2014 Green Conservation Plan

jebatty said:

Fortunately we do not need AC. Our summer days of high 80's to low 90's are typically only about 1 week long, and uncomfortable humidity then and other times is quite uncommon, at least not enough to consider AC. And ceiling fans do a good job of handling the few days when AC might be useful. We have neighbors who "must" live in a conditioned house all the time for reasons unknown to me other than that they can.

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Cool. For the record I have a 1960s house in a warmer and more humid climate, and my central AC for the whole summer keeping the place at 72°F and below 50% RH is ~1500 kWh, about 50% more than you are using for dehumidifiers. Granted my lot is very shady.

What if your neighbor's AC only used 1000 kWh all summer, and they didn't have to run a dehum....is their choice worse than yours?

We've got so many blankets on our bed right now I feel I'm suffocating.
It may be time to install the heated mattress pad on the bed.

jebatty said:

I've thought about a heat pump water heater, but we use very little hot water, only about 100 kwh/mo at $0.05/kwh or $5.00/month, that the investment in a heat pump water heater may not be worth it. A heat pump hot water heater would result in about $1.75/month electric cost perhaps, or a savings of about $3.25/month. We would get some dehumidification for sure, but I'm tending to think that because the heat pump would not be active very much we still would need dehumidification. What do you think?

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When I had my electric water heater, I never knew when it was in operation because I could not hear it like you can hear a gas water heater. Since the hybrid is relatively louder than other heaters, I am much more aware of how often it actually runs, whether to meet demand or restore water temp after hours of gradual heat dissipation. Perhaps a hybrid would run enough in your basement, even with your low demand, to contribute to dehumidification. I hope this helps. And thanks for keeping us posted on your other energy efficiency initiatives.

semipro said:

We've got so many blankets on our bed right now I feel I'm suffocating.
It may be time to install the heated mattress pad on the bed.

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Oooh, heated beds. I am a believer. We have ours installed all year and when heating season arrives we use it every night to at least pre-heat the bed at full throttle and if its really cold out we leave the element on low for all night comfort. Having bed heaters can save money by not having to heat the whole house.

I don't know what it consumes, maybe 50 watts on high? and they cycle. We even had the heaters when I was a kid at my parents' house.

Love the granite! Thermal storage, right?

Probably the last of the upgrades I can make for energy-efficiency would be to replace the 15+ year old dishwasher. I think it uses about 12 gallons per wash cycle, and probably draws a lot to power the motor and run the internal heater coil as well. I'm going to wait for it to break, however, which could be any day now. It is well past its expected lifetime.

I need wall insulation. Some of my 100yr old homes wall are completely uninsulated. I should be ashamed.

Yesterday I completed part of our conservation plan by installing 40 and 60 watt equivalent LED's throughout our house, leaving only a few CFL's in little used fixtures, CFL pin tubes in the kitchen ceiling fixtures, 40 watt florescent fixtures in the basement, and incandescent bulbs in the fridge, oven, microwave, garage and exterior lights with minimal usage. I also ordered LED strip lighting to replace the under cabinet halogen lighting in the kitchen.

starfoxACEFOX said:

I never got idea on why people monitor usage, wont change efficiency just the usage?

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You can't improve what you don't know. Five years ago I bought a kill a watt monitor causing the purchase of a new fridge. They've long since paid for themselves, if you don't figure the old fridge's waste heat helping in the winter.
I dismantled the old fridge to see why it suck so much electricity. All the fiberglass insulation was soaking wet within plastic bags.

What's the thinking on this: should incandescent and/or CFL's be replaced with LEDs at today's prices immediately or only as they wear out? And should avoidance of the social and environmental costs of electricity waste associated with high usage bulbs be taken into consideration in making this decision? And how are the other benefits of LEDs over CFL's to be taken into account: usable in cold weather, instant on, dimmable, and also a variety of colors available? Other considerations?

The 10 - 40 watt equivalent LEDs and 10 - 60 watt equivalent LEDs cost me $120.00 total. Our current electric rate is $0.12 kwh. A savings of 1000 kwh recoups the price paid for the LEDs at the current electric rate.

We're adding on 1460 sq.ft. of heated and air-conditioned space. Gonna finally break the 300 million BTU usage mark.

Thank you for your conservation.

Mostly joking there, BroBart. We spent an almost insane amount of time and money rebuilding old windows this summer, and building/installing traditional wooden storm windows, a project that will continue the next 4 - 5 years. We also added temporary weather stripping to two of the doors in the 1770's portion of the house, until I can get around to rebuilding them properly, which made an enormous difference. I mortared in all holes around the sill of our 1894 addition, installed a new roof on that addition, and installed a new mini-split in the room above our attached garage. The 1200 sq.ft. shop addition will also be high efficiency Mitsubishi mini-splits. I'm greener than I like to admit.

That said, our BTU usage is way higher using wood than the 264 million I had previously calculated using oil. With oil, the thermostats sit at 62F all the time, excepting weekends and about 6 hours each week day. With wood, we're kinda forced to keep the house at 70F, so it's not frozen when we wake up or get home from work. That extra 8 degrees means an extra 21% BTU usage for the month of January, alone. Looking at just 2011 and 2012, we went from using 1400 gal. oil with no wood, to 5-1/2 cords of wood plus 1000 gal. oil.

jebatty said:

What's the thinking on this: should incandescent and/or CFL's be replaced with LEDs at today's prices immediately or only as they wear out? And should avoidance of the social and environmental costs of electricity waste associated with high usage bulbs be taken into consideration in making this decision? And how are the other benefits of LEDs over CFL's to be taken into account: usable in cold weather, instant on, dimmable, and also a variety of colors available? Other considerations?

The 10 - 40 watt equivalent LEDs and 10 - 60 watt equivalent LEDs cost me $120.00 total. Our current electric rate is $0.12 kwh. A savings of 1000 kwh recoups the price paid for the LEDs at the current electric rate.

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The CFLs you removed were likely only costing you 2-3 watts each extra over the LED. I do not believe that destroying good CFL bulbs for LED is cost effective based on consumption only. The other factors have value, sometimes great value such as cold weather performance, that may make the upgrade worth it but I would save that functional CFL to use as a replacement for other CFLs that die on their own.

Highbeam said:

jebatty said: ↑ What's the thinking on this: should incandescent and/or CFL's be replaced with LEDs at today's prices immediately or only as they wear out? And should avoidance of the social and environmental costs of electricity waste associated with high usage bulbs be taken into consideration in making this decision? And how are the other benefits of LEDs over CFL's to be taken into account: usable in cold weather, instant on, dimmable, and also a variety of colors available? Other considerations? The 10 - 40 watt equivalent LEDs and 10 - 60 watt equivalent LEDs cost me $120.00 total. Our current electric rate is $0.12 kwh. A savings of 1000 kwh recoups the price paid for the LEDs at the current electric rate. The CFLs you removed were likely only costing you 2-3 watts each extra over the LED. I do not believe that destroying good CFL bulbs for LED is cost effective based on consumption only. The other factors have value, sometimes great value such as cold weather performance, that may make the upgrade worth it but I would save that functional CFL to use as a replacement for other CFLs that die on their own.

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There's a mathematics PhD in there for someone. I have replaced all incandescent bulbs unless I can't find a good aesthetic or functional replacement (e.g. Halogen PAR20s in dining room, candelabra bulb sconces in the bedroom). I've replaced several CFLs with Cree LEDs where I value the instant on and cold weather performance. I'll keep on using my CFL's but I won't buy only more. As they die (usually much sooner than advertised), I hope that the variety, price and color of LEDs will have improved even more.

TE

Just happened to look and notice milestone:

jebatty said:

What's the thinking on this: should incandescent and/or CFL's be replaced with LEDs at today's prices immediately or only as they wear out? And should avoidance of the social and environmental costs of electricity waste associated with high usage bulbs be taken into consideration in making this decision? And how are the other benefits of LEDs over CFL's to be taken into account: usable in cold weather, instant on, dimmable, and also a variety of colors available? Other considerations?

The 10 - 40 watt equivalent LEDs and 10 - 60 watt equivalent LEDs cost me $120.00 total. Our current electric rate is $0.12 kwh. A savings of 1000 kwh recoups the price paid for the LEDs at the current electric rate.

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The modest energy difference makes it not clear cut. In my case, I replaced all the locations I wanted an LED for fast warmup, low temp, high hour usage, dimmability, etc, maybe half of my bulbs total. I am keeping those surplus cfls in a closet, and will use them to replace the other cfls as they burn out. Best of both worlds. I'll never buy another cfl, but it will prob take me 5-10 years to finish them all off

I thought about replacing only some CFLs, for the reasons stated by woodgeek as well as to eliminate high usage CFL's, and then keeping spare LEDs to replace other CFLs as they wear out. But after thinking about it, that doesn't make much sense. I already invested in the LEDs, and I think I should use them LEDs now to get the energy savings + the other benefits, keep the CFLs as spares, because LEDs likely only will get better and less expensive. Why save them for a future use?

Saving for a future use is what I did when halogen bulbs first came on the market, but then came the CFLs and I never used the saved halogens. I still have those, and I have plenty of spare CFLs for a future that likely will never arrive.

Hate to say, I have been there and done that, solar hot water, solar electric , wood boiler and storage and a mini split to cut back on wood usage. The payback on what few energy improvements are left is so long that I cant justify sending time or money on them. The big thing I need to do is spend time to get two years ahead on wood.

jebatty said:

I already invested in the LEDs, Why save them for a future use?

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You created your own problem by buying so many LEDs at this time vs. waiting until you need them which would coincide with the price falling.

Now you're in a pickle. Do you use the LEDs and waste the remaining value in the CFL? or do you save the LEDs and wring every bit of value from the CFLs? It would be great if you could sell the used CFLs.

Like woodgeek, I will not be buying more CFLs. That tech has expired.

I use CFLs in my portable shoplights, much more robust than heavy duty incandescents, and much less burnt hair when I get too close! Just need to remember to hold my breath if I drop one.
I think that's a good retirement use for my remaining CFL's.

TE

I'm only buying LEDs from here on out. I've put the new Cree LEDs in my most often-used fixtures, and the CFLs are in lesser-used locations. I expect that it will take 5-10 years to use up the CFLs though.

I did find the new Cree LEDs used 2-3 watts less than rated, and they run not quite twice as efficient as the CFLs.

You created your own problem by buying so many LEDs at this time ....

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So true, but that's my nature, and I think my label may be "early adopter." I installed the first wood gasification boiler in our area (Tarm), this summer installed the first residential grid-tied microinverter solar array in our area that I am aware of, jumped on halogens as energy savers when they became available, similarly CFLs, and now LEDs. When we redid our kitchen in 1996 I installed pin tube CFL fixtures in the ceiling, quite uncommon then, and all but one of the can fixtures still use the original CFL. No regrets, though. I can't change others but I can change my own behavior, and hope that my behavior impacts others to act similarly with regard to all aspects of conservation.

semipro said:

You mentioned computer power supplies. Since you do IT work could you elaborate a little more on what could be done in that area. We have numerous laptops and one tower sucking power constantly at our place. What's the deal with the power supplies you mentioned?

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Computers run on direct current, not the alternating current that comes from your wall. In order to deliver steady, low-voltage DC power, a power supply (PSU) is needed to do the conversion. In laptops this will usually be an external "power brick" (the AC adapter) as part of the cord. In a desktop PC, it's a boxy internal component.

Unfortunately, it's not a sexy spec to tout, so many manufacturers just slap cheap and inefficient PSUs in PCs. A study in 2005 showed most PSUs were only 70-80% efficient, meaning a quarter of the AC draw at the wall was turned directly into heat. Besides the huge waste of electricity, this is bad because the excess heat can damage or shorten the life of other parts of your PC, and your fans will have to work harder (and create more noise) getting rid of all the heat. Additionally, a failing PSU can destroy more expensive components (like the CPU or GPU) by delivering unstable power, so it's not something to skimp on.

The significance of the PSUs starfox mentioned is their efficiency rating. 80 PLUS is a certification for PSUs that are at least 80% efficient, with several higher tiers of efficiency called Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum (with Titanium coming soon). An 80 PLUS Platinum-rated PSU is 90% efficient, so would be 3x less wasteful than a cheapo 70% efficient PSU! The initial cost of a quality power supply will be higher, but could pay for itself over time, especially in 24/7 applications like running servers or distributed computing projects.