By Johnnie Watt in Energy Efficiency on September 8 2010
I bought my first LED bulb for interior lighting last week. Prices have been coming down, and are approaching affordable levels. My kitchen is lit with 4 spot lights: 3 small lamps for overall lighting and one larger lamp directly over the island. I only bought one bulb because I wanted to be sure that the LED created satisfactory lighting before replacing all of the bulbs.
It turns out that I’m not just satisfied with the result, but actually find it superior to the lighting from the standard incandescent spots. I’ll be replacing the other two spots later this week, and the larger spot over the island in the near future.
The light is crisp and white without any institutional feel to it. The spread is narrower when compared to the incandescent, but not unduly so. As best as I can tell, three LED spots will still illuminate the entire kitchen area. In fact, I find the narrower spread aesthetically pleasing.
The question remains, are LEDs worth the cost and effort? Just what affect will three LEDs have on my electric bill? Not a whole lot, it turns out, but it certainly won’t hurt. Assuming the kitchen lights are used 5 hours a day (and if you have kids that don’t turn out the lights, this could be a pretty conservative number), the LEDs will save me about $2.67 per month. I probably won’t be retiring on the savings.
On the other hand, I estimate the ROI to be a tad more than 1 year. (How I got this number will be the subject of a subsequent post.) In business, even a 2 or 3 year ROI is considered very worthwhile.
As for effort, you’ll actually be saving time. Incandescent bulbs have a lifespan of about 1,200 hours. You’ll be changing bulbs about once every 8 months. LEDs, on the other hand, last for around 50,000 hours. Figure on getting out the step ladder about once every 28 years. Even if you burn the LED 24 hours a day, you’ll only need to change it once every 5 ½ years. Burn the incandescent bulb over that same time period and you’ll be shelling out $240 for replacements.
Interior LEDs may not always be the best solution for a given lighting situation, but in those areas where they are a viable alternative to incandescents, they’re well worth the up-front cost.
By Johnnie Watt in Buddhism on August 29 2010
I consider myself a Buddhist. Being such, I bring a number of predilections to whatever subject matter I investigate. This includes home energy savings. What does lowering your electric bill have to do with Buddhism? Quite a bit, actually. Let’s start with awareness.
In Theravada, the denomination I most identify with, the primary practice is to develop awareness. In many ways, awareness is the opposite of habit. Habits can be seen as collections of actions that we perform without normally being aware of them. If there’s a habit we wish to break, the first, critical thing we need to do is focus our awareness on it. Here’s an example:
As I work on my computer, I often go to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee. If I don’t think about it, I’ll often leave the kitchen light on. This, even though no one else in the house is awake. I’m trying to break that habit, and by using “getting a cup of coffee” to practice awareness, I’m remembering to turn off the light as I leave more and more often.
Another example:
I used to leave my computer on all of the time. In the past, when CPUs and RAM weren’t clipped onto the motherboard, this helped prevent them from working their way loose. (Constantly vacillating between operating and room temperatures could do that.) Now, I turn off my computer, speakers, monitor and printer each morning before I go to work.
Even in sleep mode, computers use a small amount of energy. If I were using my computer throughout the day, powering up and down multiple times probably wouldn’t be worth my time. However, I tend to spend a few hours each morning staring at the monitor, and that’s it. Why burn the extra electricity, however much it might be?
Should you power down your computer to save electricity? The federal government has posted some guidelines to think about when making that decision at energysavers.gov.
In general, becoming aware of how we use electricity (end especially of where we’re wasting electricity) can help us develop ways to reduce energy consumption without adversely affecting our quality of life. The importance of awareness in the practice of Buddhism flows in concert with saving energy.
By Johnnie Watt in Alternative Energy on August 26 2010
In the future, will we be pissing in our gas tanks? Maybe not, but researchers at Heriot-Watt University, UK, have developed a prototype fuel cell that replaces highly volatile hydrogen with urea (also known as carbamide), a primary component of urine. In addition, the Carbamide Power Systems use membranes and catalysts that are far less expensive than those found in traditional fuel cells.
These fuel cells are targeting applications in water treatment/purification in hopes of producing both, clean water and electricity.
Read Youtricity’s PDF document.
By Johnnie Watt in Alternative Energy on August 3 2010
The following article is from physorg.com:
New solar energy conversion process could revamp solar power production
Stanford engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil.
By Johnnie Watt in Energy Efficiency on July 29 2010
The US Senate has been really bogged down since 2008, and most of the touted legislation that finally comes to a vote has been seriously watered down. It looks like the Senate Energy Bill will be headed for a vote this week, and according to critics, it’s no exception.
One bright note is that the HOME STAR Energy Retrofit Act of 2010, originally a separate piece of legislation, has been subsumed by this bill relatively intact. This means that homeowners will soon be able to reduce their electric bills by having energy reducing retrofits installed in their homes, funded in part or in whole by Home Star.
There’s a number of provisions in Home Star, but the one that excites me the most is the Gold Star program. Under this program, Home Star will pay 100% of the costs for approved energy-efficient retrofits to homes.
I’ll be taking advantage of Gold Star. I’ve been working with a friend, Bill, who represents Allied Energy Global. AEG has a program set and ready to go. Their program is particularly well-suited to southern climates. It’s the program that I’ll be using. I’m so excited by the residential retrofit program offered by AEG that I wrote a free report for Bill to use: home energy savings report.
Think you’d like to participate in cutting your electric bill? Give Bill a call at 239-878-5931. If you don’t happen to live in his territory, he can get you in touch with the appropriate representative.
By Johnnie Watt in Energy Efficiency on July 24 2010
I grew up thinking about light bulbs in terms of watts. If I wanted a bright room, I’d buy a 100 watt light bulb. It was a natural way of thinking about it since that’s how incandescent bulbs were (and still are) marketed.
Watts, though, are a measurement of power consumption, not brightness. When comparing incandescent bulbs to CFL and LED alternatives, wattage tells you how much electricity a given bulb will burn but not how bright that bulb will be. For brightness, the comparison should be in lumens. Below is a reproduction of a chart offered by the federal government that compares the wattage of various incandescent bulbs to the wattage of CFL bulbs with equivalent lumens:
| Watts – Incandescent |
Lumens |
Watts – CFL |
| 25 |
250 |
4 to 9 |
| 40 |
450 |
9-13 |
| 60 |
800 |
13-15 |
| 75 |
1,100 |
18-25 |
| 100 |
1,600 |
23-30 |
| 125 |
2,000 |
28-40 |
| 150 |
2,600 |
30-52 |
Look, I’m an old fart. Changing my way of thinking about light bulbs might not be as daunting as changing to the metric system, but I still have years of habit to overcome. Don’t want to carry this chart to the store with you? Not to worry. Starting in 2011, the Federal Trade Commission will be requiring light bulbs to have a label that gives consumers all the information they need, including not only the brightness of a bulb (in lumens), but other important information as well. Here’s a sample from the FTC site:
Remember, watts will tell you how much electricity a light bulb uses, but <i>lumens</i> are what you use to tell how bright that bulb will burn.
By Johnnie Watt in Going Green on July 22 2010
Huh? It’s true, though. From Cornell University:
“Chicken meat production consumes energy in a 4:1 ratio to protein output; beef cattle production requires an energy input to protein output ratio of 54:1. (Lamb meat production is nearly as inefficient at 50:1, according to the ecologist’s analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics. Other ratios range from 13:1 for turkey meat and 14:1 for milk protein to 17:1 for pork and 26:1 for eggs.)”
This won’t reduce your electric bill, but it may help with groceries. Besides, it’s healthier.
By Johnnie Watt in Going Green on July 21 2010
If I had my ‘druthers, my roof would be filled with solar panels, leaving just enough room for a solar water heater. As far as I’m concerned, going green is good for the world (slowing down global warming), good for the country (reducing our dependence on foreign oil), and good for my pocket book (my electric bills are killing me).
There’s just one problem. There’s no way, with my current income, that I can afford it. Even with federal and/or state incentives, the initial investment is way above my means. As soon as I make my millions on the internet, I’ll do it. Until then, I’m going to pursue my interest in green technologies, and try to ferret out ways to reduce my utility bills, reduce my energy usage and reduce my carbon footprint.
Thus is born this blog. I’m going to be posting information that I find in hopes that it can help others as well as myself. I’m a great believer in community, and if I happen to have an anti-social streak, I also have a desire to communicate with others who share my interests.
I already have a personal blog on blogger. It goes hither and yon, talking about everything from Buddhism to Bubba politics. This blog is designed to be more focused, talking about making households green. Lots of what I’m finding is cheap or even free. I’m also finding fascinating new technologies in the wings. All of this is fodder for this blog.
So, welcome. I hope you find this site useful. Come back often or, better yet, subscribe to my RSS feed. Then you can be notified each time I post.
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