Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

Demand for electricity is highest on hot days in the summer, mainly because people, and businesses turn on their air conditioners. Increased demand is pretty easy to predict using a weather forecast.

When you turn on your AC, some generator, somewhere has to work a tiny bit harder — it happens almost instantly and automatically. All of this is entirely invisible to you.

But, in the aggregate, when lots of people turn on their AC and this happens at scale, three things can occur:

• The generator (power plant) revs a little higher and produces more power, unless it’s at it’s capacity, then
• The power plant operator ramps up one of the “operating reserve” plants, unless they have already put all the spares online, in which case
• There’s a brown-out, or black-out

But actually there’s another option: consumers of power could just use less. But how do we know to use less — it’s invisible.

And, would we do anything is we know we were getting to the edge of capacity? What’s interesting is that some customers agree to unplug voluntarily. This link is to a story in the New York Times. It doesn’t surprise me that (some) people are willing to adjust their behavior without monetary incentives. What I found remarkable is how primitive the system for communicating the need is:

On the afternoon before an anticipated surge in demand, e-mails, faxes and phone calls go out alerting those who had already agreed that it is time for them to unplug.

So what if there were a way to automatically inform people of peak events? What if people that turned off appliances did get some economic benefit? (more…)

I am beginning to think Jane Fonda is going to reincarnate (sorry, is she still with us?) and create a sequel to The China Syndrome called The Cape Windrome or something. Today the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation recommended that Cape Wind not be approved. Because what, the waves of yesteryear are going to be different? Come on, let’s get a little real, please?

The single most infuriating example of how the United States is sometimes able to undermine even the simplest, most obvious options is being played out in the great saga of Cape Wind. A small array of wind turbines is planned for Cape Cod Bay, generating a substantial amount of power, efficiently, locally and cleanly. But it represents change, and change is bad. Right? (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

I had a lot of ideas about what might happen when Google’s PowerMeter read my TED 5000 data. All that data, from so many people, so many opportunities.

I installed the update last night, with some significant anticipation … what would I get?

Looks like I’ll need to be impatient a little longer.

The good news is that enabling PowerMeter via the TED is as simple as can be. It took about a minute once I had the firmware update (even that was quick).

The bad news is that there’s not that much of an incremental improvement over what you can already get on the TED. You can see your data in 15-minute increments as a “gadget” on iGoogle, your Google account home page. You can also see how your usage compares to others. While there’s a “Share” option on the widget, it doesn’t seem to work, so I am not sure what it’s supposed to do. And, you can see your usage data anywhere on the Internet, not just at home.

But my bigger disappointment is that this data, for now, seems to be private. An engineer at Google told me that they have big plans, and I believe that they’ll come through. I want: (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!

Oh yes, I have it.

This afternoon, we started cooking dinner and I made the mistake of glancing at my TED 5000 display. It was reading 1,019 watts at the moment. What the…?

This wasn’t right. We had three lights on in the kitchen at about 35W each. The TV was on in the living room — nope, that’s only 180W. To confirm, I asked Carter to turn the TV off, checked the display, then on again. Yep, about 180W. The fridge was on — I had just gone to the market and opened the freezer and fridge sides so it was re-cooling. That’s around 200 Watts.

I checked downstairs to see if the dryer was on, or something else. Nope. Was the Smart Strip working (the kids had been playing on the Wii earlier, but I have it set up to turn everything off when the TV goes off.) Nope.

Fish tank? I had been suspicious of it for a while and had my Kill-A-Watt plugged in to the socket. But it’s 100W heater, when on, used 100W as advertised. The filter was just a few watts. The fish are safe … for now.

I checked upstairs. Carter’s computer hadn’t gone to sleep … but that couldn’t explain it. I put his computer to sleep. Hardly any change. Theresa’s computer was off, mine was asleep. What the…?

So I looked at the TED graphing, and here’s what I saw: (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…)

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…)

I installed my new TED 5000 (“The Energy Detective”) today, and it’s working — here are some notes for anyone else who may find some of the available documentation a little lacking.

While anyone interested should feel free to read this, it’s mostly intended for other early-adopter types and to save the TED Support folks from questions. It’s pretty detailed, and probably only applies to a subset of TED users. So feel free to skip this post :-). (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…)

Philips “Halogena” bulbs are not CFLs — they are incandescent bulbs that use less electricity than standard bulbs, and they work exactly like the bulbs they replace. They claim to last about 20% longer, also. Halogena bulbs cost more, about $3 more, per bulb in my case.

I could see no difference in performance compared to incandescent: they start instantly, have nice bright light at full power, nice warm light as they dim, and they dim continuously with no buzzing, the bulb looks the same and fits.

I would have preferred to use CFL bulbs: compared to standard incandescent Halogena bulbs use about 1/3 less electricity; CFLs use 4 to five times less. CFLs also last a great deal longer, even than Halogena’s modest 500 hour improvement. So Halogena are an incremental improvement.

But as per the mission of this blog: saving energy and conservation is a matter of a lot of small steps that add up to big, big savings. (more…)

I smiled today when I saw Energy Circle’s new “Moolah Maker” — my 11 year old son is away at camp now, so his younger sister will get the jump on him: she’ll earn money by saving energy around the house.

Moolah Maker is as simple as pie, and kids love pie. Make a contract with your kids — they get half, or maybe more (or less, Scrooge) of the savings. Enter this month’s electricity bill. Wait until next month, then add that bill. Moolah Maker creates an invoice you pay to your kids.

Anyone with kids knows the main method used by most of us parents to get children to do something is one of (and I quote),

• “Carter Christopher Harrison, did you leave the light on again???”, or
• “Charlotte, if you leave your computer on again, there will be no ice cream on ice cream night!!!”, or the time honored,
• “I don’t know who left that light on, but if it’s not off in one minute, no one’s getting birthday presents this year. One, two, three…”

Personally, I don’t understand why these don’t work. Sure, they just made me angry when my father uttered them, but I am so much nicer (when I yell at the top of my voice). Kids these days — it’s all about money. And video games. And texting.

So maybe Energy Circle has the right idea. Pay off the little munchkins.

And why not? If they are the ones saving the energy, shouldn’t they get a piece of the action? Shouldn’t they get a sense of how much money there is in making a small change like changing a bulb, or air-drying your laundry, or using a Smart Strip? Oh, and by the way, did you know that a computer left running all the time can cost around $100/year in electricity bills? Of course you did — you’re the Dad/Mom — parents know everything-ing-ing.

And, coincidentally, Energy Circle seems to sell just about everything you’ll need to make those energy savings come to pass. I have saved several hundreds of dollars with my Smart Strip power strips, for example.

Have fun — we will. And maybe I won’t need to remember my childrens’ middle names any more.

It has been hot and muggy here in the Boston area for the last week, with more to come, but we’re still not using our air conditioner.

We’re not martyrs, cheap, or holier than thou. OK, maybe cheap, but that’s really not it. We’re quite comfortable in our un-air-conditioned house, in fact.

[Update, August 23rd. We caved. It has been miserably humid, still, and hot and has been for a week or so. We both agreed on Sunday to put in one of our two window AC units. But it was too hot, so I didn't. And then it cooled down a little. We survived.]

The main contributing factors to our comfort are:

• Management of Sun
• Management of Air
• Our Recent Trip to Europe
• Proper Attire

And these things have also worked in our office space. I am proud of my company and of my co-workers for embracing a few changes that make this possible, and seen how much nicer life is without A/C. (more…)

A new device will soon be available, and if I could place a pre-order, I would — it’s the TED 5000, and it looks like a big step forward.

[Update, August -- TED 5000 Release Date: The TED is now available for order by phone from the manufacturer; I have one now, and wrote installation notes; see links for details]

I currently have a BlueLine PowerCost Monitor — it is very good device, and I still recommend it. Using this device, we have even further reduced our energy cost for electricity by a significant amount.

But there’s a new game in town: the TED 5000, set to be released this month (June 2009). It solves a whole bunch of problems that the PowerCost Monitor and its existing version do not.

Indeed, the TED 5000 may be a very reasonable alternative to the smart meter your electric utility is going to install, then configure. The difference is that your utility may take years until they get all that done and provide the kind of information you could have right now.

And the savings are big indeed — from our current real-time power meter, we have saved a great deal of money on our electrical bill, and save every month.

But while going from a dumb electric bill to the PowerCost Monitor is a big step, it certainly has its limitations. (more…)

There are a lot of tips out there about how to use less energy with your refrigerator — the ones I have seen aren’t wrong, but I think they can be misleading. I would never argue that improving efficiency is a bad thing, but it’s important to keep the big picture in mind.

According to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), refrigeration accounts for only 5% of household energy use.

So, this being the real picture, my blog is all about how the little changes we make can indeed add up. And I encourage people to do whatever changes they can — there are plenty out there, to be sure!

So with the big picture in mind, here are some of the factors to think about relating to refrigeration.

The Big Picture (of Refrigeration)

You may have read that adding jugs of water to take up space and act as a “buffer” is a good idea, and it is (unless you do what I saw a friend do).

There are several reasons why adding water bottles to the fridge (or extra ice to the freezer) make it more efficient. First, solids and liquids are better at storing heat energy than air because they are more dense, so they act as a “buffer”. Additional items in the fridge also mean that when the door opens, the vortex of warm outside air rushing in is disrupted — the things that are already cold stay put, especially if the jugs are in the front.

But there are some questions to consider before loading up on water jugs. First, the fridge has to work to get those jugs of water from whatever temperature they are at to the cooler temperature inside. I saw a friend who filled a jug of water to put in the fridge, but happened to have the water faucet on the “middle” setting — he ended up putting warm water in. Whoops. And how full is the right fullness — if you take the water out every time you shop, then put it in a few days later, it’s hard to say that there’s a net benefit. (more…)