My Greenish Power Project and Updating a Few Grid Cords

[Burnin Since 1991]

I have begun a project to lower my bills and still provide the services we need. Initial costs and ROI are to be considered. My wife and I are 67 years old.
The home is a slab (no basement), no chimney, no garages, (no forced hot air heat vents or hot water heating pipes, only electricity) 2 story open/ balconied cape style house of 1600+ s/f 3 bedrooms, one bath (yeah I know) built in 1978 and a family room addition built in 1988. We bought the house in 1989. For utilities, we have electricity, natural gas (NG) for the hot water heater, cable tv and 2 wireless cell phones. We have 2 LPG grills and 20 pound tanks. I have a 4400 watt portable gasoline generator that we connect with power cords where we need them to power essentials. I have 15 gallons of gasoline on hand and 2 vehicle in which I can siphon gasoline if needed. Both vehicles; 2006 Tacoma and 2015 Honda Accord are both paid for and in good condition.

The items to be modernized or updated:

1. New NG water heater, New water softener system (very hard water) and insulation of utility room. The interior walls are insulated with rockwool to prevent noises from the utility room from interfering with normal life. The ceiling was also insulated with rockwool and R13 and exterior walls were all caulked and sealed and insulated with R13 as well. All the above has been completed and I'm looking to cover the walls with either drywall or something along those lines, keeping in mind that it is a utility room (6' x 18') and there are electric breaker boxes and wires, gas pipes and a water heater direct vented, water service and cable wires that we may need access to. The room is "warmed" with a small electric baseboard heater to prevent pipes from freezing.
2. Remove / Replace 9 Electric Baseboard heaters with something more efficient and less expensive. We currently only use 2 of them. One in the utility room and one in the living room. The heat from that baseboard rises and warms the bedrooms upstairs. The family room is heated with the woodstove and has a wall mounted electric heater with fan for backup.
3. We have no UPS's in the house. Our electric backup is a 4400 watt starting/ 3300 watt generator that is not an inverter. Dirty power. We have more than a few critical appliances that wouldn't last long with dirty power. The generator runs great and in the 14 years I've owned it I've only done tune ups, oil changes, replaced the electric start battery and the carburetor. I don't have an hour meter but the generator has less than 150 hours on it.
4. Our cable tv bill just hit $300- per month. Includes hard wired internet with wi-fi. I only watch sports and news mainly. The tv I watch is on less than 4 hours a week. My wife watches 4 channels. We do use the internet frequently. Me with a laptop and my wife has an iphone.
5. Our electric bill ranges from $125 per month to about $600 per month during the winter. Average would be about $350 per month. We are on a payment budget so we pay the same amount every month.
6. Our NG bill is $30 per month, average. Budget same as above.
7. Cell phones with wi-fi connectivity. Our wireless bill was well over $200- a month. I switched my phone to a different carrier and my bill is now $20 per month and my wife's major wireless carrier bill is $125 a month.

The goals are simply spend some money and save money. ROI is important. Spending $30k for a new heating system would not break even for many, many years.
My goals and how I achieve them will probably changes as this project moves along. I'm not looking for suggestions yet as I've already done a few things and I don't want anyone wasting their energy on something that has already been implemented or decided.
My next post will be about what further steps I've taken and why. I will post it later today or Monday morning.

Stay Tuned!

 

[Whitenuckler]

Our cable tv bill just hit $300- per month

That seems high. I have Bell fiber optic cable to my house and have med speed internet and a medium TV package. It just went up to 199CAD incl tax. I did have to get a discount from them. It is supposed to stay on my account, but they keep increasing the base rate every year so it goes up every year. Inflation is the base for the economy and it is relentless.

 

[EbS-P]

First you need to define a budget and a break even time frame.

I would not remove all the baseboard heaters. Unless you go natural gas’s heat. They are good heaters if you got heatpumps that are appropriately sized and may not keep up when temps get near record lows.

Best money spent is insulation and air sealing. Adding a 2-3 tons of mini split heat would put a huge dent in your heating bill and add air conditioning.

Solar may still be viable in mass. Look up balcony solar basically it’s a plug system that can be sized up to 1500w.

Large Emergency battery backup is expensive. How much do you want to spend for emergency power and how much do you need.

Best case for solar and battery roi times now there is no longer federal subsidies is more than 10 years. Not sure what Mass is doing.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

That seems high. I have Bell fiber optic cable to my house and have med speed internet and a medium TV package. It just went up to 199CAD incl tax. I did have to get a discount from them. It is supposed to stay on my account, but they keep increasing the base rate every year so it goes up every year. Inflation is the base for the economy and it is relentless.

The only way to lower the bill is to call them up and tell them you're cancelling service because it costs too much. Then they'll reduce it for a period of time. We have Comcast/ Xfinity. Verizon also does cable tv here and they're lower if you switch then they jack it up after. The reason my bill is so high is that because the sports I watch are on 5 or 6 different channels, I had to get the sports package. Then the football package and the channels my wife wants, you have to get the upper tier channel package to get them all. I'm really done haggling with them. I already have a solution that I will post tomorrow.

First you need to define a budget and a break even time frame.

I would not remove all the baseboard heaters. Unless you go natural gas’s heat. They are good heaters if you got heatpumps that are appropriately sized and may not keep up when temps get near record lows.

Best money spent is insulation and air sealing. Adding a 2-3 tons of mini split heat would put a huge dent in your heating bill and add air conditioning.

Solar may still be viable in mass. Look up balcony solar basically it’s a plug system that can be sized up to 1500w.

Large Emergency battery backup is expensive. How much do you want to spend for emergency power and how much do you need.

Best case for solar and battery roi times now there is no longer federal subsidies is more than 10 years. Not sure what Mass is doing.

All true. I've been researching and I've got some ideas that I will post up later on.

 

[bogieb]

I'm confused about what you are calling a UPS (#3). A true UPS is normally placed as a smallish back up to sensitive applications that are running all the time such as computer, router/wifi and in my case pellet stoves. They normally don't give a huge amount of runtime, but give you time to transfer power over to another source in the case of an extended outage. Or, alternately, power the items down gracefully.

ROI for solar is very tough, for reasons given by @EbS-P . Although it depends on if installation companies reduce their prices. DIY solar is more budget friendly, but that may not be your thing (it isn't mine). If you were to go grid ited solar, there are a lot of hoops to jump thru for permitting by both your town and the power company (and maybe the state). You could put in small off-grid system and run it thru a transfer switch for select items. But, you most likely would not make enough to run your heating during winter and you would definitely need batteries to store energy to get you thru the night.

If you are worried about sensitive appliances not lasting long on your dirty power generator during power outages, I would look at replacing it with a true sine wave inverter generator. Or, you could get battery backup. But, during extended power outage, you would probably still need the generator - and battery backups need a true sine wave generator to charge of not drawing from the grid.

Use of batteries might be feasible to use for lowering your power bill. It depends on if your power company has a Time of Use (TOU) plan where you could store energy at the lower rates, then draw from the battery when your rates are higher. In that case, you would need some sort of transfer switch or energy module that automatically switches back and forth. And no, i can't be more specific than that, I just know some people do that.

It might be good to look at using NG to replace some of your electrical heating. That is not to say to rip out what is there - I'm a big believer in having different methods of heating - if one method breaks, or gets wicked expensive, then you have another to fall back on. I put in pellet stoves since I'm on propane for FHW (and my cook stove) and that is the most expensive type of heating per BTU in my area (NG is not an option). But, since you already have a woodstove, I would use that more if possible.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

I'm confused about what you are calling a UPS (#3). A true UPS is normally placed as a smallish back up to sensitive applications that are running all the time such as computer, router/wifi and in my case pellet stoves. They normally don't give a huge amount of runtime, but give you time to transfer power over to another source in the case of an extended outage. Or, alternately, power the items down gracefully.

ROI for solar is very tough, for reasons given by @EbS-P . Although it depends on if installation companies reduce their prices. DIY solar is more budget friendly, but that may not be your thing (it isn't mine). If you were to go grid ited solar, there are a lot of hoops to jump thru for permitting by both your town and the power company (and maybe the state). You could put in small off-grid system and run it thru a transfer switch for select items. But, you most likely would not make enough to run your heating during winter and you would definitely need batteries to store energy to get you thru the night.

If you are worried about sensitive appliances not lasting long on your dirty power generator during power outages, I would look at replacing it with a true sine wave inverter generator. Or, you could get battery backup. But, during extended power outage, you would probably still need the generator - and battery backups need a true sine wave generator to charge of not drawing from the grid.

Use of batteries might be feasible to use for lowering your power bill. It depends on if your power company has a Time of Use (TOU) plan where you could store energy at the lower rates, then draw from the battery when your rates are higher. In that case, you would need some sort of transfer switch or energy module that automatically switches back and forth. And no, i can't be more specific than that, I just know some people do that.

It might be good to look at using NG to replace some of your electrical heating. That is not to say to rip out what is there - I'm a big believer in having different methods of heating - if one method breaks, or gets wicked expensive, then you have another to fall back on. I put in pellet stoves since I'm on propane for FHW (and my cook stove) and that is the most expensive type of heating per BTU in my area (NG is not an option). But, since you already have a woodstove, I would use that more if possible.

The battery backups that I bought have what they call UPS mode. Here is their description of UPS Mode:

"Keep your essential devices protected with the built-in UPS function. In the event of a power outage, the P010 automatically switches to backup mode within 10 milliseconds — ensuring uninterrupted operation for computers, CPAP machines, and more."

I might do a small solar project for recharging the battery backups. Since I don't have a basement, getting wiring and plumbing to different parts of the house is difficult. There is a common chase above the utility room that goes up to the attic so getting utilities to the first floor living room and second floor (bathroom, and 2 bedrooms) are easier in that regard. The utility room shares common walls with the kitchen, living room and via the utility chase, the bathroom and main bedroom. Utility access to the 3rd bedroom would require ingenuity as it has no easy access. The family room addition is at the rear of the house and has minimal utility access and would also require additional work. It is where the woodstove is located and a wall mounted 1500 watt electric heater with blower to augment in severe weather. I haven't used the electric heater at all this year at all after having a new roof and siding on the exterior of the family room. They added exterior grade rigid foam insulation on the roof and sides and I also installed a new tighter exterior door. The windows are Anderson double panes from 1988 and they still do their job well.

The backups and generator I picked out are all pure sine wave.

With regards to power sources. There is no such thing less expensive energy in this state anymore. I can't speak to the rates in NH or elsewhere but the charge for actual electricity usage isn't the real problem. The problem is the additional charges that are added to the bill. I posted the charges, fees, taxes and surcharges on the site before. I will see if I can locate that info and post it here.

I will do up a layout of the house in a day or so to help enforce what I'm speaking about.

And thank you for your input. I have major gaps in this project, but I'm learning something new, everyday.

 

[Murray01]

Wondering if a natural gas dryer and kitchen stove is on your list? In our previous house we converted both appliances to NG, no idea if it was cheaper but it was a request from my wife.

She was getting tired of waiting for the electric dryer to dry, with the NG she no longer has wait for the dryer. For the stove she hated cooking with electricity, too slow to heat and cool down. Both NG appliances only needed 120 volts.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

What I've done so far.

Regarding #1 once the warmer weather arrives, I will resume my work and address the utility access issues then.

#2 The baseboards stay until I come up with a workable solution. I had planned to leave them in the bedrooms, bathroom and utility room (maybe). I have looked at mini-splits and they're a viable option.

We (wife and I) discussed NG direct vent wall mounted heaters, through the wall NG furnaces and freestanding NG stoves (look like woodstoves). My wife doesn't care for the aesthetics unless I can come up with a wall mounted direct vent NG heater that is more pleasing to the eye. The freestanding and through the wall NG was completely ruled out. Access to electrical and NG are in the utility room four feet away.

I want to use NG. It is somewhat less expensive than electricity. More on that later on. My wife and I are still talking about it. I need to find a good electrical to NG calculator to truly determine which one is actually the least expensive.

Our family owns a home on cape cod and we installed mini-splits there about 7 years ago and they have worked out well. That could be an option.

#3 I had the local Home Depot electrical contractor come out and give us quotes for two options. First was installing a standby NG generator doing the entire house and second was just for powering 16 circuits of the essentials. The costs of the NG standby generator were staggering. I did some research on this site and several other forums and then stumbled on some youtube videos that made total sense to me. (I know, youtube...) Take it for what it's worth and verify. What works for them might not work for you etc. I watched about 50 different videos and one guy hit a nerve.

No need to electrify the whole house in an outage. Install battery backups and run them in UPS mode. Then buy a small pure sine wave inverter generator (cleaner power) and only run the generator to recharge the battery backups. Size them so that they will give you power to get through the night. Running them in UPS mode keeps them safer from surges and the damage that can come from not being properly shutdown. I found a generator/ inverter at Lowes that fits my needs. It's a 4000/3000 watt gasoline / NG dual fuel, electric remote start fuel sipping eco mode quiet inverter. The gen/inverter has 2 110v plugs and a 30 Amp RV style connector (RV ready) I will buy a 30 Amp RV extension with a triple tap 110 outlet to the end. From there a 12 or 14 awg 110 extension to the backups.

I haven't committed to this extension. It is just an option at this point.

http://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Explorer-Lighted-Extension-Electrical/dp/B0CLR64BHC

I have a few gift cards and a store credit which brings the generator cash price from $750 to $200 plus tax (on the 750).

On one of the videos I saw some battery backups that were a really great price. I calculated the wattage I would need and bought ones that were more than twice as big as the usage will be. I bought two 800 watt models for the areas we have TV's, cable boxes, internet / wi-fi router etc. For the kitchen I got a 2800 watt model that will easily run the fridge for over 24 hours. The air fryer coffee maker and microwave can also be run separately as needed. I also have the woodstove and 2 grills outside for cooking as well. These backup units have an extended 10 year pro-rated warranty.

The initial thought for the old generator is to gift it to one of my neighbors. One is a retired couple on a very fixed income and the other is a younger family that had a baby 3 months ago. I might keep it though and have an electrician wire up the house electrical panel for me. Since it is two phase, it does give me options. If there is an emergency and my neighbors need power, I could loan it out to them. I do have a dual fuel carb that I bought recently that is still in the box. I would most likely buy a 30 or 40 pound tank to have as a supplement to the two 20lb tanks I already have.

To recap; #1 is postponed. #2 is open for ideas and #3 is in progress. I purposely left out brand names until I can personally verify the quality of the products I've purchased, though they're all highly rated.

The others will receive attention soon. I expect to have the backups and generator in the upcoming week.

And remember what works for me, may or may not work for you. We all have some specific needs that need to be met and I'm glad to be moving in a proper direction.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

Wondering if a natural gas dryer and kitchen stove is on your list? In our previous house we converted both appliances to NG, no idea if it was cheaper but it was a request from my wife.

She was getting tired of waiting for the electric dryer to dry, with the NG she no longer has wait for the dryer. For the stove she hated cooking with electricity, too slow to heat and cool down. Both NG appliances only needed 120 volts.

Good points. Hadn't even considered that. I will add that to my list to see what the foreman thinks. Both the dryer and stove we currently own have some miles on them. Not unique in New England but my washer and dryer are in the kitchen. (Slab, no basement or garage)

When they added the family room they should have reconfigured the space to include a laundry room to get the washer and dryer out of the kitchen. Still might be an option and it is something I will keep in mind. We always wanted a half bath on the first floor so we wouldn't have to climb the stairs to use the bathroom. A combination half bath and small laundry room would be the way to go. Not sure that's in the budget right now though.

 

[stoveliker]

Regarding cooking, we always had NG in Europe. Here in the US we had electric (resistive). It sucked.
We just moved to induction. For all intents and purposes this is the same as gas without CO(2) issues. Fast, instantaneous.

I'm not sure you're thinking correctly regarding batteries. Maybe you are.
A fridge does not need 2800 W.
Generally 300 W or so (and a start up surge of double that?).

Is the 2800 W instead 2800 Wh? (That would not last 24 hrs from rna 300 W fridge).

 

[Murray01]

Good points. Hadn't even considered that. I will add that to my list to see what the foreman thinks. Both the dryer and stove we currently own have some miles on them. Not unique in New England but my washer and dryer are in the kitchen. (Slab, no basement or garage)

When they added the family room they should have reconfigured the space to include a laundry room to get the washer and dryer out of the kitchen. Still might be an option and it is something I will keep in mind. We always wanted a half bath on the first floor so we wouldn't have to climb the stairs to use the bathroom. A combination half bath and small laundry room would be the way to go. Not sure that's in the budget right now though.

To keep cost down I ran the gas lines myself and had the gas fitter do the tie ins. We also had a basement and open floor joists that simplified the installation. We did not tear out the 220 Volt receptacles so the next owner has a choice.

I forgot to mention that we also ran a gas line for the BBQ, not for cost savings, purely for convenience.

I spent 40 years in Alberta, a province rich in hydrocarbons so to be perfectly honest my reasoning for switching to NG was to support “local” industry.

Good luck with your journey to reduce energy cost.

 

[EbS-P]

I getting a better idea of your scope. Separate energy efficiency upgrades, emergency backup, and comfort/usability improvements.

Your budget won’t support everything all at once and you know this.

Whole home automatic backup is a luxury, unless your have medical equipment that you rely on that needs Unless going solar and getting a utility incentive to install a battery backup. I’ve done very little research but something modular like this EcoFlow would be at the top of my list. https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-pro-ultra

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

Regarding cooking, we always had NG in Europe. Here in the US we had electric (resistive). It sucked.
We just moved to induction. For all intents and purposes this is the same as gas without CO(2) issues. Fast, instantaneous.

I'm not sure you're thinking correctly regarding batteries. Maybe you are.
A fridge does not need 2800 W.
Generally 300 W or so (and a start up surge of double that?).

Is the 2800 W instead 2800 Wh? (That would not last 24 hrs from rna 300 W fridge).

My grandmother used wood / coal for cooking and we always had NG stoves, dryers and forced hot air growing up in SW Ohio. I lived in Germany in the early 90's while I was in the army.

The kitchen backup is 2800 W - 2048 wh. The reason I went bigger is that we have a microwave, coffee maker, and air fryer in the same area. The microwave pulls 1000 watts I believe and is due for replacement. The coffee maker needs 1400 and the air fryer needs 1800. In the long run, I might look at doing something different in the kitchen. It is something I need to look at more long term I think. But, for now the 2800/2048 should be ok.

I would be rotating appliances so as to not overload the backup. Finding a central location in the kitchen to run off a full time backup/ ups is more planning than I want to do right now. Some plugs are above the counters and others under the counters or behind the stove and fridge. The 2800 will see most of its use in the family room until it is needed for the kitchen.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

To keep cost down I ran the gas lines myself and had the gas fitter do the tie ins. We also had a basement and open floor joists that simplified the installation. We did not tear out the 220 Volt receptacles so the next owner has a choice.

I forgot to mention that we also ran a gas line for the BBQ, not for cost savings, purely for convenience.

I spent 40 years in Alberta, a province rich in hydrocarbons so to be perfectly honest my reasoning for switching to NG was to support “local” industry.

Good luck with your journey to reduce energy cost.

My stove would require about 15 feet of gas pipe, run under the kitchen counters and through or under the cabinets. The dryer is on a common wall with the utility room and would need about 6 feet on gas pipe. Both doable. We will be doing the kitchen over at some point anyway. It is a little 1970's dated and we need to get that fixed. The NG for a grill or tri-fuel inverter/gen is also an upgrade option I am considering as well.

 

[Burnin Since 1991]

I getting a better idea of your scope. Separate energy efficiency upgrades, emergency backup, and comfort/usability improvements.

Your budget won’t support everything all at once and you know this.

Whole home automatic backup is a luxury, unless your have medical equipment that you rely on that needs Unless going solar and getting a utility incentive to install a battery backup. I’ve done very little research but something modular like this EcoFlow would be at the top of my list. https://us.ecoflow.com/products/delta-pro-ultra

I'm going to have to look into the ecoflow system a bit more. I gave it a cursory look and it's interesting. I'm even wondering if it's feasible to take part of a home off the grid using something like that? Say to do all your lighting?

And no medical equipment to run. Not sure what the future will bring...

One other point of concern. I tend to burn myself out trying to do projects like this if I get overwhelmed. That's why I've broken it down in chunks.

All the points you (all of you) bring up I am noting in my project notes on my computer for implementation or consideration and further research. The plan is to have phase 1, points 1-7 implemented by June 1. I am giving myself extra time as I have other projects also in the works.

I am working on phase 2 based upon available funding, feedback and evaluating the project as it's implemented.