2,000 Watt Society

We are getting towards the end of our summer sojourn in London and I was hoping I would have an electricity bill to compare with our life in Houston. But they bill only quarterly here – which itself may be a commentary on how much less they use! – and so the only bill I have to hand is for the period from early March until early June when my tenant was in the flat. Total usage was 724 kWh, less than I have ever used in a single month in Houston. Bear in mind that the Houston house has gas for cooking and heating, whereas the London flat has only electricity, and the contrast is even more remarkable. The price by the way was about 12 pence per kWh, about 50% more than in Houston.

All this remind me of the 2,000 Watt Society, so-called because that is what the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology believes is sustainable. If each of us consumed 2000 watts continuously, this would amount to 17,520 (2000 times 265 times 24 divided by 1000) kilowatt hours per year. The typical American or Canadian uses about 6 that.

Of course this is meant to cover ALL our energy usage; not just electricity but natural gas, gasoline, and all the energy content in the things we buy. Nevertheless, our electricity consumption is a major element and it is interesting to find that in London my wife and I are running on the equivalent of about 330 watts, whereas in Houston it’s over 2200 watts. (This is based on the calendar year 2007 when we used about 19,400 kWh. With new double glazing and insulation we are looking forward to a lower number for 2008.)

Piezoelectric Dance Floor

The BBC and others today report the opening of an allegedly eco-friendly night club in the Kings Cross area of London. This area used to be rather sleazy but is being gentrified, a process stimulated by the new high speed rail line to the channel tunnel. The night club features a piezoelectric dance floor which the owners say will harness the energy of the dancers to provide about half of the club’s electricity. Since the energy has to come from somewhere, I am wondering whether the dancers will tire more quickly than on a regular dance floor. If the idea catches on maybe it could be used in airports; those who eschew the moving walkways could help power those walkways for the less mobile, or more lazy.

Double Pane Window Update

Just a quick note about the first few weeks with the new windows mentioned last month. The latest electricity bill is 40% less than the average for the same month in the previous 3 years. There is obviously a lot of variability between years due to different weather etc. but I think this is very promising, especially as the bill includes only about 3 weeks with the new windows.

I also think the house is more comfortable; a bigger temperature gradient across the window means smaller temperature gradients inside the house, so the whole house is closer to the temperature at the thermostat.

Kill-a-Watt, SmartStrip, etc.

[Sunday, March 9th. After I posted this last night, I switched off the printer and again the SmartStrip failed to switch the other stuff off, as a reslt of which I have made substantial revisions to the posting.]

I bought a Kill-a-Watt power monitor, among other things to help me work out why the HP printer did not seem to reliably switch the SmartStrip (see last Saturday’s posting). The Kill-a-Watt fits between the outlet and whatever device is plugged into it, allowing one to measure the power used by that device. Unlike the Cent-a-Meter described last week, which measures total household usage and is very useful in its own right, this is not influenced by extraneous factors going on in the house like the refrigerator cycling on and off.

I found that the printer is quite consistent: it uses 7 watts when plugged in but switched off, and after going as high as 37 watts during its power-up sequence it settles at 13 watts when switched on. This seems not to be a large enough difference to make the SmartStrip work reliably. I adjusted it as carefully as I could, and at first it seemed to work, but as noted above it later failed to switch the SmartStrip off. I also wonder why the printer draws any power when switched off; that 7 watts costs $10 a year. Maybe time for a new printer.

I also tried using the DSL controller, which draws only 8 watts when on, as the controlling device. This turned out to be inadequate to switch the SmartStrip on, even when the sensitivity was turned up to he maximum.

I had similar trouble with the entertainment systems being switched by the tuner/amp when this was done using the remote. The unit draws 24 watts when working and 14 when on standby, and again the SmartStrip does not seem to be sensitive enough to detect the difference. If I switch off using the switch on the unit instead of using the remote it works fine, so I guess I will be doing that in future. (Saving that standby power is worth $20 a year, so I should be doing that anyway.)

The Kill-a-Watt is quite expensive at $45.95 (from http://www.smarthomeusa.com/) but it has a number of other features. Most useful, in addition to measuring the rate of power usage in watts, it can be used to integrate that over time to measure kilowatt hours used over a measured time interval. This is perfect for monitoring things like refrigerators which cycle on and off. It can also be used to switch between active power and apparent power readings, and can also display the power factor. These are rather esoteric measures which take account of phase differences between the voltage and current, and I doubt many users will understand or care about them. Other features include monitoring voltage, current, and frequency, and again I am not sure what use these would be put to.

To test the kilowatt hour capability, I turned my attention to our ancient refrigerator and found that it used 0.16 kWh in 2 hours, so averaging about 80 watts. This does not sound much, but it is on 24/7 so over a year this is about 700 kWh. At my price of 16 cents this is $112 a year. According to the energy star site, a typical modern top-freezer 18 cubic feet energy star rated refrigerator consumes about 400 kWh per year, so replacing our old model could save about $50 a year and pay for itself in 9 years. That may not sound like a great return, but what bank is gong to give you 11 percent? And that assumes energy prices do not go up in those 9 years. Bottom line is that old fridge will soon be history.

Finally, I used the Kill-a-Watt to test some chargers. It seems almost a cliché to say one should unplug chargers when not in use, but I found this not to be worthwhile. I tried two Dell computer chargers. Both registered 0 watts when the not plugged into the laptop. When plugged into a fully charged laptop, they registered 1 and 2 watts respectively. I also tried two mobile phone chargers and found that both registered 0 watts when not charging a phone. I also tried an electric toothbrush charger and a cordless phone charger and found that these registered 0 or 1 watt even when they were charging. I therefore think one should not lose sleep over chargers.

New Gadgets at Energy Technology Venture Capital Conference

This conference, organized by the Houston Technology Center, took place yesterday and today. I did not register for the conference because I could not make the first day and today was just a half day, but I was invited to lunch today and to see the exhibits. The lunchtime keynote speaker was John Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil. I had heard him give the keynote at another conference last week, and it was essentially the same speech though it seemed more polished this time. (He gave it at least one more time in between also.) It wasn't what most climate change activists would want to hear, but at least he was unequivocal in saying that we needed a cap-and-trade system. He said it was time to stop arguing about whether climate change was real and get on with doing something about it.

More interesting to me were some of the exhibits, which I hope to cover in more detail at a later date. Here are three that caught my attention.

A Company called EnerPlus (www.pulstarplug.com) has a new kind of spark plug which utilizes a capacitor to greatly increase the size of the spark, resulting in more complete combustion and a claimed improvement of 6% in economy and up to 12% in power output.

A company called Adaptive-AC allows each room in your house to be controlled by a programmable intelligent thermostat built into the air conditioning outlet. The thermostat adjusts the temperature by opening and closing flaps so as to regulate the air flow, thereby balancing the temperature over the house. (Or not balancing it, if for example you don’t want A/C in the living room when you are asleep in bed.) The unit is powered by a small generator driven from the air flow, and stored in an ultracapacitor for when the A/C is off, so there are no batteries. The product is not in volume production yet. (For technology junkies, the protypes were made with a 3-D printer, which is the first application of this technology I have come across.)

A company called DBLive (www.dblive.com) controls sprinkler systems by using the weather forecast to generate soil moisture forecast by location, this information being transmitted along with a local FM radio signal. This product is not in production yet, but will soon be undergoing trial in the Houston area.

My Experience with a Smart Power Strip

[Amended March 2nd. It seems the sensitivity problem with the printer, mentioned towards the end of this post, is still an issue. I will investigate further and report back, probably next Saturday.]

I recently tried out a SmartStrip surge protector from Colman Cable Inc. It is a combined power strip and surge protector intended to save electricity by automatically switching off peripheral equipment when one controlling device is switched off. It seems rugged and well made. The model I bought cost $43.95 from SmartHomeUSA.com (there is a smaller model for $30.95) and has a total of 10 outlets: one for the control device, 6 for controlled devices, and 3 which are always live (unless you switch the power strip off). It has a lighted switch, a light to indicate whether the controlled devices are on and another to indicate that surge protection is working properly. Finally, there is a screw to control its sensitivity.

So, how useful was this in practice? Firstly one has to find a suitable application, and I had two in mind. One was entertainment. In one room I have a TV, satellite receiver, CD player, DVD player, and a tuner/amp used for the sound for everything except the DVD (because I ran out of amplifier inputs and rarely use DVD). All these devices are on standby. I also added a cordless phone charger to the mix, thinking that I listen to the radio enough to keep the phone charged and in any case there is another phone in the house. One hears a lot about not leaving things on standby and not leaving chargers plugged in when not in use, but I was not sure how much electricity was involved. Using the Cent-a-Meter described last Saturday I was unable to measure any difference very reliably – of course there could be other things going on in the house, and I might try again later with a monitor specific to the outlet – but it would seem that all these 6 devices used about 0.1 kW between them. This might not sound much, but at 16 cents per kWh it adds up to about $120 per year if left on when not needed 20 hours a day, which would pay for the SmartStrip in a few months.

I chose the tuner/amp as the control device, for two reasons: firstly, it mostly needs to be on when anything else is in use; and secondly, if it has been switched off (not on standby) it powers up with tuner on. I also found that I could not switch the satellite receiver completely off because when power returns it goes through lengthy signal acquisition process. So, this needs to be plugged into one of the permanently on outlets and the overall saving may therefore be less than 0.1 kW. Incidentally, I found that two of the devices – the tuner/amp and the satellite seem to use more power on standby than when on. I consistently measured a 0.03 kW difference on each. The TV is the only one which had a significant increase in power usage – about .15 kW – when on rather than on standby.

Now for the other case. In another room, I have a computer, external hard drive, printer, DSL internet connection, and wireless network controller. Between them they use about 0.3 kW when on. (Note that this is a case of equipment which in the past we have tended to leave on rather than just on standby. I have a computer in another room, which gets access to the internet though the network.) The internet and wireless network use transformers, and it seems these are not suitable for the controller. Likewise the computer, partly because it may not be needed when the network is and partly because it is a laptop with a charger so power consumption does not correlate well with whether it is on. So, I chose the printer as the controller. I found it quite hard to adjust the sensitivity to cope with the quite small power usage of the printer, but it now seems to be working and based upon the same assumption as above I project savings of about $350 per year.

I started out thinking the benefits would be minor, but overall savings of $470 per year on a total bill of $3000 is not to be sneezed at. Second only to the pool pump controller discussed in an earlier blog, which I estimate to be saving about $900 per year.

Carbon Footprint of Suburban vs. City Life

Last Saturday I discussed one very easy thing we could do individually to reduce our carbon footprint, namely to eat less meat. Here is something a bit more disruptive: move to the city. That may sound drastic, but it could also be a smart economic choice.

The 3 top things about real estate are said to be 'location, location, and location,' yet Americans buy houses in the middle of nowhere. Often the price of the structure (a depreciating asset) is actually greater than that of the land. (As Gertrude Stein said, “There’s no there there.” though in truth I have to admit she was referring to the city of Oakland.) This makes no sense as an investment, and in my view has a lot to do with the mortgage crisis. Increasingly Americans pay for larger and larger suburban homes with little intrinsic value and commute dozens of miles to work, but I think this trend is set to reverse. The attraction of the suburbs will decrease – and hence the folly of buying there will become more obvious -- as the cost of energy goes up and as retiring baby-boomers seek homes with less yard to look after and closer to amenities and public transport.

Of course it won’t help much for you to move if someone else takes your place, but if it leads to lower house prices it might at least slow down new development. My advice however is to get out while the going’s good.

City-dwelling is much more energy-efficient that suburban or rural dwelling for many reasons: homes are smaller; apartments insulate each other from heat and cold; transport of goods to stores is more efficient; amenities like schools, hospitals, and stores are closer to home. In some cities a car is unnecessary, most errands being possible by public transport or even on foot. (From my London apartment I can visit bars and restaurants and buy anything from a bottle of milk to a business suit within five minutes walk, while for longer trips the tube station is about 100 yards away.)

There was an article in last Sunday’s New York Times about people struggling to be green in the suburbs. Buying things like wind turbines. Why not just move to the city? The article points out that the average size of an American home almost doubled between 1970 and 2005, while the average commute went up from 8.9 miles in 1983 to 12.1 in 2001. The article also says the average American's carbon footprint is over 3 times that of a resident of New York City. But you don’t have to live in a million dollar Manhattan efficiency to improve your carbon footprint. The NYT article quotes a study done in Atlanta, which found that even moving from a neighborhood with 2 to 4 dwellings per acre to one with 6 to 8 saved about 10%, just because people need to drive less to get to stores etc. Finally, the same study showed that residential energy use for a single family detached home was about 70% more than for a multifamily unit.

Still like your sprawling ranch, or maybe can’t get out because of negative equity? In coming weeks I will talk about what you can do to make wherever you live more efficient, starting next Saturday with a couple of gadgets that have helped me reduce my electricity consumption by 25% over the past year or so. Plus an update on my sole LED lamp, which is now consigned to the scrap heap.

New Report Sees Profit in Combating Climate Change

Once again, late breaking news trounces what I had prepared for today. According to the Financial Times yesterday, McKinsey was set to release a report about the cost of addressing climate change, and the man conclusion is that about half of the required reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could actually be achieved at a profit. I have not been able to find this report yet on the web, but it seems to be a follow-up to the report they issued last November, prior to the Bali conference. (See http://mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/greenhousegas.asp for a summary and the ability to download the full report, an executive summary, video or slideshow presentation.)

The good news is that McKinsey believes that about half the reductions in greenhouse gas GHG required to meet the IPCC goal of stabilizing GHG atmospheric concentration at 550 ppm not only can be achieved by energy savings using existing technology, but that it can be done at a profit (with an average return of 17%). That would suggest to me that the other half would probably be achievable and profitable with the imposition of a relatively low carbon tax or the equivalent, especially when measures other than energy efficiency are included.

The bad news is that we are apparently not doing it. That is to say, we are not acting in our own economic interest. Adam Smith’s invisible hand is not working. I wonder why? One explanation is that this conclusion must be quite sensitive to the price of fossil fuels, and these have only recently reached the dizzying heights they are today. Other reasons, especially among individuals and small companies, probably include ignorance, apathy, and an inability to make the necessary capital investment. I have also found personally that companies often look for unrealistic rates of return, often expecting a payback period of 2 years. I do not understand why this is; where can they invest and get a 50% return? (For insights into how big business regards climate change issues, see another McKinsey report “How Companies Think about Climate Change,” which indicates that climate change issues are considered mostly with regard to the effect on a company's brands and reputation. This and other McKinsey reports on climate change can be found at http://mckinsey.com/clientservice/ccsi/.)

In the new report, McKinsey looked at all energy-saving technologies which would provide a return of 10% or more and found that adopting all of them would cost about $170 billion a year worldwide (0.4% of global GDP and not much more than the US spends annually on the Iraq war) but would provide an average return of 17% on this investment. It identifies heavy industry in China as the sector with the most to gain, with the second being residential housing in the US, where homes are large, poorly insulated and equipped with a range of appliances that are often themselves inefficient or poorly used, such as air-conditioning systems left on unnecessarily. (US homes happens to be the subject of the posting prepared for tomorrow, Saturday being my day for what individuals can do.)

Overall, out of the $170 billion, $83 billion would be spent on industrial applications, $40 billion would be spent on residential, $25 billion on transportation, and $22 billion on commercial. $38 billion of this would be spent in China and $28 billion in the US.

CFL Experiences

[I am modifying the first paragraph of this post on 2/17/08 to say "up to 70" rather than "about 70" lumens per watt, to reflect the fact that 70 LPW is at the top end of the range of CFL performance. Also see this report on two tests of CFLs, which also confirms my personal experience of the amount of variation between CFLs, drop-off in brightness ovefr time, and failure rates. www.rightlight6.org/english/proceedings/Session_8/International_Lamp_Testing_Programs/s08-3p030granda.pdf]

Like some political debate, conventional incandescent light bulbs produce more heat than light. In fact, only about 2% of the energy they use is emitted as light, which is why lighting is seen as “low hanging fruit” for energy conservation and why the US and other governments have legislated to phase these bulbs out. (Actually, the legislation does not ban incandescent bulbs explicitly, but mandates a minimum efficiency of about 20 lumens per watt. Current incandescents typically produce less than 15, while compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) easily beat the proposed standard at up to 70 lumens per watt.) There are other alternatives, and in a later posting I hope to discuss the physics behind them, but today I am going to report my own experiences using CFLs and hope to get feedback. (In fact, I plan to concentrate my Saturday postings on the practical aspects of what individuals can do to reduce climate change.)

When I set out to write this, I had envisioned a rant about how bad CFLs were, but when I looked around the house I was surprised how many such bulbs I have and how unobtrusive most of them are. I did not count the bulbs, but I did count 10 different types from 5 brands. So, not all CFLs are created equal. There are however a few general points. Firstly, some people do not like the color of the light. It tends to be slightly bluer, though this “color temperature” varies from bulb to bulb. It is more like natural daylight, and I actually prefer it. Secondly, while they are meant to come on instantly, there is often a noticeable delay and/or a longer warm-up period during which they are relatively dim. Finally, some helicals are larger than conventional bulbs, and don't always fit into table lamps.

Most of the bulbs in the house come from Bright Effects, which I think belongs to Lowes. One is a regular 15W bulb (LBP16AM2) which is fine. Most are large 18W floodlights (LBP18R402) in can fixtures, and have also operated flawlessly so far (getting on for a year). However, I bought four smaller 15W floods (LPB15R30M2) which were mounted in more confining fixtures and which failed within 3 to 6 months. Lowes refused to replace them or refund the money, saying that they do not refund on light bubs. I think they need to rethink this policy for CFLs.

I have heard of other people with similar problems, and the problem may be that the bulbs do not work well when confined in can fixtures. Even CFLs produce quite a bit of heat, and the problem may be that the electronic ballast gets fried.

I also have four GreenLite dimmable floodlights, also mounted in can fixtures. So far none have failed, but one is temperamental. Sometimes it comes on for a second and goes off again and I have to “reboot” – switch off and wait a few seconds, or maybe play with the dimmer switch. I don’t dim them often, but I have found that they flicker when dimmed low. They are also among the worst for taking time to get up to full brightness.

Another interesting bulb is a 3-way bulb from Sylvania -- 12/19/29 watts which is equivalent to about 50/85/130 for an incandescent – and I have no complaints. I also have a dozen 9 watt Sylvania decorative globes in the bathroom which have worked flawlessly, with negligible delay in startup and close to full brightness immediately. I have one 19 watt helical Sylvania, however, which has a definite delay (maybe half a second of so) and also seems dimmer now than it was when I first installed it.

I also have a couple of GE helicals – 10W and 26W – which have been very satisfactory.

Finally, I have a 15W Lightwiz helical which was still in its box. I tried it out yesterday and it seemed to work well, but I have not tested it over time.

(I also have one very expensive LED light, which is very blue and so dim that if there is any other ambient light it is hard to see whether it is on or off without looking directly into it!)

All in all I think it is well worth making the switch to CFL, at least if you live in a hot climate; I live in Houston where we use A/C most of the year so producing less heat gives a double benefit and in my case it has contributed to a 25% drop in my electricity bills. (There is no real advantage at times when you are heating the space anyway, especially if heating with electricity.) The biggest problem seems to be failure of the ballast when confined in a can fixture, but some cans seem to provide more space than others. I should perhaps add the obvious fact that this is all highly unscientific and anecdotal. I welcome comments from others on their experiences with CFLs.