DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

Electricity consumption for a dual-processor PowerMac G5, as measured with my Kill-a-Watt:

Specs: dual 2.0 GHz PowerPC G5 processors, 1.5 GB RAM, two 150 GB SATA disk drives in RAID-1 (mirrored) array. USB keyboard and mouse were attached. See additional specs on the Power Macintosh G5 at apple-history.com.

Tags: kill-a-watt
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-01-18 07:50:41

I had a chance to step outside my home environment for a week in December, during a visit with family. Their energy use was jarring: they have two refrigerator/freezers, plus a beer cooler behind the bar, yet someone goes to the grocery store daily (granted, they had guests in town). Dozens of incancescent lights were left on, most of the day. The thermostat is set a couple degrees higher than I’m used to. The washing machine runs once or twice a day (just for the few people who live there).

I’m not taking cold showers to save a couple more BTUs, but this was a different world altogether. This was a total disconnect between lifestyle and the big utility bill that comes at the end of the month. And, more to the point, with the cumulative effect of all those excess tons of C02 being generated on their behalf.

The point of this is not to pick on my own family. My green tendencies would have remained latent had I not moved to California and gotten involved with Care2.com. 20 more years in the Midwest and I would personally have regarded long-haired Californians with PV arrays as scary liberal treehuggers. And I sure as heck wouldn’t have been willing to visit such people, given that their houses would be cold and dimly lit. My family is much more gracious than I would be in this regard. For example, they’d never write a story about me in a public journal.

No, the point of this is that the global warming prevention movement has its work cut out for it.

Seth Godin recently challenged bloggers to write about compact fluorescent light bulbs. I’ve been doing that for over five years, but I haven’t even reached my own family. (Hmm, maybe they’re too busy doing laundry?)

I love Seth’s idea that the right story would help push CFLs as a mainstream, or even a trendy product. As an engineer I’m inclined to think that a higher-tech device that lasts longer, uses less power, creates less waste, and saves both time and money ought to pretty well sell itself. But logic has no place in the market, as both Seth Godin and George Lakoff will tell you. That’s why Wal-Mart’s CFL push is a big deal. (Does anyone have figures on its success?)

Here’s another engineering-centric solution to this small piece of the global warming problem: Put an Energy Cost gauge on the refrigerator door. Wire it into the main electrical circuit, so it measures instantaneous electricity usage for the entire house, multiplies by the local utility rate, and shows the result in dollars per hour in 4''-high numbers.

Part of the problem of CFLs is that consumers have to take it on faith that they’ll save money. CFLs are cheaper than ever but still a lot more expensive than incandescent bulbs; one needs a longer-term view to see the benefit — just as with solar electric systems, which take 8-12 years to break even.

I don’t know if such a device exists. The closest I’ve seen is the Kill-A-Watt, which completely and utterly fails the Mom test, and even for the adventurous will only measure single devices, and only those that are plugged into a wall socket.

Tony Robbins (to drop another name) has said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” If people could monitor their moment-to-moment energy use like they monitor the ambient temperature, you can bet they’d start to manage it too.

Tags: pv, wal-mart, cfl, godin
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-01-17 16:25:41

If you want to consume less of any resource — money, time, energy — you generally need to analyse your current usage to determine where to conserve.

How can you analyse your electricity consumption? First, you have to measure it. Some appliances are labelled in watts, like light bulbs and hairdryers and microwaves, but many aren’t, like the TV and DVD player, the cable modem, wifi access point, and that multi-GHz supercomputer under your desk.

Enter the Kill-a-Watt. I just bought one of these ($25 at Amazon, cheap) to better understand where all the power goes.

So far I’ve used it only for spot readings: plug in a device, measure the draw in watts when switched off (aka the phantom load), when idling, and when in full use. But the Kill-A-Watt is capable of accumulating kWh usage over time, too.

If you like, multiply the day’s kWh value for a particular device by the cost per kWh charged by your local utility. (The cost of a kilowatt-hour probably appears on your utility bill; for example, here’s a sample PG&E bill showing electricity rates.) That gives you the true daily operational cost of the device you measured.

Some reviewers have claimed they saved enough in electricity to pay for the Kill-A-Watt in a month. That won’t be true for me, because I’ve been squeezing out waste for about six years. But it is helping me understand the true cost of every electrical device in the house, which will guide additional conservation efforts during peak periods on the TOU clock this summer.

What really appeals to me is the ability to read a device’s power draw instantly. Wasteful habits, like leaving all the lights on, or opening the refrigerator door 30 times when cooking dinner, generate no immediate negative feedback about the costs of those habits. The Kill-a-Watt is a great first step at raising one’s awareness of power consumption.

And the truth is, unless you’re already a hardcore conservationalist, the Kill-A-Watt probably will pay for itself before too long.

I’ll post some of my watt readings over the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Tags: kill-a-watt
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-01-15 14:44:40

I don’t know what it is about this thing that so appeals to me. I think it’s the something-for-nothing aspect of it: if you’re burning candles for ambiance anyway, you might as well also heat up the room with them. It’s low-tech, it’s earth-friendly, and very very clever.

47% of your energy bill goes toward heating your home… yet for every degree you turn down the thermostat, you knock ~5% off your bill. This simple device, like compact fluorescent light bulbs, would not only save money, but pay for itself, over and over again.

Let’s do the math. The average US heating bill for 2005 was $989, or $82/month. If you could turn the thermostat down 2 degrees, you’d save about $8 per month. You’d save enough in heating costs to pay for the heater within four months.

Basically it’s a steel and ceramic radiator suspended above a small “jar candle.” It looks like an inverted flower pot, but it acts like a space heater. When in use, the steel bolt in the middle of the nested stack of flower pots heats up to 300+° F.

If you buy one, I recommend the use of beeswax candles. Paraffin candles cost less, but emit toxins like benzene and toluene. If you’re going to go to these lengths to help save the planet, you might as well stick around a few extra years to enjoy it.

(Soy candles are also nontoxic, but burn cooler, which is not what you need when you’re trying to heat your room.)

Yo, Treehugger, check this out.

Tags: treehugger, beeswax, energy, heating
posted to channel: Conservation
updated: 2007-01-14 21:04:42

I enjoy filling out credit applications about as much as I enjoy tooth extraction (erm, that’s safe for work, unless you just ate breakfast), but I finally succumbed to the logic that we’d benefit from putting most of our expenses on an airline-miles card, considering that most of us fly to Germany every year.

As is now typical, the cards arrived with a “convenience check,” the idea being that balances outstanding on other accounts can easily be transferred to the shiny new credit card whose benefits are superior to whatever stinky old account is about to be replaced. The text reads:

• Write this check as you would a personal check.
• Make a large purchase you’ve been putting off.
• Complete home improvements and other projects.

It seems like a great deal for the consumer — consolidate debt in one place; escape the karmic weight of old debt, even if only temporarily; cancel old credit accounts that have come to represent guilt for poorly-considered purchases in months past, etc. (I’m just hypothesizing here, of course. Nothing to see, move along…)

But it’s a scam. There’s a tiny footnote symbol, about a millimeter tall, after the words “personal check.” The referenced note is on the back of the page; it’s 18 lines of rules and limitations, including this flashing neon red flag/klaxon: “Please see your Cardmember Agreement for any applicable transaction fees.” The Cardmember Agreement is three pages of mousetype filled with phrases like “fees may apply.” Not until the last page will you find the actual fee table which shows the transaction fee for these advance checks: 3% of the transaction amount, up to $75!

Yeah, I’m sure they love it when new cardholders spend a pile of money on one of these checks. I’m surprised they only sent one.

The other thing I’m bitter about is the Chase privacy policy. They provide a marketing opt-out via phone, but they say it will take four to six weeks to take effect. I’ve written enough database applications to know that it doesn’t take four to six weeks to update a binary value in a database table… even if you’re running Oracle (heh). So what that really means is, “We’re going to sell your name, address, and purchase history as many times as we can, per day, 24x7, for the next 40 days, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

You know, I don’t really like travelling all that much…

Tags: visa, feh, united airlines
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2007-01-12 07:42:05