gradually add a few more each month. As you go along, remind yourself how much of a help your efforts are for the planet and how much lower your utility bills will be. That should give you the inspiration to turn your energy conservation habits into a way of life. The tips below do not involve high investments. 
(more…)

People bought SUVs because their friends did. They got big houses. They lived large. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was famous. Malcolm Gladwell coined the term “Tipping Point” and we all used it. Ideas and trends caught on, and took root and thrived as social contagion.

Now, we have washed our hands. SUVs and big houses are out. The rich and famous are mostly in jail. A tipping point of an entirely different kind tipped.

We’re a little aimless these days, as a country. There was a groundswell of recognition that Obama’s course was right, and he got elected. Like a diet, we all got psyched to buckle down and get in shape. But we’re not very good at keeping our resolutions, are we (even if we know they’re right).

Can the same phenomenon — ideas that spread because it’s the “in” thing to do — apply to things like restraint? Could it possible be cool to have a small carbon footprint?

I hope so.

I expected nothing less of Google PowerMeter — week by week, it continues to improve. Now the graph displays my usage compared to expected use, and includes a visual and numeric accounting of my baseline, “Always On” usage compared to total usage. Here’s what my graph for today looks like:

Three Great Things

The expected usage gives you a nice target, and the comparison to others provides a helpful benchmark.

But the new “Always On” measure provides two very helpful bits of information.

First, the darker bar helps isolate the spikes above. For example, the most obvious repeating spike above is the refrigerator — it cycles on about once per hour and runs for perhaps 25 minutes each time, running at a bit over 200W — it’s easy to see that pattern. (more…)

My cousin Alison wrote me an email this evening asking how she could stop her always-on DVR (the “not-a-TiVo®” things cable companies will rent) from gobbling electricity.

Here’s her email,

I am trying to do my next round of tightening up and have read all the stuff about turning off your “always on” appliances, but after much googling couldn’t find the answer to my real question: if I turn off my cable box, will my dvr stop recording?

So then I remembered—aha, my cousin Tom’s website.

And spent a little more time surfing around there, which was incredibly informative and pleasant BUT I still couldn’t find the answer.

So then I thought I’d take the lazy way out and just ask you.

Will it?

Your very very pale green cousin

alison

To which I promptly and thoughtfully replied

Yes, it will stop recording.

However, consider the following tip: if you have nothing to record between, say midnight to 4pm, you can do this:

1) Plug everything (TV, Cable Box, DVD Player, whatever) into a power strip
2) Plug the power strip into a light timer
3) Set the light timer to turn off at midnight and on at 4pm
4) plug the light timer into the wall

Then, not only will you miss little or nothing, you will get rid of the power of the cable box and the standby power of the TV and whatever else, and have the whole system off for two-thirds of the day.

Light timers and power strips can be bought at drug stores, grocery stores, hardware stores or online.

Your friendly neighborhood energy conservation cousin,

Tom

Google PowerMeter showed me I was wrong about something. Well, sort of.

Perhaps you have noticed: I am a little obsessive with my measurement of energy usage. Despite being an energy saving zealot, we still use our electric clothes dryer — perhaps as a rationalization, I had claimed that all those other people saying that we should use our dryer less had it all wrong. I said that this caused people to lose focus of the smaller items, especially the ones contributing to your “baseline” usage.

As I have pointed out, but said more nicely in a great article on PlotWatt’s blog, 100 watts, on all the time, costs about $100 per year for most people (more for us in the Northeast). Over the course of measuring electricity usage with several power monitors, I have reduced our baseline usage from about 700W to around 200W, which saves me a good deal more than $500/year in electricity bills. Finding the little energy vampires like my old Dell laptop which wouldn’t sleep on its own, to the old cable box (replaced with TiVo), to the 2 buttons on my “off” receiver, to the computer server in our hall closet — all eliminated, and all reduced our baseline. Success.

So was the dryer really that important? I have to say, it seems so now. Here is a series of screen captures from (actual) data from my TED 5000 now hooked up to Google PowerMeter, which I can see from my iGoogle home page.

What do you see? (more…)

Google announced today that the TED 5000 (The Energy Detective) will link directly with Google PowerMeter — the TED 5000 scores big!

Update: Tuesday Sept 6^th — TED Firmware page reports that Google PowerMeter software will be available this Friday afternoon.

Who cares? Well, I know that real-time energy monitoring devices make a huge difference in behavior, or at least they can.

And I know utilities are going to get to that smart grid “real soon now” (just as soon as they stop hand-typing my electricity bill). Look, there’s a reason that The Electric Company is the worst property in the game Monopoly®.

But seriously, allowing real people to get themselves hooked in to a larger network of data that Google can collect, analyze and do their usual greatness with should offer a few early-adopter types the chance to show the true power of data aggregation again, this time with electrical power.

The Google Power Meter blog says the functionality is enabled in the latest TED 5000 firmware, so I downloaded it … but I cannot see anything different. I already had the 1.0.214 gateway firmware installed, and now have Footprints 1.0.103 installed (the latest as of 11pm EDT, 10/5/09). But I see nothing. The TED 5000 site says little (although there’s now a screenshot of PowerMeter). The Google Power Meter site says little, and the newsgroup has nothing new posted.

Am I just being impatient? Yes! I want my TED 5000 household electrical use data to be on the web so everyone knows that I don’t line dry my clothes (and they know when, too.) Well, also I want to be an über-energy-geek.

More to come. Soon, I hope!

As I have often mentioned in these pages, we had an energy audit last Spring. The audit was a seminal moment in my understanding of our household energy usage.

Mission Accomplished! (Or Is It?)

I talk to a lot of people about their energy conservation measures. Naturally, not wanting to look uncaring, people talk about how they have changed and are going green. Perhaps a light bulb or two changed to CFL. Perhaps they a jacket on their water heater. Some weatherstripping on their door? A programmable thermostat?

These changes sound fine, and they may actually make a difference. But there are two ways that just making changes alone doesn’t really change things.

Perhaps your two CFL bulbs reduce your electrical use a little, but isn’t it important to know how much? (For example, the oft-repeated water heater jacket is of almost no value if you have a relatively newer one). So it’s possible that your changes haven’t improved anything. And the second way changes alone are bad: you may feel like you have “gone green” … mission accomplished.

So to my great chagrin, I realized recently that I had very little clue what my heating usage was, or for that matter what it should be. I had made lots of great changes. Mission accomplished? Not so fast. (more…)

My NStar bill came the other day, and it was the lowest bill I have ever had since moving into this house in 1997 — we used an average of 13.1kWh per day; last year for the same period was 14.5kWh per day. That’s a reduction of almost 10%, year over year. Yes, it’s true that we were away for 6 days, which is why this period is historically low, but last year we were away for over two weeks. The vacation is the main reason that our consumption fell from the prior month’s average of 16.8kWh/day.

What did we do? I’m honestly not sure. It was about a month ago that I installed the new TED 5000, but we still have been mostly using the PowerCost Monitor from the year before to keep an eye on our electrical use.

I guess all those little changes we keep making, even in our fifth year of working at it are still adding up. (more…)

Today researchers at the Scotland-Hapsburg Energy Engineering Partnership reported a breakthrough fiber that reportedly can save home owners hundreds of dollars on home heating bills. Being naturally skeptical of such claims, I checked it out, and I believe their assertions are valid.

This bio-tech innovation allows specially bred species to emit a fibrous substance having remarkable thermal insulating properties. Whereas most home insulation is done to create an envelope around the house, this material can instead be used to create an envelope around the items in the house needing the insulation, thus creating an order or magnitude or greater efficiency gain versus heating the air of the house.

Remarkably, this technology has been in use for thousands of years, and it is only recently that researchers understood how it could be used as an energy efficiency tool.

Of course, I am just being baaaad. (more…)

As I have become aware of my energy use, I have grown more interested in understanding the details. I have used four methods to measure my electrical use:

1. (actually) reading the electrical bill,
2. using a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure usage of things we plug in,
3. installing a PowerCost Monitor to display total house usage right in our kitchen, and
4. installing a TED 5000 monitor that measures and records our usage in great detail

Each of these methods is effective, and each has resulted in incremental changes. For us, the incremental changes have added up: we now use less than half of the electricity we used to. Everyone can do at least the first of these — I hope I’ll show you why it makes sense to go a step further. (more…)

TED 5000 in my Hot Little Hand

I am waiting for a good time to turn off the power so I can install the little doohickey that makes it work. But there’s a lot more information about what it does available now. Here’s my summary.

First, TED is a home energy monitor, kind of an electricity meter on steroids. It can tell you how much electricity you’re using at the moment. The TED 1000 series did that, and is very similar in function to my PowerCost Monitor from Blue Line (same one as now sold on the Black and Decker label).

Knowing how much electricity you’re using at the moment is incredibly instructive, and has saved us hundreds of dollars in electricity by helping us identify and change a few things … and to keep us honest. I caught my wife using the dehumidifier in the basement last week, for example.

The TED 5000 gives you another feature, potentially more interesting than the real-time monitor, because TED 5000 remembers. (more…)