staze.net

Vampire Power

Many of us have oodles of electronic gizmos plugged into power outlets 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The trouble is even when these items are not "turned off" and not in use, many are consuming power - sometimes egregiously as if they were simply left on. In some ways and perhaps more insidiously, many draw a few handfuls of watts just sitting there and doing nothing useful. Hence the term vampire power, which some estimate uses about 5% of the total US power generated. (I wish they called is zombie power, then I could mention that World War Z is still the best book I've read this year).

Properly eliminating vampire power is a tricky proposition and the real solution is for the consumer electronics industry to drive this trickling power use to near zero. There are initiatives such as Green Plug, but those for the moment are vapor (my definition being that I can't go down to the store and buy electronics so equipped).

I stumbled upon the Smart Strip and realized this would be a perfect solution for my home entertainment center. The Smart Strip works by plugging a "control device" into a specially marked outlet - when this device is turned off, the Smart Strip detects this and then shuts down all of the "automatically switched outlets". The opposite occurs when the control device is turned on. Here's my setup:

The one catch is that my DVR needs access to power all the time - it needs to wake itself up in order to record a random show during the day. To enable this, the Smart Strip has "constant hot" outlets.

I've made the speaker system/sonar array the control device. It will always be on whenever we're actually using any or all of the entertainment system and most importantly off when we're not. From here, everything else is plugged into the automatically switched outlets.

The whole setup is a snap and it doesn't require any thought to put to use. But the question is, what am I really saving?

Modern televisions are significantly improved in their vampire power characteristics. My television draws only 0.2W while in standby mode, the PS3 quite a bit more at 1.9W. That looks like small potatoes, but ends up being 18 kWh over the course of a year (2.1W x 8.670 hrs/year).

Perhaps even more useful is attempting to reduce "oops left the TV/PlayStation on" kinds of episodes. The PS3 consumes a whopping 177W turned on a doing nothing (as compared to 166W for my television). As long as the speakers are turned off, everything else is taken care of.

Overall, the Smart Strip is a quick, easy and relatively inexpensive solution to one form of vampire power.

Soap Nuts Drive Me Nuts

By the title of this post alone it's clear that I was scarred as a youngster, probably on some road trip trying to read the mudflaps on a semi trucking down the interstate.

What is really on my mind are the byproducts of the genus Sapindus. These caught my eye recently, being marketed as "soap nuts" - a natural, environmentally friendly alternative to conventional laundry detergent.

I read oodles of testimonials on numerous websites proclaiming the awesomeness of soap nuts. Not only do they get your clothes squeaky clean, they are 100% biodegradable (heck, compostable), a renewable resource and most importantly the name reminded me of another product that is a little out there and mildly entertaining.

My inner skeptic was screaming bloody murder, but the marketing message caught me hook, line and sinker. A low-cost experiment was in order and I whipped out the credit card with reckless abandon. I won't mention the specific website here, since I don't want to single out any of the many you can easily find online.

I ended up with a box of 1) sticky prune looking things (dried versions of the fruit in the picture here) that 2) smelled kind of funny. The box came with a small canvas bag to put a few of the "nuts" into and toss into the wash. Simple enough.

To alleviate any perception of preconceived bias, I've eaten things more earthy than my new trial laundry detergent. (As a lifelong vegetarian, these things happen).

I ended up running four loads of laundry using "soap nuts" in lieu of conventional laundry detergent. Given that I have a LG WM2688HNM "Dirt Crusher" washer that can make 50 pounds of soiled diapers smell like roses - using nothing more than atmospheric moisture - it would be a little challenging to have the "soap nuts" improve cleaning quality. Mostly, I was looking for any detracting items and I found two that are deal breakers:

1. My clothes smelled like soap nuts. Some more so than others. I have a synthetic fuzzy sweatshirt thing that still smells like them after a number of conventional washes. Not that the odor is outright intolerable, but one that just doesn't agree with me.
2. A load of whites took on a brownish tint that, well, kind of goes against the grain of the whole "cleaning clothes" concept we're after here.

I'm sticking with using my tried and true all free clear HE detergent. Others may find "soap nuts" more agreeable, but unfortunately I'm not one of them. On the plus side I did recycle the cardboard box they came in :)

Attack of the (sort of) Killer LEDs

As part of my campaign to reduce energy consumption, I've been eyeing LED bulbs as the ultimate in lighting efficiency. However, as I mentioned some posts back, they do have their drawbacks - primarily lacking sufficient light to be useful everywhere a standard incandescent or compact fluorescent bulb can go.

To dip my toe in the water, I targeted a nice antique chandelier light in my dining room. It currently has five 40W candelabra bulbs in it - burning a precious 200W when turned on. I use this light quite a bit, so reducing power consumption here will likely result in an overall measurable reduction in energy use.

My first pass was to pick up five LED replacement bulbs from the folks at superbrightleds.com - specifically the 21-LED model shown below.

The first test failed, in that my wife came home and spotted something "wrong" with the fixture even though it wasn't powered - the shape and size difference threw her. Powering them up at night, the 5500K super white color was pretty neat and got a "cool" vote from my 4-year-old - but was eerily different from any other light sources in the room. However, the real problem was insufficient light - very noticeable on the table surface below (at the elevation of the light and above, not too bad). This was quite a bummer, since I was really hoping that at 2W each, I could take this fixture from 200W to 10W in power use.

So it was back to the drawing board and for once timing was in my favor. The superbrightleds.com folks had just added a brighter 32-LED candelabra bulb to their catalog and as a bonus it comes in the traditional aesthetic shape.

This time around I opted for warm white LEDs and combined with the additional light output ended up with improved lighting quality and something I can work with. These bulbs consume 3W each - not bad going from 200W to 15W total energy consumption for the fixture (that's a decrease of 92%).

I am going to stick with this setup, although I would give it a B or B- in terms of being a true drop-in replacement. First, the actual light intensity is noticeably less than the original incandescent bulbs. The claim is that these are rough equivalent to a 25-30W bulb - a lumen-for-lumen replacement for a 40W (or higher) bulb simply doesn't exist. Second, the light emitted does not saturate an area like an incandescent or CF bulb - by their very nature, LEDs appear to be highly directional light sources with narrow beam patterns. Finally, my wife made me promise to keep the old 40W incandescent bulbs around "just in case" we want to swap them out for the random dinner we may host - the LED bulbs have a space age appearance that may not be the best mood lighting for a quiet dinner. And for the icing on the cake, these bulbs are pretty heavy on the pocket book.

I have a few other LED replacements projects in the works and I'll report on those down the road. But for now, LED light technology isn't here yet in terms of being decent 1-for-1 replacements for existing conventional bulbs. I hope this does not remain the case for long.... but it took a while for CF bulbs to get into the mainstream and to be reasonable replacements - I suspect LED bulbs will follow a similar path.

Refrigerators

Ok, even I admit the topic of refrigerators leaves a little to be desired. I think I can explain myself out of this, so here goes nothing.

About a month ago my Kill-A-Watt EZ came in the mail. I decided to target something big and easily measurable - my refrigerator. So for the last three weeks I've had the refrigerator plugged into it collecting data.

I have a relatively modern model - a modest Kenmore Coldspot manufactured in 2001. Normal size, nothing too fancy. Energy Star compliant (at least when I bought it).

The Kill-A-Watt measured an average of 2.22 kWh/day, which translates to 810 kWh/year. Granted, this is a landed cost of approximately $53/year (at $0.067/kWh for my local rate), but in 2008 you can't find a refrigerator on the current Energy Star list that consumes this much energy, no matter the size.

I've had my eye on the Sun Frost refrigerators for while now, so I decided to do a little comparison. The RF16 model is probably what I would replace my current Kenmore with and is a rough equivalent (although slightly smaller capacity).

The Sun Front RF16 consumes a between 0.48 and 0.70 kWh per day (ambient temperature dependent). This represents a decrease in energy consumption between 68 and 78%, with a annual cost of approximately $12-$17 to operate.

Now I'm not going to run out and buy a new refrigerator anytime soon - at $2800 the Sun Frost isn't exactly an impulse purchase. However, if my current one dies an untimely death, I'll definitely think seriously about it. Besides, if I ever get around to solar panels on the roof, there is a 12 volt DC option that can further reduce energy losses.

War on Junk Mail - Month One

I've been deep under cover the past few weeks - out of town tending to family affairs, etc. Life should be getting somewhat back to normal for me now, which means the blog machinery is starting to spin up again.

The picture above represents 28.5 pounds and four weeks of junk mail at my household. (For scale the yellow tape measure is three feet). I started this collection the day I signed up for GreenDimes, simply to see how effective the service is. I didn't expect to see any magical decrease in junk mail in the first month, due to it taking several months to get off everyone's mailing list. However, now I have a good baseline to work from. We'll see what happens in month two of the experiment.

(By the way, this does not include stuff I've put into the shred pile - credit card offers, etc. That represents a smaller, but significant stack of paper as well).

Green Update

Every once in a while I'll put together a list of small things I have done to reduce my environment impact - or perhaps note some items I am investigating or could do better at. My goal here isn't to come across as sanctimonious; rather, I believe that too many people don't try to do the small things since they don't think those small tweaks can make a difference. In either case, here's what has been happening over the past week or so:

• Turned pool filter timer down from six to three hours a day - we'll see how next month's utility bill reflects this (could be a significant savings) - hopefully the pool doesn't start to turn green with the warmer weather though.
• Carpooled 4 of 5 days this week - taking a gas guzzling SUV off the road and saving approximately 12 gallons of gasoline in the process.
• Monthly water bill arrived with slightly positive news - consumption down 3.3% as compared to last month - although an average of 651 gallons per day is way too high - where is all that water going?
• Monthly utility bill comes in even more positive - electricity usage down 13.1% as compared to last month (21.9 kWh/day); natural gas usage down 41.4% (1.7 Therms/day).
• The great LED lightbulb experiment begins! Full report at a later date.
• The Kill A Watt EZ showed up - testing it out, getting ready for some experiments and data collection.
• Added a list of catalogs to my GreenDimes account - finally get those other five trees planted (10 in total).

Gulp. That water consumption is really bad, almost twice the average San Diego household. I need to pick up the pace on water conservation in a big way.

So Long, Junk Mail!

Or so I hope. In the true American spirit, I'm outsourcing the problem to the folks at GreenDimes. For $20 they claim my junk mail will be reduced by 90% - and plant 10 trees on my behalf. Sounds good to me.

I was getting primed to hit up all the individual junk mail touch points to get off of lists, etc. but I already did that once (probably missed a few) and frankly don't want to invest the time and energy again into a project like that.

However, science being the prime directive here at staze.net, I'll be monitoring my junk mail flow closely to have some true quantitative data to share. The collection basket, scale and counting skills are awaiting the letter carrier.

I Hate Junk Mail

About a year ago I got sick and tired of the endless junk mail - not only was it blatantly wasteful, but the direct personal impact of all the time spent sorting through it and the risk that some important piece of real mail be lost amongst the chaos was simply out of control. What pushed me over the top was on some days getting three or four unsolicited credit card offers in the mail. I bought a shredder and ran all the "identity theft" sorts of material through it and ended up recycling the whole lot.

At my snapping point I did what any reasonable person would and followed the tips and great information from the folks over at Junkbusters. I ended up giving my information to the Direct Marketing Association (how ironic) to stem the flow of junk mail and unsolicited credit card offers.

Now to someone's credit somewhere, the flow of junk mail started to subside a bit. It still came, but was reduced by a near order of magnitude. Nothing is perfect and I could cope with the fire hose being reduced to a trickle.

Then the holiday season came and the volume of junk mail steadily increased, peaking a few weeks before Christmas. Annoying, but that's life in a negative savings rate consumption driven society.

With traveling and other life events in full swing, it's been two, maybe three weeks since I've culled the junk mail pile. Pictured above is 20 pounds of it. (The pile is about 6 inches high at the center and yes, I actually weighed it). People, it's March. Why are you sending this to me? I'm really not interested in buying swimming goggles or hearing aids. Trust me. I'll let you know when I am really in the market for those items.

Now for some data on the environmental impact:

• More than 4 million tons (62 billion pieces) of junk mail is produced yearly.
• Americans spend over $275 million to dispose of junk mail annually.
• Individually, an average of 41 pounds of junk mail are sent to every adult each year, 44% of which goes to a landfill unopened.

Time to go jump through the junk mail hoops again.

Interior Lighting Survey

Armed with paper and pencil I wandered the house yesterday compiling a list of all the lightbulbs I could find. The data were surprising to me:

• A total of 44 lightbulbs
• If all were turned on they would consume 1630W

My wattage figure is an estimate - I wasn't inspired enough to get out a ladder and unscrew bulbs/disassemble light fixtures to read the exact numbers. I figure my estimate is within a few hundred watts.

Now to find the biggest culprits:

The areas in the pie chart are simply bulb wattage times number of bulbs for each type. Perhaps it's not too surprising the halogen bulbs are the most energy hungry - but I had no idea they would represent 68% of the total home lighting wattage. It's quite clear I need to find a good alternative for the halogen lights.

I would like to take the leap straight to LED bulbs of some sort, but I am unsure if the technology is there yet and whether they give reasonable whole room lighting. Consider this:

• A 150W Halogen bulb emits 2400 lumens (cost $2.49)
• A 75W equivalent CF (15W actual consumption) emits 580 lumens - would need 4 bulbs (60W) for equivalent lumens (cost $8.99 each)
• A LED flood with appropriate form factor consumes a mere 6W, but also emits a mere 150 lumens (cost $49.99 each)

At least I have a prioritized list to work from. Now it's time for more research on replacements for those evil halogen lamps.

Reducing Electricity Consumption

The home represents a significant portion of one's environmental footprint. In my case three primary resources are consumed: electricity, natural gas and water. I figured I would start off with trying to reduce my electricity consumption and continue on down the list.

My local utility is kind enough to provide some historical energy usage data. Based upon their data, my average electricity consumption is within 5-10% of "similar households" - not bad, but it certainly can't hurt to try and improve that figure. (My recent spike in consumption is due to long term house guests who had been at home during the day).

I've done a cursory pass some time back by replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. Although in the meantime I have also added a number of recessed light fixtures to improve poor lighting in several areas of the house - likely offsetting most of my other attempts at efficiency gains. A few other strikes against me - I have an older 1950s house (less insulation) and a swimming pool (pool pump running several hours every day).

My next step is to begin a detailed audit - understand exactly how electricity is consumed in my home and what possible options I have to improve efficiency. There are numerous options for collecting consumption data, although I am considering the Kill A Watt to target individual consumption points throughout the home. I am particularly keen on understanding the extent of vampire power consumption with all of the gizmos strewn about.