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Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A tech columnist looked around his home and wondered, 'All these TVs and cable boxes and computers and computer gear and chargers for various adapters have to be sucking up a lot of power, right?' So WSJ.com's Jason Fry bought a power meter to find the biggest power hogs in his home. They weren't his newfangled gadgets: 'The heavily used agglomeration of PC / two monitors / printer / hard drive / speakers in my downstairs study costs a bit more than $10 a month. The PC in our bedroom costs about $6 a month. The upstairs laptop? Less than $1 — a bit more than other always-on gadgets such as the router, cable modem, wireless repeater and Airport Express. So what were our apartment's power hogs? The lights and the dryer. I estimate our lights cost us around $30 a month, nearly a third of that from a chandelier with eight bulbs. Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"
If he hung his wet laundry on that chandelier's hot bulbs, he could save $25 a month.
--
make install -not war
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
He should use CF and hang-dry more clothing.
He owns a PC and a hard drive. The Wall Street Journal must be paying rather well, nowadays.
Time to get those compact fluorescents. I have them in all but a few of the sockets in my house, and I estimate they save me big $$ given how much we have the lights on (there's almost always someone home, and I'm a night owl).
the Dryer charges you!
Change them to fluorescent lamps. Dismiss the dryer. Shut of the computer in the basement and help save the frickin world.
a great reason to invest in energy saving lightbulbs i would think.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
Power usage percentages have long been known, and is a very simple search away. This article adds absolutely nothing of interest to the equation.
And the author's contention that gadgets don't deserve the blame for increasing power usage is dubious -- yes, lights, fridges and dryers consume a lot of power, and they have for years. Yet while they're getting better, we're offsetting their improvements by 200W sucking PVRs that are on 24 hours a day, PCs that are on throughout the day, massive power sucking plasma screens, etc.
As an aside, energy conservation articles always mention that reduced heat = less air conditioning. Yet to be fair it should be mentioned that power hogs do help in heating the home.
So how did you reach the estimate of what your dryer or lights use?
RTFA I guess. But why is he thinking about switching rather than switching? Each month he waits, that's enough money to buy a few compact fluorescents. After a year, most of his house will be switched over.
Did this surprise him in some way ? Did he really think a PC could compete with a dryer for top energy usage ?
This isn't a suprise at all. Residential energy use is well documented in the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The DOE runs these once every 4 or 5 years. Heating > A/C > Lights/Fridge/Cook/Clothes > gadgets.
Things might change as people consume their 8h/day TV on 60" plasma space heaters.
I'm about done with replacing the light bulbs (that I can) from incandescent to fluorescent, but we have a smaller chandelier that's hooked up to a dimmer. I generally keep it at 75% of full power. The light bulbs also last longer because (hearsay warning!) apparently, the fact that the lights don't flip on/off immediately helps the bulbs not burn out as quickly.
Anyways, somewhat on topic, I hear that in California all new development and remodeling requires fluorescent lighting. Is that true?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I fail to see this article's relevance to the Slashdot userbase. Being nocturnal, underground dwellers we have no need of light other than the soft glow of our displays and diagnostics. As for the rest of our energy needs, we tap into the power grid of the mysterious beings that dwell above us. They provide us with nourishment and also manage the laundry.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Well, that $25/month that you pay to run your dryer (even less if you spend a little more upfront and get a gas model) is just about a wash in the long run as compared to the $1.50/load that it would cost at a laundromat. We used to spend $40/month on quarters for laundry. About two-thirds of that was for drying and the rest for washing.
But yeah, those multi-bulb units will really kill you. Once you realize how much it costs per month to operate a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, that's the real incentive for switching to compact fluorescent wherever you can (slow startup-time and all).
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
Wasn't there an attempt to force a label on every appliance saying "this device will cost you $x.xx per month if it's kept running" or some such? Can't remember. That would definitely make a lot of sense.
On the other hand, as long as everybody I know never turns off the light in their office I don't expect them to do that at home either. That tells me that energy is still far too cheap.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
He also failed to give real numbers and total things up. Sure, maybe the electric clothes dryer is an energy hog as compared to say the a computer. But it does not let us know if the dryer is twice as bad as a computer, 10x, or 100x. If you have say 3 computers up and running constantly, then it still makes sense to unplug them instead of 'the energy hog' dryer, if the dryer only uses up twice the power of a single computer. I would have loved to know relative strengths, such as 1 electric stove = 7 laptops.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's old news, but it's still good news. After my utilities went up for the holidays, I decided to do some cutting back... I try to keep my main PC in hibernate when I'm not around now, I can spare 10 seconds for it to start up. And I replaced my rackmount dual p3-700 server with a laptop in a docking station, and an external HD. Sure, it's a bit slower, but the power usage is a lot less. Now if I could just find a way to properly heat my reptiles without using heating lamps (undertank heaters aren't an option) I'd be set.
Also, the upside of having dozens of gizmos around is that you don't need to use regular lights... all the LEDs provide all the illumination I need.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
You have to be perpetually asleep to not have realized this already. Light bulbs have a wattage rating right on them. So does practically everything else except for a clone PC, whose wattage rating is on a sticker inside the case (on the power supply.)
An electric dryer draws about 4 kW (heating element, blower, motor) while a gas dryer pulls about 400-500W (for the blower and the motor.) Any asshole could look this up with google... except the one who wrote this article.
It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to realize that a PC with a peak draw of, say, 500W is going to consume less power than a chandelier with 8 light bulbs on it. Even at 40W each that's 320W, which is a fair amount of juice.
But seriously, you have to be some kind of idiot not to know that an electric clothes dryer is consuming more power than anything else in your house (when running) save possibly the water heater. After the dryer and the water heater (which could have anything from about a 10 amp (1200 watt) to a 30 amp (3600 watt) heating element) the next thing is either an electric heater (usually at least 1000 watts; I have one of those portable oil-filled electric radiators and it's 700 or 1500W) or in the absence of an electric heater, the refrigerator, which draws about 500 watts. 1 kW = 1.34 horsepower. The electric motor turning the AC compressor is probably about 80% efficient. That's .5 kW = .67 * 0.8 = about .53 horsepower. (Fun with math, whee.) For comparison your car's AC compressor takes 3 to 5 HP to run. Er, I should mention your home air conditioning will, of course, consume more power than your fridge, but less than an electric heater.
Want to reduce power consumption? Unfortunately most people blow it when they build their house and nearly all commercial home builders blow it too; orienting your house in the proper direction and building overhangs and windows to match one another so that you get sun in the winter and not in the summer is one of the most important steps. Going big on insulation is another. Using solar preheat for your hot water and installing a water heater blanket will do a lot more than you think. I'm about to move into a rental house that's designed with all of these principles in mind (Except that the solar water preheat is out of commission right now) plus it uses a just-in-time propane hot water heater that saves you from having to keep water hot when you're not using it. We expect to save a bundle on both gas and electricity.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Amazing that a WSJ columnist could be so clueless.
The energy hogs in the home have always been major appliances. Duh.
I wonder how long this guy has had to pay utility bills.
By not having your house lit up like the Griswolds' place. It might also reduce the requirement for another Power Station somewhere.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Our dryer died one day, and since it did not belong to us (it belonged to the landlord; he did not want to fix it; long story), we just left it there and started hanging our clothes instead. We were a little irritated by the inconvenice at first, but after that first electric bill we were sold. $25/mo less per month. I made sure to compare all the transmission/generation charges just to be sure it was all from the dryer.
Now this was in 2003. We've noticed that the generation charge has been going up, so that, compared to 2003, we are paying roughly $10 more a month for the same number of kWh (roughly 180 kWh/mo). So you'll even save a bit more now.
Anyhow, that prompted us to walk around and replace all of our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, and so on (saving us another $10/mo). Considering that none of these bulb have died (save the one that our landlord dropped), I think the $40 or so we put into bulbs has paid us back quite a bit.
I did the same experiment with the power meter. I was quite surprised to discover that under normal load, my Soekris router consumed less than 1W. Very cool. The same can't be said about the laser printer (LaserJet 4M Plus), though. 700W peak, ~30W at idle. We leave that one off most of the time.
I live in Bellevue, Washington, a large suburb between Seattle & Redmond (the land of Evil).
0 03482933_stormmainbar18m.html
Almost the entire city, plus the environs, has been without power for the past 4
days.
Ref:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2
Thus we are major leaders in energy savings!
That's better than a 26% per year ROI. The 100 Watt equivalents are about than $2.70 each when purchased in 3 packs at Walmart. I replaced every bulb that didn't have an occlusion due to a light fixture (about 30) in my home for around $80.
It's a better investment than the stock market any day.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
I found my furnance used the most energy, even more than the dryer. Got my fingers burnt trying to get the vom leads in there.
The author must have measured outside the summer/winter months, or have non-electric climate control.
In the southern USA, summer electric bills are very high.
In buildings with electric heat, winter heating bills can also be high. It's like a clothes dryer or oven only with many more hours per month usage.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
News flash -- any 220V appliance (water heater, range, furnace) draws more juice than the other stuff. One of the reasons these things are put on higher voltage is so they draw fewer amps.
Other hogs include anything that radiates a large amount of heat or has a compressor. Note that the purpose of such devices is typically to create or transfer heat (as in the case of a freezer). Anyone who needs a power meter to discover that the battery charger consumes less electricity than one of these appliances is a bit of a low Watt bulb.
but just a moment of reflection should tell you that yes, anything that generates heat is going to be a huge draw of power. one can directly express heat power in Watts; yes, the same watts used to express electrical power.
electric heaters are usually 1500 watts. light bulbs from 60 to 100 watts. appliance motors in the home are around 1/4 to 1/2 horsepower (1 horsepower ~= 746 watts).
let's keep this in terms of heat for a second. in case you're wondering what uses more power -- your hair dryer or wireless router, you can do this simple test. put your hand on the hair dryer -- in just a few seconds, it will burn. perhaps a 1st degree burn. now, put your hand on your wireless router. warm, but not burn. in fact, it might feel cozy depending on your clime. therefore, i give to you the severity of the burn is proportional to how much electricity a device is using.
another indication is the size of the power cable something uses.
i dunno. i thought every self-respecting nerd had a handle on basic home power and loading.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
I have never blamed the gadgets in my house for the rise in electrical consumption. I have a teenager that watches way too much television. If he isn't watching TV he's on the Computer. How have I compensated for this? Well for the dual screen PC, turn one off screen while playing a game, it burns power and doesn't get looked at anyways. Buy LCD Screens they save power. Turn off the TV while playing on the computer, I can not count the number of times the TV was on while playing on the computer. Change all the light bulbs for low watt bulbs. Some basic common sence goes a long long ways.
I've spent time thinking about this recently.
Assuming that you're spending money heating your house in the winter, isn't it effectively impossible to "waste" electricity? Any electricity you consume is going to end up as heat (minus an irrelevant amount as light and kinetic energy), which you want anyway.
Of course, if your main heat source is not electricity (e.g. gas), electricity might be slightly more expensive. But I think the basic idea holds.
Your dryer, which uses a big 3 to 4 pronged monstrosity of a power cable didn't strike you as an obvious one of the most power hungry devices in your home? You though it might be the thing that plugs into a 150W 12V DC adapter instead?
The Moxi cable box from Charter is always on - theres literally no off switch. The power button on the remote only controls the TV. Its bizarre - why have the box site there and decode HD all day rather than sleep? T least my old DirectTV Tivo had a standby mode. What a big waste of electricity. I wonder how much that costs me every month?
I was going to comment on CFLs, but the article already did. (That'll teach me to read the article, huh?)
But aside from more energy-efficient appliances (and lights), I really do have to wonder how much energy could be saved by just hooking up rooms to motion detectors.
I'm in my 30s, and growing up I often heard my Dad complain about rooms with the lights left on. Lately, I've been seeing advertisements from my power company about energy savings from turning off ceiling fans in rooms when no one is there.
How much energy does a motion detector use? They are generally passive IR, aren't they? Would it be offset by the gains from hooking the lights and ceiling fans into it? CFLs are great (I've replaced most of the incandescents in my house already, the rest as the little-used ones burn out eventually) but you save more by not having the lights on at all. If the lights came on automatically when I walked into a room, and turned off automatically 2 minutes after I walked out (to reduce needless quick on-off cycles) that would be both convenient and efficient... wouldn't it?
Just wondering...
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Energy Star Appliances...
CF Replacement Bulbs
Gas Dryer
Those three things will annihilate your electric bill.
Examples:
We recently replaced our twenty year old 15 cf* fridge with a 20cf energy start. Power usage went from 1500kwh/year to 425kwh/year. And the old fridge had new seals, was kept away from the stove, vents, and all that. Insane how much we've saved. Sure, it costs $450 plus delivery - but as long as you don't put it on a butt-raping credit card, your fridge will pay for itself in less than five years.
Same goes with electric appliances that heat or dry things. electricity is ten times less efficient than natural gas. So do everything you can to convert your dryer and stove to some form of gas. It'll pay for itself very quickly.
*cubic foot, I'm a lazy American who will not provide metric conversions. Sorry. Not really.
We *know* what the big power hogs are: anything that does heating or cooling. Air conditioning, stove (oven and range), clothes dryer, and any other electric heating or cooling devices you may have (e.g., space heaters).
Note that fans don't count as "cooling", because all they really do is move air around, which is rather easier. So even a really *big* CPU fan, although we call it a cooling device in IT, does not suck down power like an air conditioner or space heater would do.
After heating and cooling, the lights are often the next-biggest power hog, but they're still small potatoes compared to heating and cooling.
You want to save power? Put in better insulation, and set your thermostats to a wider temperature range (e.g., only heat to 60 instead of 70 in the winter, and cool to 80 instead of 70 in the summer). And if the area room with the heater is warmer than the rest of the house, put in a better fan to improve distribution. Fans are cheap to run, compared to the heater itself, and *much* cheaper than space heaters.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I agree that the clothes dryer has the highest energy consumption in the house... but luckily I have a high efficiency dryer. It uses half the amount of energy that a normal drier uses! Here is the scoop on how the awesome technology works:
You have a knob that controls the timing for your dryer. The old energy inefficent dryers used to to have the knob labeled so that it had one normal cycle - Dry. But then they decided to relabel the knob to that there is TWO cycles painted above the knob: 50% of the arch is labeled "Dry", and 50% labeled "Super Dry". By relabeling the normal dry cycle to now be TWO cycles, the normal dry cycle now uses 50% as much energy! BRILLIANT!!!
Change the knob label, and I am sure the company got a big fat government subsidy or something for making the dryer "energy effiecient". Awesome!
Don't mod this funny, because unfortunatly I am not joking!
I just saw a Mythbusters this weekend where they challenged the "myth" that you save money by leaving the lights on rather than turning them off.
They busted that myth wide open. They found that the energy it takes to start up the lightbulb is infinitesimal for all but the fluorescent bulbs, and the fluorescent loses any savings after only 23 seconds (i.e. if you are out of the room for more than 23 seconds, you are wasting money). Basically, it took very little power to start up the bulb, despite what the myth proclaims.
They also did a stress test of an equivalent of 5 years of turning the lights on and off. Even with an incandescant light bulb, the light bulbs all lasted long enough that any savings on "not stressing out the bulb" the bulb itself was negated by the power used to keep the bulb lit.
In short, if you are leaving the room for any length of time and have anything but flurescent lights, you'll save money by turning it off as you leave the room. If you use fluorescent, it's okay to leave them on if you just want to grab a drink or go take a piss, but anything more than 23 seconds will waste money.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
First, a dryer is in a class of it's own. It will suck electricity, but only when it is being used. Same things with lights. And both are very deterministic. If they are not being used, they will not use electricity. And often these things are not, in fact, being used. This is different from a cable box or stereo which often cannot be turned completely off, and goes into various modes that use various levels of electricity.
Second, for most people the biggest energy use is the heating and cooling, and the most dramatic gains in saving can come from reducing the need to heat and cool. So, if you move to cool fluorescent bulbs, you not only save by reducing the energy to run the bulbs, but also the energy needed to remove the heat of the bulbs. This applies to some electronics as well. The electronics are very efficient heat generators, basically converting much of the power directly to heat, which then needs to be removed. When it cold, this is a good thing, but not when it is hot.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So you do not know how many watts your dryer is, yet take the liberty to 'estimate' the $25 figure.
I would start with reading the wattage close to the handle.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
he doesnt have a 30" Inch LCD screen as his computer monitor and a dual-core GeForce 7900 GTX with 512 MB RAM and a 7.1 Surround Sound System.
All the electricity these gadgets consume is turned into heat, so in the cold season, they are completely free. Every watt they use results in one watt less used to heat the house.
The same goes for lightbulbs and any other electric appliance except the ones that heat the outside (like the clothes drier)
On the other hand, if you run the A/C for a long time in the summer, you pay twice for the electricity these gadgets use. First when the gadget turns it into heat, secondly when the A/C pumps the heat out of the house.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Otherwise you get screwed, and not in bed, and you end up doing all the chores!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Incandescent bulbs are most efficient running at full power. You will get much more light from a 75 W bulb running at 75 watts than from a 100 W bulb running at 75 W. It is highly nonlinear, third or fourth power of temperature, I forget which.
It is true that they will last better with the soft start. The filament resistance is low at turn on so there is a surge, and the magnetic forces on the filament help to tear it apart. Remember hearing that "ping" as you turn them on? Especially in the first spell of cold weather each winter.
I live in CA and work in construction. We did a remodel last year, and they required flourescent lighting in the kitchen, laundry room, and garage. The bedrooms required dimmer switches, with no apparent restriction on the type of light used (one of the rooms had a halogen fixture). The bathrooms and a second, incandescent fixture in the laundry room needed to have motion-sensing switches installed.
I don't know which of these are mandated by the NEC (federal), state or county regulations, though I know being in CA, we have some of the more stringent requirements.
I thought it was ridiculous that even if you just had to run into the bathroom to blow your nose, the light was going to be on for five minutes. Not to mention it shuts off when you're in the middle of taking a number two. The current motion-sensing switches are impractical in that it's hard to find a happy medium. If it were my house, I'd either set it to max time, or, more likely, change it to a traditional switch as soon as we passed final inspection. I can save energy on my own, and better; but thanks anyway, government.
I wonder how long he estimated he left his lights on and how long they actually were on. On anouther note I would have thought that an always on device like the fridge would have ranked alot higher on the cost range. I mean I can go weeks without washing my cloths, my friends stay away but sometimes thats a plus. The fridge on the other hand is always plugged in and doing something even if its not cooling. I also wonder if he included the light in the fridge as part of his math for lighting. Lord knows that things always on...
Jason Fry apparently concludes from his research that the power used by computers isn't that much. But I think that's the wrong conclusion! His two PCs use $16 worth of electricity a month, compared to $30 worth for the lights.
To me, that's a LOT of electricity used by the PCs. I start from the premise that lighting uses a lot of electricity (common sense?)... and the fact that the computers use half that much is surprisingly large. I would be happier if my always-on PC used maybe 5% as much energy as the lighting in my house.
My bicyles
not completely free, many of us use natural gas for our furnaces, for those with electrical furnaces however you're spot on. With methane, you're merely shifting the cost somewhere else, whether or not it is meaninfully cheaper remains to be seen.
I live in a farmhouse in rural Ontario Canada. Gas heating is not an option, and oil delivery is likely not possible to an area this remote. To give you an idea, my only acceptable Internet service option is a Tachyon dish setup.
Heating the house with electricity adds $400/month to the electricity bill in the winter. But... I can buy a full cord of firewood here for $30 (or chop it myself for free on my land). Burning one cord of wood per month in a high efficiency wood stove cuts the power bill by about $225/month.
Compared to heating, all other electricity costs are minimal. Which is a good thing probably - 11 computers, 3 always on.
I'm always looking to conserve energy, without giving up too much comfort. All lamps in my house are fluorescent lamps, except my desk lamp, which is a halogen lamp. I use brooms rather than vacuum cleaners when I have the chance (not just because of the energy usage, but also for the noise). I retired my CRTs and replaced them with TFTs as soon as the latter became affordable. My PC is built around a fanless VIA EPIA motherboard, all pretty low power. The only moving parts in the computer are the PSU fan and the harddisk. I will soon move most of my files to a flash card, leaving the hard disk for large and infrequently accessed files. I don't drive a car (although I might drive a car or motorcycle in the near future; I would fit it to run on vegetable oil). There is no air conditioner in my house, and I use heating very infrequently.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
During the winter months, I like to leave my laptop running on A/C at night. I get the convenience of not having to wait for it to boot up in the morning, Windows update runs, and I figure it helps with the heating in some infinitesimal ammount. My apartment is all-electric, so the heater and the A/C is probably the number one consumer. It's a small place with a fully enclosed washer/dryer. When I dry clothes, I turn the heaters off because the warm air from the dryer is filtered back into the apartment. The dryer is a fancy heater, but it only runs a little bit each week. The heaters run all night. From a thermodynamic perspective though, everything is just a fancy heater.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I used to be cheap, and a cheap student at that. Here in Ireland we are charged through the nose for electricity. Being in college, I need my laptop and my home pc, and when I moved out, I thought two things, a) I would freeze, b) be toasty warm with no computing power bar my calculator. But choose a... I'm still here, my lovely pc kept me warm. Nearly every watt of computer power is converted to heat. Thus you get the heating and the power you need. Get a dodgy made power supply and it could be pumping out that heat all day and night long!
One shouldn't confuse consumption with waste, he's talking about total consumption here. A dryer running constantly with no clothes in it is wasted power. Yet no one sensible would do that.
Most newer computers can ramp down power consumption when not in use, but they're still using some power. Lights left on when no one around is wasted energy (and bulbs), just as a computer running at full tilt with no one around is usually wasted. But if you're google using however many thousands of computers that they are running constantly isn't a waste.
Wasted power are things you don't see any benefit from. Yes, I could air dry all my clothes, though I live in canada, so 6 (now thanks to global warming 4) months of the year I could air freeze my clothes. So a dryer is an inefficient use of power at least part of the year but it isn't wasted as such. Leaving the refrigerator open 24/7 is wasting power. Running the dryer 20 minutes longer to make sure your clothes are extra dry is wasting power. Leaving a computer running full bore when no one is using it is wasting power. Inefficient power use is when you don't insulate your house (or open air it depending on your climate and house) but they obviously don't work for everyone. Incandescent bulbs are inefficient in terms of power, but total cost of ownership is harder to quantify. I find fluorescents burn out as fast or faster than regular ones, and the fluorescents cost more, that may be a matter of tolerance to humidity, electrical fluctuations and air temperature but I don't know. It would be nice to reduce power consumption but not if it costs me 30 or 40 bucks a month in replacement bulbs to save 10 bucks on my power bill.
I've got a solution for you... put the dual P3-700's back in the rack. Now, add rails to the reptiles' cages. Then, rack-mount the reptiles underneath the P3's. Then, as you said, you're set!
I have a lot of this stuff in my house too and my electric bill is NEVER that expense - he's racked up like $80 there - my bill is usually like $15 ....
calling all destroyers
After moving to Japan, I had to learn to do laundry the Japanese way. Even though we have a washer and dryer, it is customary to air dry our clothes. The more I stopped using the dryer, the more it made sense. Why use an electric appliance to dry something when it will dry its self? We still have a dryer just in case we need something dried quickly, but by and large, dryers are a waste.
www.americanjapan.com
In other words, we're talking over $200 a year just to power electronic gizmos. They may not be the biggest consumers of electricity, but that still adds up and he could save a lot by turning them off when he doesn't need them. Heck, I have a 3 bedroom house and pay about $60/mo for electricity (higher in the winter, lower in the summer). Sounds like he pays more for a much smaller place.
Two nitpicks: Does the power meter he used properly measure inductive loads as the common switching power supplies appear as, especially when they are in trickle mode? And did he account for the useful heat produced by the devices in the cool parts of the year (not that they would be as efficient as a heat pump)? Obviously I didn't RTFA.
The hierarchy of power consumption is:
- Electric heating (resistive heating: Driers, room heaters, heating appliances.)
- Motors
- Lighting
- Consumer electronics.
Electric heating (by resisitance heaters) consumes an ENORMOUS amount of power.
Switching from electric to gas drying (so the electric load is just the motor) will cause a big savings in the electric bill, while the gas bill won't go up anywhere neer enough to compensate. Ditto (even more so) if the house has electric heat.
Same is true of the other heating appliances (hair driers, toasters, stoves and ovens, etc.) But (except for ovens if you do a LOT of baking) they tend to only run a short time so it doesn't make all THAT much difference on your bill.
Motors are the next big load. Air conditioners are the worst, due to the heat pump. But moving anything around (even air) is costly. One horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 KW (and motors can be very efficient - 80s to 90s percent - but they're still not lossless). (Nevertheless, using a heat-pump for HEATING - especially if the weather outside is above freezing or so - uses a lot less power than resistive heating. But except for merely cool days it's still more expensive than gas.)
Lighting is next. Incandescents are especially hot heaters, and the light is the visible part of the hot-wire glow. Much more is heat. Switch to fluorescents (compact or otherwise) and you get about four times as much light per watt. (LEDs may beat that in a few years but right now they're trailing fluorescents.)
Consumer electronics is 'way down there - because it's improved a lot and because there has been serious effort to increase its efficiency and reduce its losses - as well as to reduce localized heating of the components. (When I got my first linux box it was a good space heater - and most of that was the disk drive. Nowdays things take a LOT less power.) With cheap semiconductors modern power supplies are now highly-efficient switching-mode devices, which also helps a lot.
(Other appliances have also been re-engineered for efficiency, so switching to a modern large appliance may save you significant power and/or fuel. But electronics has had a much bigger improvement.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If he hung his wet laundry on that chandelier's hot bulbs, he could save $25 a month.
...
But, if he just hung up his laundry on the bathtub wall when it was damp when he went to work, and popped it back in the dryer later, he would save even more, and not need the fancy humidifier
Seriously, though, I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically, and saved me tons of cash. And they make compact flourescents that work in chandelier bulbs and don't look ugly now - just go to Home Depot and look.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Dryers are a huge waste of energy, if you have a yard. Clotheslines have largely gone out of fashion in the US--in part because it takes a few minutes to hang up and take down clothes. But they save quite a bit in energy costs, and the clothes smell better and are bouncier after hanging outdoors. (Usually.) A dryer uses 1800-5000 watts, according to the DOE. According to a study pulled up in a second (check median loads of laundry on google) call it 0.96 loads a day. That's 350 loads a year. Assume the same number of dryer loads. Time to dry varies, figure 45 minutes at the middle of the power usage range, that's 3264 watts a day, 1,191,360 watt-hours a year for the dryer.
I was once told by a roommate my shiny Opteron(tm) box ran up the electric bill $50 a month. That increase, of course, had nothing to do with the fact that I moved in about a week before two ancient and massive air conditioners were installed for the summer, oh, no.
Having since moved elsewhere, I noted with amusement this fall that my own electric bill dropped around $40 after the removal of my air conditioners. (Which, mind you, were more 'efficient' than the former roommate's.)
People have no clue, mainly due to idiots spouting, "LOL ENVIRONMENT COMPUTERS BAD LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111"
Running gas pipe isn't that hard, look into it. If you are a homeowner (as in not renting) go ahead and retrofit your house, buy some tools, accumulate some leet skills. It'll payoff handsomely over the years, there's no need to hire a contractor for most jobs around the home. Add more insulation, pull the trim off of doors and windows and fix the humongous leaky cracks you see there, add gas lines, contract for a propane tank and use that instead of natural gas because you can store the fuel onsite, or have both and different appliances, etc. They even make dual fuel refrigerators, electric and natgas or propane, a REAL handy thing to have when the electric power goes out, you can then switch it easy to the gas. Add a no electricity required gas wall heater, even in the worst case winter power out scenario you can keep your main living room warm, or go for a wood heater as auxiliary or primary. We have wood, propane and electric heat here, and it is *nice* to have the options, it has come in handy several times and using wood primarily our heat bill is pretty low as I cut all my own wood. We are geeks! Tools and modding are *fun*, whether it is your computer, your vehicle or your home!
If you can and have space, hang your clothes up to dry. I know not many people do that outside nowdays, but if you have a laundry room or a garage where your washer/dryer are, you can hang them up in there. Use the dryer for things that need to dry really fast or you need pronto.
In the 1990's my Pentium 90 had a 90 Watt power supply. Today I have a 450W power supply. An LCD screen is easier on power than a CRT, but the trend is upwards. Blame Windows for producing software requiring more computing power to run and Intel for producing the hardware to run the supposedly more "Power"ful software. All just to play solataire! Slap a carbon tax on Microsoft, Intel, AMD and graphics card makers.
Why frame it in terms of dollars per month, when the more relevant cost is that on the environment? Every extra "dollar" spent is more consumable resources and pollution which costs us more than its dollar value.
... and then they built the supercollider.
When we rewired only the overhead bathroom light had to be an energy efficient bulb, I assume because it's often left on longer than anything else.
Note if you go to CFLs, check the spectrum output not just the color temperature (www.ledmuseum.org has some of the info). Blue light is the narrow band that affects when you start to feel sleepy (melatonin symthesis). Most CFLs have a very strong emission in that band. Look up "low blue" +melatonin for references.
We cured our evening insomnia -- after changing our evening reading lights to sources that don't emit in that band (switched those to dimmer incandescents or 'bug light' CFLs or amber LEDs)
He was talking about an induction hob - ie there is no element to stay hot. Your gas stove, however, will heat up all the ironwork around the burner that holds your pans in place, so there is still a risk of burning.
Except that nice glass top on your induction hob stove also gets very hot during prolonged cooking and can also burn you. As far as safety goes, always assume the stove to be hot. That way, you might keep your fingerprints!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
pilot lights are nowadays only found in history books pictures or on quite expensive, pro level 5KW gas burners.
[jealous]And on some nifty, very expensive ovens for the too much ric... the connaisseur.[/jealous] http://www.lacornue.com/gb/chateau_93.html
But yes, gas can be dangerous.
The really bluffing thing with induction is bringing a gallon of water to boil within 60 seconds.
And temperature control is just as fast as activating a rheostat...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Do you not like the 60hz flicker? I dislike the nasty yellow color from incandescent bulbs. You can get Flouros of any color temperature you can imagine. I like 'cool white' but you can get a fine 2100K yello flouro just like your old caveman bulb!
Blar.
I live on my own and don't have a washing machine/dryer at the moment. I don't think I'm going to buy one. Since I'm single (this is Slashdot), I have a full load at most, once a week, usually it's every 2 weeks. So let's say it is every week. That would make 52 times a year. A new washer: $250, a new dryer $250 (and those are the cheap ones that waste a lot of electricity). So in the first year that would cost me close to $10 every time I do a load of laundry without counting the electricity and water (another $10/month). A laundromat costs me at max. $5 every time (I live near a University, so a lot of cheap places to do laundry). If I could keep the washer/dryer more than 2 years, it would start saving me money. But what if it doesn't last that long (some break down after a year) or what if a leak develops (I'm renting, my computers are on the same floor, insurance has a $1000 deductible)? And in the mean time, I could also use the laundromat in hotels when I have to travel for work or pleasure and put it in as an expense as well as use the lump sum and buy something else.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Here in the South, the air conditioner is the biggest electricity user (at least in the summer). Bill goes sky-high during July/August...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
WSJ = Wall Street Journal
Just to save those who were wondering from waiting for this inane article to download.
I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically
Obviously you don't live in the Northeast :P No such thing as waste heat from light bulbs this time of the year :P
Seriously, though, I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically, and saved me tons of cash. And they make compact flourescents that work in chandelier bulbs and don't look ugly now - just go to Home Depot and look.
I love compact fluorescents. My problem is that my voltage is not stable and I've noticed that in similar situations that the compacts seem to burn out -- sometimes quite spectacularly (smoke and sparks). Once upon a time I rented an old farm house with a bunch of roommates. I spent over a hundred bucks replacing every single bulb in the house with compact fluorescents. The house was in the country and had a well with a really old pump. Every time you flushed the toilet the lights dimmed and UPSes went off. Every single bulb that I bought was dead within three months :(
Ditto in my current apartment. Next door neighbor runs a glass business. She has 6KW and 10KW kilns that cycle on and off when in use. My voltage goes from 120V to 108V and back again over and over for hours on end. I'm not brave enough to try compact fluorescents in this environment :( Normal fluorescents seem to handle it just fine though -- have never replaced the one over my sink. Wonder why the compacts can't handle it?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Real geeks find their way around using the LEDs on their gadgets, boosted, when it's really needed, by the backlight on their PDAs.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Just a thought for all you Puget Sound geeks in the dark, Kittitas county was able to get their power back on line right away even though the main lines to the county were out because they have their own wind farm. Distributed and micro generation make for a much more resilient power system.
Modern front loading washing machines have the potential to save large amounts of energy. Not only do they use less water and energy themselves, but they have a faster spin cycle that removes far more water from clothing than older machines. Thus, drying the clothing takes less time and uses less energy.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
30 bucks a cord? Wow!That's like prices from ye olden days. I cut my own wood but at that price I'd buy a few a year just to throw on the pile. Around here it is all over 100$.
a cord
Slow startup time?
Since when is less than 200ms slow. Maybe you're thinking about bulbs from 7 years ago, but all my bulbs (ranging in age from 2001 to recently, since a few of my circa-2001 bulbs did finally burn out) start up instantly. Some of them get brighter over time, but only the older ones. Newer bulbs are near enough to instant that I can't tell the difference.
Plus I run my entire house on roughly 80w of light.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
There are two oposite factors that effect the lifetime of incandescent lamps. Allmost all modern dimmers use a solid state switch to 'clip' the sinusoidal wave back creating a sharp change of voltage at the point where it is cut. This rapid change of voltage induces a rapid change of current and magnetic field causing the filament to act like a tiny electrical motor and twists it much more violently than during a normal smooth transition. The more expensive the dimmer the better the choke which smooths out these spikes. The lower temperatures reduce chemical reactions inside the bulb, which lengthens the lifespan.
I'm still waiting for someone to invent a 50/100/150 three-way bulb (or even a 30/70/100 bulb) in an A21 form factor. Until then, I'll keep putting incandescents in my living room lamps.
They already did that. Just go to Home Depot and pick one up. I've got two - one in my living room torchiere lamp and one in my bedroom torchiere lamp - works fine (it's really two bulbs, a 50W equivalent and a 100W equivalent (think that's 8W and 17W actual). The new ones are instant on and feel much brighter and sunnier than the old ones did too.
Do NOT buy cheap CFL - unless from say Home Depot, as they last a lot less time and the quality of light and delay is not as good, but you can get decent CFL 4-packs or 6-packs on discount for about $6 or $8 at Home Depot (100w, 60w equiv) and you can even get 2-packs of the 3-way CFLs.
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I said: I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically.
:P No such thing as waste heat from light bulbs this time of the year :P
:(
:( Normal fluorescents seem to handle it just fine though -- have never replaced the one over my sink. Wonder why the compacts can't handle it?
You said: Obviously you don't live in the Northeast
To which I reply: No, I live in the Pacific Northwest, and at this time of year we also like the extra heat from bulbs, but we have these fancy things called heaters which we use on demand instead, run by these automatic heating/cooling devices that have the heat turn down 20 degrees when we're at work, and down 15 degrees when we sleep. My house is gas heat, but many people also use oil and electric heat. Electric is about the same as gas here, costwise.
I said: Seriously, though, I've noticed just replacing incandescent (standard) light bulbs cut the extra heat in my house dramatically, and saved me tons of cash. And they make compact flourescents that work in chandelier bulbs and don't look ugly now - just go to Home Depot and look.
You said: I love compact fluorescents. My problem is that my voltage is not stable and I've noticed that in similar situations that the compacts seem to burn out -- sometimes quite spectacularly (smoke and sparks). Once upon a time I rented an old farm house with a bunch of roommates. I spent over a hundred bucks replacing every single bulb in the house with compact fluorescents. The house was in the country and had a well with a really old pump. Every time you flushed the toilet the lights dimmed and UPSes went off. Every single bulb that I bought was dead within three months
Ditto in my current apartment. Next door neighbor runs a glass business. She has 6KW and 10KW kilns that cycle on and off when in use. My voltage goes from 120V to 108V and back again over and over for hours on end. I'm not brave enough to try compact fluorescents in this environment
There are some light outlets in my place that I don't use CFLs in - mostly stairways and near vibrating washer/dryers - and one fixture that seems to just burn out CFLs faster than others. Over time I've figured out which ones not to use CFLs in - especially in ones with dimmer switches (duh). In practice, I find the cheapo CFL bulbs are less tolerant than the more expensive brands - but you can buy the more expensive brands in bulk for cheap at Home Depot (and sometimes Costco).
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Might want to bitch to your landlord. A properly wired electrical system will not cause such massive variances in voltage due to load changes of a mere 10KW.
The scary thing is that undersized wiring may be feeding the living units, which means that when her kilns fire up, the wires in the wall might be getting quite hot.
-Z
Might want to bitch to your landlord. A properly wired electrical system will not cause such massive variances in voltage due to load changes of a mere 10KW.
Actually, the wiring in our house (two-unit home) is modern. I've checked it myself because I supplement my heat with electric space heaters (cheap hydro electric) and didn't want to be burning the house down. When she fires up that kiln I can watch the street lights dim.
What I really need to do is bitch at the power company to give us a new transformer. It was probably sized decently before everybody and their bother started converting to electric heat. I don't seem to have these problems in summer when she uses her kilns...
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Compacts are designed differently - the element that ignites the gas is built into the chunky base, rather than into the fixture like it is for standard fluorescent bulbs (the four-foot ones, for example). The ignition element can only function so many times before it outright dies - around 3,000, I think - so flickering lights will die quickly. The life ratings are really estimations of how long the average illumination of the bulb will last... they tend to go with about three hours, so you'll see about 9,000hr lifespans. If you leave one on 24/7, it should last almost indefinitely so long as you don't have that unstable voltage that keeps it flickering (and doing so should draw less power than having an incandescent bulb of the same light output on for only six hours a day). See the Wiki article on electrical ballasts, particularly the section on the three start types (and the back of the package of a CF bulb).
This same concept is why you can't put standard CF bulbs on dimmers. Wrong voltage applied to the ballast means no start
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Those high tech gadgets are considered hogs not because of the gross amount of power they consume, but because they are powered 24/7, whether they are in use or not. Sure my dryer (if it were electric rather than gas) would consume more power than my PC - but my dryer is only running when there are clothes in it being dried. OTOH - the average 'always on' PC is eating power even while the owner is sleeping or at work. The 'always one' TV eats power even when nobody it watching it. Etc... etc...
When I was in Paris last year, I noticed something really interesting. In most apartments, when the elevator opens to the hallway of your apartment, it is dark. There is a glowing switch on the wall near the elevator that you must press to turn on the lights. The lights then stay on for a few minutes, allowing you to get into your apartment. There are several glow in the dark switches throughout the hallway for when people leave their apartment.
When you think about it, leaving lights on in apartment hallways 24/7 is extremely wasteful of energy. In a single hallway, I wouldn't be surprised if the lights consumed 1000 watts or more. In a day, that would be 24kW-hr, which would probably compare to the entire daily consumption of electricity for one or two apartments.
I can imagine that having motion sensor light switches in hallways would be an effective way of implementing this in North America. This one idea could save huge amounts of energy.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
but we have these fancy things called heaters which we use on demand instead
I was being a wiseass :P
My house is gas heat, but many people also use oil and electric heat. Electric is about the same as gas here, costwise.
Are you sure about that? I've run those numbers before (post I just made on the subject) and I've never been able to justify electric over gas -- unless you have a really crappy gas furnace and can't replace it for whatever reason. At $0.08/kWh it costs $2.34 to get 100,000 BTUs out of electric. If you live in NYS and pay $0.12/kWh it's $3.51. Are you really paying $2.34 - $3.50 a therm for your gas?
There are some light outlets in my place that I don't use CFLs in - mostly stairways and near vibrating washer/dryers - and one fixture that seems to just burn out CFLs faster than others. Over time I've figured out which ones not to use CFLs in - especially in ones with dimmer switches (duh). In practice, I find the cheapo CFL bulbs are less tolerant than the more expensive brands - but you can buy the more expensive brands in bulk for cheap at Home Depot (and sometimes Costco).
I have that problem with all my fixtures. My voltage problem is housewide and occurs even if I'm not drawing any load. I'm anxious to see affordable LEDs on the market. They should be more robust, safer and environmentally friendly (no mercury required) then CFLs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It most certainly is a fire hazard. The power dissipated in the wall is (voltage_from_power_company - voltage_at_outlet) * current. If a 10kW kiln draws 80 amps, and the voltage is 108 vs. 120 when there is no load, then there is (80 amps * 12 volts) or 960 watts going into the wall. That's almost the heat output of a space heater.
And the LED bulbs can be run on a dimmer...
Check out your water heater, range and AC. the AC is often your largest single electrical load. followed by the Water Heater, then the Oven. (The load estimates for homes give these as 5-10 KW, 4 KW and 8 KW respectivly. (See NEC 70, National Electrical Code Article 220 for load estimates.)Load is much less if they are gas. In northern climates, the Electric element for your furnace may be the largest electrical load. As I'm in the Phoenix area, heat loads are not significant. (We have had our heat turned off for several days. Don't need it.)
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
No kidding.... Its loads of fun when the controll on an electric stove shorts out and BLOWS a hole in a double thick bottom pot.
No, it's just [possibly] a bad method. In fact, he doesn't even mention the method he used to come to that conclusion. So what is this "American style science" shit? Lemme guess, your comment about "American style science" is... er, based in fact? I think it's based in stupid shit.
The original article was not written by a scientist, nor does he expect you to believe he's an authority on the matter (e.g., "Beyond my mathematical incompetence, some caveats...", and so on). His point is this: look, I'm a journalist, this isn't my specialty, but here are some simple things I discovered to save money on electricity. Might be useful to you. Maybe he guessed the cost of the dryer after he gained some intuition about the costs of other appliances around the house. Or maybe he figured the cost out deductively, by measuring the cost of the other appliances and then subtracting that amount from his total electricity bill. Who knows? Method aside, as I mention in a previous post, his estimate of the cost of his dryer accurately matches what I actually measured it to be.
Regardless, he makes some good points in the article. I'd rather see the WSJ run a slightly fact-challenged article on the benefits of conserving power than on the benefits of owning that new BMW, because the last thing we need is one more asshole on the roads throwing away gasoline.
I said: My house is gas heat, but many people also use oil and electric heat. Electric is about the same as gas here, costwise.
Are you sure about that? I've run those numbers before (post [slashdot.org] I just made on the subject) and I've never been able to justify electric over gas -- unless you have a really crappy gas furnace and can't replace it for whatever reason. At $0.08/kWh it costs $2.34 to get 100,000 BTUs out of electric. If you live in NYS and pay $0.12/kWh it's $3.51. Are you really paying $2.34 - $3.50 a therm for your gas?
Yes, in Seattle, electricity is cheaper than gas, and much cheaper than oil. Same in Portland. If you live in NY State, well, I suggest you move or buy lots and lots of insulation, because the WSJ today said the price of oil is going up to $70 a barrel soon.
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Costs us about $55 a cord here, also in ontario.
Yes, in Seattle, electricity is cheaper than gas
What are the actual costs? Because every calculation I've ever done with electric vs natural gas, gas wins hands down unless your furnace is out of date. My electric is among the cheapest in the country and it still doesn't pay to use it over gas -- even as gas prices have gone up.
If you live in NY State, well, I suggest you move or buy lots and lots of insulation, because the WSJ today said the price of oil is going up to $70 a barrel soon.
Heating oil sucks. But my house is heated with gas and electric. Others around here heat with wood (or at least supplement). We get by just fine.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Even if we can't stick computers too much for standby power (even epa "energystar" standby is 30W for computer, 4W for monitor)which is equivalent to leaving 2 17W (17W cfl ~75W incandesant) bulbs on 24/7, computers generate lots of toxic waste when you "throw" them away (meaning they end up in a land fill contaminating ground water in your backyard or school playground), or recycle them (meaning insted they get "thrown away" in a third world country instead) when they get obsolete every 3 years.
That's not even counting the 240kg of fossil fuels, 22kg of misc chemicals, and 1,500kg of water that goes into making the computer in the first place (mostly water in the semiconductor manufacturing processes). That's about 2kg/day of natural resources amortized over about a 3yr span even when your computer is off...
Simulation studies of residential buildings in Seattle and other northern US heating climates generally find 50% of lighting energy (and computer energy) is useful in offseting space heat (on an annual basis). For every kilowatt-hour saved in lighting, the heating energy increases by half a kilowatt-hour (or the heat equivalent if heating with gas/oil/??). Also, if the building has cooling (again in a northern US climate) there is a reduction in cooling that is equivalent to the around 10% of the lighting change. That is for every kilowatt-hour saved in lighting there is a further savings of 0.1 kilowatt-hour in cooling. In warmer climates the heating interaction gets smaller and the cooling interaction gets larger. In florida there would be a large benefit from decreased cooling and almost not impact from heating change. To figure the economics you need to factor in the difference between your electric and heating fuel costs. This is often very significant. Seasonally it varies as one would expect. The "waste" heat is nearly 100% useful in the winter and near 0% in the summer (northern climate). All of this assumes we are talking about a small amount of electric use relative to the heat loss of the space and the space is a home or small office. If one is operating more than 1 computer in a small room, or 2 or 3 in a larger one, then the available heat is likely to be more than the space requires. Likewise if the computers are located in a warm climate. In any of these cases the winter utilization can approach zero and if your cooling equipment is running then it will even be negative (increase the cooling). Larger work settings with multizone heating/cooling systems are completely different and difficult to generalize, but basically the cooling reduction is very important. A good rule of thumb might be, if your heater is operating during the day then the computer heat is useful. If your heater is not operating at all then the computer heat is somewhere between 0 and 50%.
Here in NYC, electric costs about $0.18:KWh, or $0.05:Mj. Natural gas costs about $18:Kf^3, which is about $0.017:Mj. Fuelcells get about 40% efficiency, so that would be about $0.043:Mj consumable power. NYC has the highest electric prices in the country, so I don't know if that's competitive everywhere. But that $0.017:Mj is a Bush Era spike, complicated by Mideast wars and Indonesian tsunamis (and the price gouging that kind of press enables). The usual price of natural gas until early 2006 was about $0.009:Mj, though NYC electric has been over $0.06:Mj for years.
I like the idea of redundant power, including both AC and gas/cell. Especially since the gas pipe brings about 15SCF:min, which is about 100KW. That sure beats any residential electric company I ever heard of. And you can store a reservoir of gas as a "voltage buffer", which you can't do as efficiently (or cheaply) with batteries (even UPS).
I'm just a little surprised that even today's entry level fuelcells aren't getting snapped up to save 20% on electric in places like NYC. At $10K for a 5KW peak output fuelcell run at 2KW average, it would pay for itself after 6 months.
When their efficiency goes to 60-75%, that will be something like $0.023-0.28:Mj, or double the electric rates. Which will have gone up - they always do. Who knows, the solar power rules that require power grids to buy electric generated residentially ("run the meters backwards") might also apply to fuelcells running arbitrage on the gas/electric differential. That would double the savings, allowing maximum fuelcell capacity usage, probably paying for the fuelcell after only a couple of months.
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make install -not war
Heating > A/C > Lights/Fridge/Cook/ Clothes > gadgets.
A-HAH! So YOU'RE the person behind this picture. Personally, my clothes don't require any power.
my blog
Recently I bought a Fisher and Paykel washing machine from an appliance outlet store. It's quite the unique little washing machine. Instead of having a clutch and transmission, it runs off of a brushless electric motor. This thing spins and spins fast! The ending cycle spins the clothing at 1000RPM to sling all the water and soap out of them. Since this purchase, my clothes take about 1/2 the time in the dryer that they used to. Instead of pulling out soaking wet clothes from the washer, my clothes are only a few steps from being dried. I have a dryer with a moisture sensor built in, so they spend no more time than they have to in the drying cycle. I actually prefer them to be slightly damp so that, when they fully dry, they will be wrinkle free. I seem to be saving an average of $10 a month on electricity, and my clothes have never been so soft and clean smelling....
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
http://www.powerint.com/greenroom/faqs.htm/
It was (for older devices still is, but they'll get replaced) caused by cost-driven use of linear converters for predominantly 50W and physically larger power supplies lately? Maybe heard a few company's engineers blame the increase in power supply sizes on "government regulations"?
I believe cooking with electric sucks for two reasons.
I have a flat topped cooking surface. Most if not all pans develop some type of curvature over time. This curvature causes very poor heat transfer, they now are using convenction for the middle, conduction around the middle and no heat transfer on the edges because it is beyond the burner circumference. This uneven heating is made even worse because the heating element will shut off even on the high setting because it gets too hot because the heat is not being transfered to the pan and food. I have tried at least 10 different types of pans over the years of various thinknesses and they all warp up in the middle over time. I had the most luck with some of the copper bottom pans but still do not last more then 6 months. The only thing I have found that has not warped was cast iron. Not bad for frying things but not the most convienent thing to cook anything else in. Glass cook wear does not warp but its heat transfer properties suck which make it easy to burn things considering the stored heat capacity of glass coupled with the slowness of the electric unit to respond to you changing the heat settings.
I'm sure people will have suggestions for cook wear that will not warp but please include SPECIFIC links or models of pans that you have tried. A pan for under $100 would be ideal. I've used hard anodized, copper bottom, glass, aluminum, stainless steel (does not have teflon coating though), all of varing thicknesses and I've found nothing good yet.
I am sick and tired of not being able to sear meat properly on an electric stove. I and up getting some initial searing after heating the pan and oil until the oil starts to smoke and then the hole thing cooling down rapidly and then boiling the meat in its own juices until all of the moisture evaporates. I am no left with vary dry cooked meat instead of seared and browned meat with juices trapped inside. Oh, and heating the pan that hot is one of the reasons my pans warp but that is a catch 22, not hot enough, no searing, too hot and pan warps. The dilema with cooking with electric.
In some instances, I've fired up the side burner on my gas grill and used that instead of my stove to avoid the frustration.
Heating and A/C are simply ways of moving heat from here to there. Yet the power stations which produced the electricity almost certainly simply threw away the "waste" heat from the generation process. When you consider that a typical coal fired power station is about 35% efficient at producing electricity, the 65% which is lost as heat might conceivably be better used.
Google for "District Heating", "District Cooling" and "Combined Heat and Power". Processes which use the "waste" heat from power stations to provide domestic/business heating and cooling. Finland for instance have power stations which are 85%->90% efficient. They sell heat and cold as well as electricity, to customers.
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In almost every city code and certainly in every HOA rules, having a clothesline in your backyard is strictly forbidden.
I get a ton of RF noise from these bulbs. Enough to interfere with my audio setups. I'm even using good cables.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
I'm part of an organisation called Guerilla Energy Efficiency in Sydney, Australia. We are changing all the irresponsibly installed lights we can find (ie incandescents put in by developers in exterior fittings) for light saving globes. The economic efficiency of this action is far higher than installing Solar Panels etc. For more info try http://www.greenfreedom.net/ and follow your nose to Guerilla Energy Efficiency
Funny how the WSJ, an expert magazine about money and finance, would actually PAY someone MONEY to tell everyone the bleeding OBVIOUS.
OMG! You mean my laundry dryer uses *more* electricity than my IPod?!
And abotu the computers and tech stuff: There is a reason your dryer uses a 240V socket instead of a cigarette adapter.....idiot.
For now, I'm going to go read articles about research projects that DON'T tell me the obvious.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Hello? We're dealing with most "applicances" that work thru mass amounts of heat transfer (Toasters, refridgerators, ovens/stoves, microwaves, heaters/space heaters/oil heaters, lightbulbs, Vacuum cleaners [those motors get fucking HOT, plus lights if applicable,] fireplaces, etc.) and energy loss.
Since we're not needing to heat things up in this area, NO SHIT electronics will use less power than induction/resistance/radiation-based appliances. C'mon, is this really news for those of us with half a brain and high-school education?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Gas appliances should be in well ventilated areas. I lived many years in a place that used gas for cooking and the odd ocation when there was some gas leak (pilot flame stopped burning) thre was absolutely no problem.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
They do have life cycle cost issues, though.
Hang dry your clothes, put them in the dryer while they still retain a bit of moisture or saok them with a bit of water (one or two cups per load should do). Then you can use the dryer 10 minutes instead of one hour getting very similar results.
Failing that be a real man, real men don't care about scratchy pants.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Dude, just have a shower with your cloths on, get 100% wet, take them off, and hand wrince them dry.
Place them on a clothes rack and they will dry indoors in hours.
1) no washer needed, just uses soap from shower
2) no dryer needed, all natural
3) you wash in FIFO order, not 5 days worth at a time.
4) you save water
5) its dry by the morning to wear again, so you only need 2 pairs of everything at most
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
For those of you who haven't been paying attention until now, the refrigeration equipment in your home is the single largest user of electricity. Until this article was written, was there anyone who thought a TV, stereo, or computer uses more power than an air conditioner, refrigerator or electric dryer?
There are exceptions of course. I happen to do a lot of arc welding and plasma thermal spraying, but that's just me.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
I prefer thinking in watts than in monetary terms as watts are absolute, money is not. The general rule of thumb I use is that if something creates a lot of heat (cooker, immersion heater, element heater, incandescent light bulb) or moves something heavy (tumble drier, lawn mower, hoover) then it'll use a proportionally large amount of juice.
However, this is mitigated by the fact that people don't typically keep such devices on all the time, for fear of burning down their house. Leaving everything on standby or using electronic devices constantly does end up consuming a lot of energy, particularly if you consider how many people are doing the same. My router and cable modem combined use around 24 watts, so to use as much energy as a kettle left on for 5 minutes I'd have to leave it on for around 3 1/2 hours. A nation of people doing that 24/7 along with all their other energy uses adds up to a lot of watts, a lot of money and a lot of melting ice caps.
Now, if you're the sort of person that uses a chandelier full of incandescent bulbs (surely not though, what kind of person doesn't use CFL bulbs these days. Oh, wait... most of them), you'll probably laugh at my worrying about 24 watts (or around 200KWh every year, multiply that by several million for national use) but many of us now take our energy use seriously and have begun to plan accordingly. Sure, using an oven for an hour dwarfs the energy used by your desktop, laptop, gadgets and lighting but the cumulative effects, both on a household and national/global scale are significant.
The fact is, it costs nothing to switch things off when you don't need them, just a tiny bit of care and time on your part. Saying that the energy use of these things is insignificant just because you waste vast amounts of energy on other things doesn't mean that you shouldn't curb both.
Tim.
Here in NYC, electric costs about $0.18:KWh
I live upstate. Our rates run about $0.12 - $0.14/kWh. What I really love is how I can cross the border into PA (which generates from the same fuel mix as we do) and it's instantly 25-40% cheaper.
And you can store a reservoir of gas as a "voltage buffer", which you can't do as efficiently (or cheaply) with batteries (even UPS).
I've often wondered how economical it would be to compress natural gas and store enough for the winter months on summer pricing. In the summer our gas runs about $0.60-$0.70/therm. In the winter it's recently peaked at $1.20 and typically runs $1.00 - $1.10/therm. How feasible would it be to compress enough gas to last through the winter in June or July when prices are cheap?
I'm just a little surprised that even today's entry level fuelcells aren't getting snapped up to save 20% on electric in places like NYC. At $10K for a 5KW peak output fuelcell run at 2KW average, it would pay for itself after 6 months.
You might want to read the PSC regulations before you try to do this. I'm pretty sure they have a whole different set of rules that you must follow (and a whole different set of rates that you'd be charged) if you wanted to use gas to generate electricity. The regulations are tailored to using it with a generator, but if the utility wanted to be jerks (ConED? Never....) they could probably make a case for doing it with your fuel cell idea too.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
those compact fluorescent lamps that are supposed to save energy
have their problems. I've noticed that after just a few days of use
they start taking a long time to 'warm up'. The "60 watt" unit in my
bathroom now starts out at about 5 watts worth of light (talk about
pissing in the dark) and takes about 5 minutes to come up to full light.
It's enough to make be go back to the power hogg "Edison" original.
...The sky is blue.
I can see this is tagged "obvious" but what about the fact that the summary, at least, says "Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month." Hang on a second... You don't know? You went through all this trouble to figure out how much power your cell phone charger draws when nothing is plugged into it, yet you can't figure out how much power your dryer takes? How do you figure it's $25? You say it's an estimate but did you base it on anything?!?!
Then the lights are costing you $30/mo??? Good lord you must have a lot of lights.
Barring that, don't you have a refrigerator??? Those are one of the largest power drains in many peoples homes! What about a microwave? Perhaps an electric furnace or hot water heater???
Perhaps I've missed the point of the article though. I would agree -- after all I've said -- that gadgets are not the largest power drain. Seems kind of like commons sense to me...
let me guess.... Heating goes down, A/C goes up, Lights same, Fridge goes up, Cook goes down, clothes go down, gadgets go down, plasma tv the top new one.
No, the reason is economical in nature. Pipes for gas are more expensive than the equivalent wiring.
Wow! That's a pretty cool system, and I haven't seen it before. It looks pretty pricey compared to my gas cooktop, but I'll try to remember this for "next time".
I'd like to see a physical chemist's economic analysis of the difference between compressing gas to CNG vs chemically converting it to a liquid like m/ethanol, and the economics of the different fuelcells that "burn" each. The cost of the machines and the differential efficiencies.
Then there'd be the tradeoffs of (probably) noisy compression vs (possibly) smelly liquefaction.
As for the PSC, they'll have to catch me first. And by the time they did, there'd be enough of us doing it "underground" that we'd have a basis to change those monopoly protection laws to accommodate the new age of distributed power.
--
make install -not war
15,000 btu... Is that BTU per hour, per minute, per second? BTU is a unit of energy rather than power. It's like saying you have a 5000 Joule heater. I'll assume it's 15,000 BTU per hour. Divide by 3414 to get kiloWatts. 4.4kW per burner, 8.8kW for the oven.
The question is, do you use all the burners and oven at the same time and at maximum? The oven in particular only uses power until it's hot enough inside, then it just maintains the temperature.
Deleted
Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"
So, how is he estimating the cost of the dryer?
Prior to getting married, I'd planned on living in a yurt (www.yurts.com). Alas, the bride to be was a no-go in living so simply. We found a 1928 Arts & Crafts house that fit. As I had already purchased all the appliances for the yurt, planning to live off the grid, we used them. Using CFL lights in all the sockets, ceiling fans in the summer, a very efficient fridge from Denmark and a single unit washer/dryer combo (washes and dries in the same unit) we average a $24 a month electric bill annually. You can live on the cheap, have all the goodies of American Life, and be an environmentalist. It's just easier for the average American to consume and pay.
A defense contractor in Antarctica is a bad idea. Get Raytheon OUT of Antarctica.
If you want to avoid creases/wrinkles in your laundry so you dont have to iron them; put them in a tumble dryer with a Bounce sheet or two, make sure you know how long the dryer cycle is (if you just moved into an apartment like I did you might not know this) then about 5 minutes before the end of the cycle, pull the clothes out and fold em / hang em quick. Doing it that way they are perfect, no wrinkles, and as long as you fold them properly (as in, so as to avoid piles that will crease) and quickly then you dont even need an iron. I've been doing this for several years now.
Anyone with an electrical water heater should measure that. It probably sucks down more watts than everything else in the house combined.
I see you've never been to Seattle during a heat wave - most of us don't have air conditioning.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Granted, due to being a huge hydro power producer, our electricity is a bit cheaper than what you get in the US (0.069$ CAD per KW/h for me right now). Even then, according to the government's energy cost calculator, electricity is by far the cheapest option. Well actually, the cheapest option seems to be a mix of oil/electricity, but I don't know anyone with that setup.
My point is, even pure electricity is cheaper than an extremely recent natural gas heating installation (assuming 95% efficiency from gas). According to their calculations, an average 2 bedrooms home pays 1292$ per year for electricity heating (not counting water & appliances), while the best natural gas installation nets you a yearly cost of 1348$. Not a huge difference, but that's a best-case scenario.
Additionally, using electricity over here means no contribution to global warming, since it's all hydro. Win-win situation. I suppose with the higher electricity prices in the US gas can be cheaper, although there are reports that gas production might have peaked around 2001 in the USA, meaning it's going to get more expensive unless you start importing, with all the middle-eastern goodness that implies.
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
As for the PSC, they'll have to catch me first. And by the time they did, there'd be enough of us doing it "underground" that we'd have a basis to change those monopoly protection laws to accommodate the new age of distributed power.
Eh, the PSC isn't the one that would catch you, it's your utility. The PSC is only the enforcement arm (for both wronged consumers and wronged utilities). The rates for using natural gas to generate electric aren't that different from the rates for using it to heat your home -- mainly I think the utilities are entitled to know what you are using it for so they can plan distribution and figure out supply needs. Heck, there's even a separate service tier if you use natural gas for vehicles -- it doesn't cost any more or less (in the end), but the utility wants to know what you are using it for.
Case in point with me: I have municipal electric that costs ~$0.04-$0.05/kWh. I stopped using natural gas to heat my home with. Eventually I received a letter from my utility asking what the scoop was -- they had assumed the meter stopped working because the usage dropped. They never changed my rates or tried to pull anything after I told them I wasn't using it as a primary heat source any longer.
If your usage changes drastically from your established history then don't be surprised if the utility contacts you and asks what's what. You don't have to tell them -- but don't be surprised if they decide to retest your meters if you don't give a decent explanation for the change.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It must really depends where you live, because here in Quebec, Canada, electricity is by far the cheapest solution. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a gas stove in Montreal city, where I live. Everything just runs on electricity.
Most areas in the US don't have access to hydro -- or if hydro is available then it's not the primary source of power. I do have access to hydro (via the NYS Power Authority & Niagara Falls) and even at my rates ($0.04 - $0.05/US) gas is still cheaper -- $1.17 to $1.47/therm for electric vs about $1.10/therm for gas in the winter months. It's only with the calculation of furnace efficiency that electric wins in my scenario. And I'm a unique case because I have access to cheap hydro power. 95% of the United States does not.
Additionally, using electricity over here means no contribution to global warming, since it's all hydro. Win-win situation.
That's not exactly true. If you turn off a light bulb in your house then the hydro plant doesn't reduce it's power generation by 100 watts. A coal or gas fired plant attached to the grid does. With few exceptions (drought, environmental regulations, etc) hydro plants always run at a specific output. When you turn off that light the hydro power can replace coal power on the grid for that tiny amount. The bottom line is that every appliance that you connect to the grid has a carbon impact. This is why I still conserve energy even though my power is technically "greenhouse gas free".
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Most electric motors use an open design motor. The brushes spark about 2 times per turn of the motor on a single phase unit. you don't see the sparks, but they are there.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Can you imagine the aesthetic appearance of a chandler with eight compact fluorescents in it?
I actually heard this yesterday at Home Depot when looking for a light bulb (they don't carry vibration-resistant 100W bulbs, BTW):
"We could get some of these"
"What, are those those fluorescent bulbs?"
"Well, they're these compact fluorescents, they're about the same size as a regular bulb and they have warm colors now"
"I'm not putting fluorescents in my house"
"They'd probably save us $30 to $40 a month on the electric bill"
"There's no way my house is going to look like a fucking motel, I don't care what it costs."
You can imagine the visuals.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's the reading lamp for geeks! Custom spectrum 68watt coated Metal Halide lamp, and two 20watt incandescent lamps. You can use one or the other or both.
They're expensive tho...and the bulbs are propriatory...but I still want one.
Blar.
I found your site, but I was reluctant to open your PDF.
So, for the benefit of the PDF-phobes around here, what sort of globes are you replacing the outdoor incandescent lights with? It doesn't sound like you're just swapping 100W with 40W.
CF? Surely not--those would short out when it rains.
Halogen? Or are you replacing those, too? Are they major savings over normal incandescents? (I really don't know.)
So, what are you using? LED globes? Or what?
And what do you do when you find an incandescent in an outdoor lantern fixture? Those don't seem made for globes...
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage... -- Paul McCartney
I checked Home Depot a few weeks ago. They have a 50/100/150w equivalent three-way, but it's much larger than A21 and won't fit in my existing lamps. They have a bulb that fits an A21 profile, but it's only 60W equivalent.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Well, maybe they have more around here since we have a lot of international students, post-grads, and residents.
Don't give up. I used to have a hard time finding the right form CFL bulbs, but it's more of a demand thing.
Sometimes you can buy better ones in Canada, on the net or in person.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
would like a tank full of hash oil.
The real answer is that back East, heating oil is frequently how people heat their homes, and that oil is kept in x-hundred gallon tanks.
Tech Public Policy stuff
actually, the subject is all I actually had to say.
Tech Public Policy stuff
to shut down the gas supply. Find the valve going into the building, turn it to a right angle from wherever it was. Miller time. (unless you for some unaccountable reason, like real beer)
Tech Public Policy stuff
"cast iron is unacceptible" has saved me trouble. It means I don't have to bother with anything the writer's got to say about cooking any more than I need to bother with what anyone who says "hydrogen is the future of energy". . . either way, the writer's a tard.
Tech Public Policy stuff
LED lights cost next to nothing to leave on. Make the switch now!
:P
(Unless that eerie blue glow bugs you)
I bought a four-pack of remote controlled power sockets. Now whenever I leave my house or go sleeping, I'll just click the "all off"-button on the remote and it turns off all my computers, the TV, DVD player, laser printer etc, so I guess the "standby power" is no issue for me. And I replaced all lights either to compact fluorescent lamps or 12V halogen replacement LED lamps.
Try a google image search for "remote power socket" and you'll know what I mean.