Toeing the Power Line
Hey, you skeptical, conspiracy-minded California consumer, you! Is your refrigerator running? Better go catch it then--or at least try slowing it down. Maybe even consider replacing it with a more efficient Energy Star model.
Also look at your VCR, PC, hot water heater, clothes dryer, hot tub, water bed, aquarium, swimming pool, imported Italian espresso maker and thermostat, which you’re probably keeping at a frostbite-inducing 72 degrees during these brutal months you call “winter” and those of us from the Northeast refer to as “summer minus the smog alerts.” (And they say Californians don’t know the meaning of sacrifice.) Oh, and don’t forget to unplug that 53-inch monster TV your kids persuaded you to buy this Christmas so the whole family could bond while watching “Rugrats.”
No, this isn’t the script for a prank phone call. It’s some simple advice on how to handle California’s rapidly escalating power crisis by curbing your kilowatt appetite, upgrading your appliances and avoiding energy “leaks” from those indispensable kitchen thingamajigs and “home entertainment” centers that resemble the monolith in “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
These and other “hidden” power costs could be short-circuiting your family’s energy budget more than you realize. But you’ll probably realize it soon. As the state’s cash-strapped utilities beg for relief and Gov. Gray Davis rants at out-of-state suppliers while exhorting the citizenry to cut personal consumption by 7%, one ugly truth looms large: Your utility bill likely will be going up, no matter what happens in Sacramento or Washington.
A recent Los Angeles Times Poll taken before last week’s rolling blackouts indicated that more than half those surveyed don’t believe a power shortage really exists, with many blaming the current crisis on corporate “greed” and political shell games. But whatever your quotient of cynicism, we have a problem, Houston. As spot blackouts continue, relatively small increments of power could decide whether your house goes dark.
“In the case of the San Francisco blackout, something on the order of 100 megawatts would’ve made the difference,” says Steven Nadel, deputy director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, referring to one recent outage. “Clearly, we need bigger efforts as well. But those little things that people do can help.”
The good news is that you can significantly reduce your home energy costs without having to live like Arctic nomads. “It’s not just changing rates that can lower your bills, it’s also changing usage,” says James Cavallo, associate editor of Home Energy magazine and an economics instructor at Roosevelt University in Chicago.
In fact, the best way to motivate suspicious Californians to conserve may not necessarily be flag-waving appeals to save the planet but pitches aimed straight at the wallet.
“There’s always an energy crisis, but to the American mind it’s always a pocketbook crisis,” says Lisa Matsuura Walker, who manages the Real Goods store in West Los Angeles, which sells renewable energy products. “There are people who stumble in saying, ‘How do I cut back on energy consumption?’ Well, that depends on how many kids you have playing Nintendo and whether you have the most inefficient refrigerator in town that was handed down by your grandmother.”
Basically, experts say, you’ve got 2 1/2 options for helping to keep your energy bills low and your porch lights on in the coming months: cut back on high energy-use activities; invest in more energy-efficient appliances and home technology; or adopt some combination of the two measures that meets your budget and lifestyle needs.
The first strategy costs little or nothing but could require altering your habits or investing a bit of upfront time and effort. Many of these ideas derive from the standard eco-gospel that dates from the 1973 OPEC oil crunch. These energy-saving tips have been hard-wired onto our brains like the Pledge of Allegiance: Take shorter showers; switch off little-used TVs and VCRs; run your dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer only when they’re full--preferably during off-peak hours; lower your thermostat; install low-flow shower heads; block off any chimneys not in use; turn off lights in unoccupied rooms; seal drafty doors and windows with weather stripping and caulk; seal and insulate ducts in attics and crawl spaces.
If all else fails, remember the First Commandment of Home Energy-Saving: Thou Shalt Wear an Extra Sweater.
The second approach to home energy conservation requires spending a bit of money in the expectation of recouping your investment over time. One simple step is replacing high-use incandescent lights (say, in kitchens and family rooms) with compact fluorescent lamps, which use less energy. Costing about $25 apiece, CFLs can fit into standard light fixtures and have average life expectancies of 6,000 hours, up to 10 times that of incandescents.
Among the biggest home-energy gorgers are refrigerators, which can consume more than your entire lighting system. If your refrigerator is nearing the end of its 15- to 20-year life cycle, Cavallo recommends replacing it with one that has received the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star certification. The Energy Star label, which also can be found on certain models of clothes washers, dishwashers and air conditioners, indicates that an appliance performs above federal energy efficiency standards, typically somewhere between 10% and 30% higher.
Though they generally cost more than ordinary appliances, Energy Star models make up the difference through lower electricity bills over the product’s lifetime, advocates say. By reducing the need to generate power, they also ultimately reduce greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide) emissions.
A few years ago, Energy Star added small appliances and household electronics such as VCRs, TVs and DVD players to its ratings guides, which can be accessed on the Energy Star Web site (https://www.energystar.gov). According to the Web site, Americans spend $3 billion a year to power home electronics that appear to be turned “off,” but are equipped with “instant-on” technology that silently saps electricity. Instead of taking a few seconds to warm up vacuum tubes, as in the past, much of modern circuit-board technology is always “live,” ready to respond at the flick of a remote control. Many consumers won’t know they’re “leaking” power this way until their electricity bill shows up.
“If you turn off everything you think you can in your house, then go out and look at your electric meter, you’ll see that it’s usually spinning, even if you unplug your refrigerator and all the other things you think you might be using,” Cavallo says.
At Real Goods, shoppers browse through hundreds of renewable energy products, from rechargeable batteries and organic cotton clothing to shiny new hand-cranked cornmeal grinders, solar panels, wood-fired water heaters, Swedish composting toilets and a $249 Sun Oven that can cook up a meal when positioned in your garden’s “high noon” spot.
While still the exception, renewable energy technology is increasingly being incorporated into new home design and construction. Some states, including California, offer rebates of varying amounts to homeowners and businesses that install photovoltaic (solar electric) and other renewable-energy devices.
However, energy-efficient home building is still in its infancy, says Steven Nadel, deputy director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “The homes built today are a lot more efficient than the homes built 10 years ago, but it’s a slow process, and it’s incomplete.”
That didn’t discourage Real Goods shopper Danielle Lebis from stocking up on more solar paneling for her off-the-grid home in Pioneer Town, a community north of Palm Springs. Though energy self-reliance is rare in urban settings, Lebis says it’s standard practice with many of her neighbors in the rugged high desert. By gradually retrofitting their 1,000-square-foot home and two small guest houses with a gas-heated water system, solar paneling and other eco-friendly amenities, Lebis and her husband have brought a touch of homesteader chic to their abode. They’re planning to add a greenhouse and a hot tub, both powered with renewable energy, of course.
“In the high desert the people are more like us, not the Rockefellers,” says Lebis, a native of Aix-en-Provence in southern France. “At the same time, guess what? You help the system, too, because you don’t suck up all the hot water.”
Another Real Goods shopper, Vicki Tamoush, a Tujunga resident and state deputy labor commissioner, isn’t living as self-sufficiently as Lebis, not yet anyway. But after moving into a rustic old house off a dirt road in the San Gabriel Mountains last month, she and her fiance, Jess McLeod, recently ordered a wood-burning stove and are planning to convert their home from electricity to wind-powered energy.
On clear days, the couple can see from the Los Angeles Basin south to Orange County, a view they intend to make available to friends, relatives and even passing trail hikers, whom they sometimes ask in for coffee. They regard conserving energy as part of a sociable lifestyle, a means of connecting both with the planet and those who inhabit it.
“I keep thinking of this quote. I think it’s from Wordsworth: ‘The world is too much with us; late and soon, / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours,’ ” Tamoush says. “We decided if we were able to wind up with this home, we’d share it with everybody.”
Ah, yes, sharing. A powerful concept, worth renewing.
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How a Household Consumes Electricity
Every home uses power differently, but a typical home in Southern California uses about 7,000 kilowatt hours of power a year. Over the course of a year, here’s where the power goes:
* Refrigerator: About 1,000 kilowatt hours; 20% of homes have a second, often even less-efficient unit.
* Lighting: About 400 to 2,000 kilowatt hours in lights, lamps, etc.
* Electric water heater: Up to 3,000 kilowatt hours. For the 10% of users who have an electric heater, it’s a big draw.
* Dishwasher: About 400 to 500 kilowatt hours. Preheating water, using dryer among variables.
* Washing machine: About 200 kilowatt hours--not counting the hot water.
* Clothes dryer: 500 to 800 kilowatt hours. Motor and heating element. Variables include how damp clothes are when they go in; if the spin cycle on the washer does a good job, clothes will dry faster.
* Microwave: About 50 kilowatt hours. Uses much less power than an electric oven/stove.
* Electric stove: About 600 to 800 kilowatt hours.
* Swimming pool pump: About 4,000 kilowatt hours to circulate and filter water.
* Hot tub: About 2,000 to 5,000 kilowatt hours. About 15% of homes have one.
* Aquarium: About 1,000 kilowatt hours for a mid-size unit, with heater and lights.
* Water bed heater: 600 to 1,000 kilowatt hours.
* Air-conditioner: From 1,000 to 5,000 kilowatt hours. An adjustment up or down of a few degrees has a big impact.
* Air cleaner: About 800 kilowatt hours. The free-standing air filtering systems in 10% to 15% of homes usually run continuously.
* TV/VCR setup: As much as 1,000 kilowatt hours. A typical TV uses about 250 kilowatt hours, but many homes have duplicate sets, VCRs and cable boxes.
* Home office: About 1,000 kilowatt hours. Desktop computer, monitor, speakers, modem and printer all need juice. A laptop computer uses just 10% of the power of a desktop.
Source: Alan Meier, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
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7 Percent Solution
Californians are being asked to use 7% less electricity to help mitigate the energy crisis. If your household uses a typical 7,000 kilowatt hours of power a year, you’re looking at trying to save 500 kilowatt hours. While every bit helps, you’ll have a hard time saving that amount just turning off lights. If you have an older major appliance--refrigerator, dishwasher, washing machine or dryer--that you replace with a new, energy-efficient model, you can save as much as 500 kilowatt hours in one move.
Standing By
Standby power consumption--the power that an increasing number of appliances use even when they are turned off--accounts for as much as 10% of a household’s energy use, a study at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found. Cable boxes, alarms, plug-in chargers, computers and microwave ovens are among the household items that quietly eat electricity when not in use. A microwave oven can use as much power in a year in standby mode as it does in actual use.
Say Watt?
The basic unit of electric, mechanical or thermal power, the watt was named in 1769 for James Watt, inventor of the steam condensing engine.
Kilowatt: 1,000 watts, enough electricity to light 10 100-watt lightbulbs.
Kilowatt-hour: Electrical energy supplied at a rate of 1,000 watts for 1 hour. The amount of electricity consumed to light 10 100-watt lightbulbs for one hour. The average Cali-
fornia home consumes between 550 and 600 kilowatt-hours per month. This figure is listed on your electricity bill.
Megawatt: A million watts, or 1,000 kilowatts. Enough energy to power about 1,000 average California homes at any given time.
For more information, visit the California Energy Commission Web site home page at https://www.energy.ca.gov. For a glossary of terms, visit https://www.energy.ca.gov/glossary. A kids’ Web site is available at www.energy.ca.gov/education.
