Electrical Power Management

[Dmitchell]

Recent events in Juneau has the entire city worried about power management. Ordinarily, our power comes from a hydro plant about 40 south of town. Last week an avalanche destroyed about a mile of the transmission lines. Thus, we now have a city of 30,000 people running on diesel fuel for generation. Estimates are that it will be 3-6 months to repair.

Essentially, overnight our electric rates went from about $0.11 per KWH to somewhere between $0.45 and $0.65 per KWH. They are burning something like 4,000 gallons of diesel per hour.

So, we have been going over every inch of our house and our shop to determine where we can cut our usage.

It's interesting stuff. First, what is a Kilowatt hour Basically it's an hours usage of 1000 watts - like 10 - 100W bulbs running for 1 hour, or a 1600W hairdryer running for about 37 minutes. Our average monthly use is 750 KWH in a 2200 sq' house with 4 people. Talking to my co-workers, that's less than a lot of them. But, given that my $80 electric bill could be jumping to $400 we're looking at every possible cutback.

Probably the most interesting thing that I've learned is that a lot of things that you think are off when you push the power button aren't really off. For instance our 55" projection TV uses like 250W when it's on, but still uses 7W (3/4 of a KWH per month) when it's off. When you add up all these types of things, TV's, DVD players, cell phone chargers, routers, modems, all those little black boxes that plug into the wall, my house uses 3-4 KWH per day when I'm not even there!

So far, we've replaced just about every light bulb in the house with the energy saving ones, started unpluging appliances when they aren't in use and I've started turning off my PC that used to run 24/7, figuring out exactly how long it really takes to dry clothes and the range is off the minute the meal is cooked. We're hoping to cut our home consumption by as close to half as we can for the next few months. Thankfully, it's spring and not early winter!

I see a lot of bar-b-cue this summer.

Any other tips and tricks to kill a few KWH?

Dave

[airsix]

Any other tips and tricks to kill a few KWH?

Dave

Water heater is a biggie. Turn down the temp, put it on a timer, or get a tankless. Get your wife and kids to quit standing there with the front door wide open while they visit with departing company or bring things in from the car. If you can solve that one please let me know how you did it!

-Ben

[Sounder]

Run a secret power cord off your neighbor's house to yours... it doesn't help the environment any, but it'll definitely save you a few bucks!!

[Dmitchell]

Good suggestions,

My water is heated by diesel fired boiler which is also is my source of heat. Ordinarily, in the summer when I don't need heat, I switch to electric hot water to save fuel. But it looks like this summer I'll stay on the boiler. When the heat is off, I use about 1 gallons of oil per day for hot water.

Our water is city water and everyone is joking about putting in micro hydroelectric-generators since city water is billed at a flat rate we could just hook them to the garden hose .

Hopefully, I'll be able to shut the heat off soon, It's 55 degrees here today but was 17 a couple nights ago!

The neighbors are going to be hurting! 4 kids - 2 teenage girls!

They've declared a disaster and are looking for funding to help out with this. I can absorb it it'll stink but I can deal with it. But people on fixed incomes are going to have a tough time. Especially if it feeds back through to the cost of everything else.

[CaptnJack]

Power strips with a true mechanical switch can help positively turn off stuff with electronic on-off switches. Like the TV, stereo, etc. You might also look into a "watt meter" that can tell you where your amp drains are. In the short term, moving the refrigerator outside might save some!

[Dmitchell]

I've actually suggested moving the freezer out on the deck!

The wife's response something about me being a true Alaskan Redneck and that it wasn't happening!

Dave

[airsix]

The neighbors are going to be hurting! 4 kids - 2 teenage girls!

No, that's perfect. You put a generator on a stationary bicycle and put them on 30 minute rotation. Being tough Alaska kids they ought to be able to maintain a steady 500w if you feed them well (and threaten to cancel their cell plan)

-Ben

[stillhope]

Sounds like a really great opportunity to face our consumption addiction without being life-threatening. Too bad instead of being given a $300 tax rebate and told to spend it on a shopping spree, we aren't given a several thousand dollar gift certificate to spend on making our homes more energy efficient.

As far as your present situation goes, what about this: How much sense does it make to pass electrically generated heat only once through your clothes dryer then discard it? Can you imagine a more poorly designed appliance? Well, the refrigerator is a close second. Why can't it take advantage of lower temperatures outside to reduce the amount of work it has to do? What's up with throwing most of the heat from the water heater away while washing dishes or after a bath? Why aren't houses designed as efficient energy systems instead of an independent collection of appliances all working at cross-purposes? Heat exchangers to recover some of that energy really aren't science fiction -- they're very achievable. Tell your legislators that you think this is ridiculous, and you want them to require homes and appliances be designed more sensibly -- that you want the choice! It might not fix your immediate situation, but maybe it will help your kids when they have families.

[Dmitchell]

I hear you! My house is only 2 years old and I'm proud to say, pretty darn efficient but you're right those appliances are really wasteful! I see us cutting way back on the dryer, washing in cold water and keeping the refer stocked so that the food helps cut the run time. Maybe cleaning out and shutting down the freezer for the time being. We used 14KWH from 0700 to 0700, that's not bad for a family of 4. I have co-workers that are couples that use 3-4 times what my family does.

What's really disturbing is that the waste here at work. We have not been officially told to do anything. All the lights are still running, the place is business as usual and nobody seems to care. I can't image that the lessor will put up with this for long before he locks us out. In theory, he should start seeing $50,000 a month electric bills. There's no way he can afford to keep us here at that rate.

On the flipside, I was in Home Depot on Sunday and they have most of their lights turned off and are doing everything they can to cut back. Costco didn't seem to be doing much (yet) my wife won't shop at Walmart so I can't report on that one.

This is a huge learning experience for the entire city and I'm proud of my kids for jumping right on the problem and helping out to conserve.

Dave

[stillhope]

Airsix, get a dog or cat that you keep in the house but wants to escape outside whenever the door is opened. That will give your wife and kids incentive to learn to keep the door closed. Alternatively, my situation was the opposite -- my neighbor's cat was always trying to get into my house, so I could never leave the door open.

dmitchell, congratulations for achieving such savings! If your management at work won't say anything, why don't you talk to them about it?

I just came across a book published in 1990 called "30 Simple Energy Conservation Things you can do to Save The Earth." It was courtesy of our local power company. It was basically re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic -- which is the situation many of us are in. We can re-arrange our appliance use to make it more efficient, but the appliances themselves are insane. When it's 40 deg.F. outside or colder, why should the refrigerator be trying to cool its coils in the 70 deg. kitchen? How does that make sense? Were all the physicists busy designing the atom bomb when refrigerators were invented?

I have ductwork in my house to distribute hot air from an electrical furnace. Rather inefficient, since the ductwork is pretty shoddy. But I find I can put my wet clothes on a wooden rack over a duct and they will dry -- it might take half a day, but they will dry without added energy, and it also helps humidify the house. Just slightly, but it helps.

[Dmitchell]

Well It's official, the Electric Company filed for a 447% increase over last month!

We got the house down to 8kwh for yesterday! My shop is using 3 kwh per day of course we haven't ran the compressor since I'm waiting on a valve for it. Convenient time for it to go down, but it looks like I'll be raising the cost of airfills and don't even ask for Nitrox, I'm probably not going to pump it.

Dave

[airsix]

But I find I can put my wet clothes on a wooden rack over a duct and they will dry -- it might take half a day, but they will dry without added energy, and it also helps humidify the house. Just slightly, but it helps.

Well, almost no added energy. Nothing's free in thermodynamics. The evaporating water cools the air which must be heated again by your furnace, so it does actually make your furnace work a little harder. I'm sure it's more efficient than running the dryer though (which dumps it's hot moist air outside where it does no good).

-Ben

[BASSMAN]

Run a secret power cord off your neighbor's house to yours... it doesn't help the environment any, but it'll definitely save you a few bucks!!

Doug Where do you come up with this stuff?
We have replaced just about all of our light bulbs with the 7 or 10 year energy efficient curly Q ones.
But now I have recently heard that all of these energy bulbs have a certain amount of mercury in them that makes them hazerdouse waste. what's going to happen in 7 or 10 years when all of these bulbs start getting replaced? Make atificial reefs out of them?
Dave,
Sorry to hear of the Juneau disaster status. I have a friend in Minnesota that has a large wood furnace in his basement
and then the exuaghst goes through a 500 gal size tank that has copper tubing coiled in it that runs througout the hose floor and some how has water circulating through it that keeps his house toasty warm all winter.
I guess it also helps that he is a Logger by trade, so he has an unlimmited amount of wood to burn every year.
But a wood furnace or fireplace with a good heat-a-lator system works really well.
I know I feel bad that I have this big hot tub warmed up and ready to go within a few minutes and we have not been using it much within the last few years. I hope the country can learn from this Juneau incident. because if I was forced too do a major cutback like that my hot tub would be the fist thing I would have to shut down. I wonder if there is a more efficient way to run my hot tub. Doug? Got any Ideas other than the secret extention cord?

[ArcticDiver]

It is interesting that Juneau's plight seems to be helping our remote villages. They have had electricity costs equal to or far in excess of what Juneau is now experiencing. But, they have been unsuccessful in getting the State Government that is primarily housed in Juneau and Anchorage to give them much assistance. Now that Juneau is suffering they are jumping right in to let people know that is what they live with all the time and to get on the power subsidy bandwagon.

What I don't understand though is how in a nation, not just my home state, that is feeling the electricity costs we are how government buildings can be left so lit up at night. For that matter we could make a very sizable dent in our fuel costs if all government and commercial office buildings scaled back lighting and air conditioning(head & cool) at night. Fuel saved would lower demand that, in turn, would result in at least lower rate of increase.

[Dmitchell]

Arctic,

You're right about the fact that the rest of the State could benefit from this. The difference is that they choose to live where electricity is outrageous and they have it budgeted (hopefully). We are used to paying a rate that is just a little higher than the national average and a lot of people don't have the budget to cover an electric bill that is all the sudden 5X what they are used too. At my house, I'm estimating that we will use less than half what we used last month, with that conservation, we should see a jump from $90 to around $200-$250. Many people will see that $90 jump to $500. It's outrageous when you hear some of my co-workers talk about their ordinary $400 a month electric bills becoming $2K.

On a whole, people here are doing a great job, the power usage for the entire city is off about 30% from normal.

Now as far as government buildings go, it's disgusting. The city has done a great job with their facilities. They have shutdown the Ice rink, Limited the pool hours and are doing a great job in the office buildings and schools.

The State and Feds are doing a terrible job. My office is leased to the State and the landlord pays the electricity. The landlord has shutdown about 30% of the lights, but when the Commissioner's secretary asked to implement further cuts, she was told by our people that it's the landlords problem.

[ArcticDiver]

Yeah, Dave that is the heart of the conflict about energy use in the villages. They say since they were in most cases born and reared in the village being asked to either move or revert to a more primitive lifestyle is unreasonable. Their view is that they didn't choose to live there, it is where they were born and where their family and life is. At the same time they see no reason why they shouldn't have all the same benefits as everyone else. Your post sums up the view of many city dwellers.

Being blessed by being a diver and also having interests around the US I "get" to travel a fair amount. It always amazes me how much wasted energy there is in our cities. To bring it home to people on this forum: Next time you are downtown in Seattle or Portland in the wee hours of the morning look at how many office buildings, commercial and government, are lit. All the energy that is used for that could be go one of two ways. Since a lot of the electicity used is hydro, either divert it over the grid to other places that are burning expensive fuels for their needs. Or, just don't produce the stuff. One way reduces hydrocarbon consumption and both ways reduce cost to the consumer.

[ArcticDiver]

I brought this back because while at a convention last week I had conversations with several people from Juneau. As the OP posted this is the place where the hydro electricity supply lines were cut by an avalanche and they are now paying a Whole Bunch More for their electricity.

Without exception they all said it was amazing how little their life changed by reducing their electicity consumption. They said the city residents cut their consumption 30% in less than a month. Now they are wondering how they can get the government to follow suit. Their biggest complaint is that the Federal Government and to some extent the State Government are not cutting their consumption like the citizens are.

The lesson to me is that Juneau has proved that we can live comfortable lives with a lot less electricity. Less electicity means less environmental impact. It also means the need for new power plants is reduced.

Now, how to export Juneau's lesson to the rest of North America?

[Dmitchell]

What will be interesting is when things get back to normal, we are all used to conserving. That means that the power company will be taking another hit because while I expect the usage to increase a little, A lot of folks will continue to conserve and that hurts the power company's bottom line.

I'm not real sure what they are doing with the billing, I guess they decided to start charging us the crazy rates after this cycle.

The avalanche happened on the 16th of April, my meter was read on the 10th so I would have had 6 days of normal usage then a couple days slowing down as we realized what was going on and implemented change.

My March/April bill was 758 KWH my April/May (may 12th) bill was 475 take out the 6 days on full consumption (25 KWH/day) and that's 325 KWH for 26 days or an average of 12.5 KWH per day exactly half what we were using before all this.

It's taken very little effort on our part to do this. Just turning things we don't need off. We are using less overhead lights and more task lighting. Watching less TV and less time in front of the home computer.

The other good thing is people are spending more time outside which is good for everyone!

DM

[ArcticDiver]

I'm sorry this had to happen to you folks Dave. But, often these kinds of things end up working for the good.

If you can keep it up after the hydro comes back you will be the poster child for wise energy use. And, as you said, that is The Challenge. After all, we aren't the only species that gets fat and lazy when things are plentiful.

You know I bet there is a buck or two to be made from trumpeting your success in using less and yet not putting on the proverbial hair shirt.