power play–one
Apologies–I started this post almost two months ago, and now I finish it. But it works because I was just going to post something related anyhow.
Begin old post…
So, this week I was trying to do something about my household energy consumption.
As some may have read, the governor of Pennsylvania is currently locked in a budget stalemate with the legislature because he wants state support for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. But in general, there are no resources here to help those who want to reduce their energy consumption. The power company won’t do energy audits, and it costs $500 to get one that focuses solely on your home heating and cooling costs (not on appliance consumption.)
In the meantime, I was talking with a friend who tells me that the “Computer Building,” an enormous building designed solely for supporting the computing infrastructure of our campus, is out of power. That is, no more electricity can be run into the building without major renovation. And a lot of that is old, energy inefficient servers and so on.
So, my laptop uses juice. So do many digital appliances. Energy star ratings allow me to see the more or less consumptive items when I buy new. Because I know that Power=IR^2=VI, I can calculate maximum power consumption on electronic devices I buy based on their rated amperage. But in general I have no way of knowing when I’m doing something that’s a real waste of electricity.
What I want: somebody, please write a widget for computers that shows you, in _dollars_ or in kWh, how much of our planet you’re ruining at any given moment. What are the ways in which we can tailor our energy use? How about a standard that requires outlet plugs to have LED emitters that show you how much electricity is being used at any given time?
Living On Earth had a special on water recently, and compared US water usage to that of a woman in India–it was 10 times more for the American. When I go to South Asia, even the children understand that indoor plumbing is a double edged sword. Everyone wants the convenience–nobody wants to wake at 4am to shlep water home from the well. Many people do that in the year 2007 in the developing world. But the kids I work with will say that if they get the pipes, they’ll be more casual with the use of the water. And there’s not magically more water to go around just because there are pipes. So this shleppage makes you care about the water because you had to invest in it.
Basically what we ask when we ask people to curtail energy use is open loop learning–i.e., no feedback. I want to hear, feel, or see that I’m using lots of resources when I use them. And it should hurt if I’m way out of line in terms of usage, whether financially or just in terms of inconvenience.
Joel Galbraith said,
October 1, 2007 @ 10:05 am
Great ideas Chris. I too think we need devices that provide better (more useful) feedback loops. As I kid, I recall looking at our spinning electricity wand water meters out side on the side of our house and comparing it with that of the neighbors. Wondering what was using so much electricity during the day time, and why ours was spinning faster than the neighbor’s. It’s my understanding that al my AC adaptors use up power even when my laptop, camera, computer monitor, dvd player are not ON. I’m not sure why, but its something I would love someone to explain to me–I’m not talking about a device being in standby mode, I mean my extra laptop AC adapter sitting plugged in to the wall unused while I’m at work all day.
-Joel G.
Shawn said,
October 1, 2007 @ 7:06 pm
I agree that we all need to be more aware of our usage as it happens in order to understand how to change our behavior. I would like a small wireless l.e.d. device that provides an accurate and constant tally of current usage and kwh’s to date based on the billing month from the main meter, and have the ability to absorb signals from many outlet-mounted mini-meters, combining the totals into an easily understood visual display (like a clock-radio graphic equalizer for power), but also able to be sent to a computer screen. Seeing where your power is going is an effective way to facilitate change.
Getting a huge bill at the end of the month does provide some incentive to save, but you never know if you used your air conditioner too much, or your washing machine was set to “hot” too often, or maybe your fridge’s compressor is failing. Hence the individual meters. Compare this to your cell phone bill, where every call is labeled with a person and a time, allowing you to instantly see where the money is going, and the electric bill seems positively antiquated. The electric utilities here already have the ability to remotely read our meters. Why not give the power to the people? Well, they don’t want us using less power for one thing, but that’s another post. If they really wanted people to pay attention, then a sliding cost scale in which the more power one used, the more each kwh cost would be of great assistance. I propose we could even make the base charge extremely low, and have a jump once a certain minimal threshold is crossed, then continue to rise as usage goes up. The minimum should contain allowances for the number of people in the home, and this number should be claimed openly to receive accommodations. A billing system of this design would appropriately distribute costs to the people who tax the system the most. Families with little money could easily have minimal bills by doing things efficiently. But how do they know they are being inefficient? Back to the mini-meters. It’s just more transparency of information.
Sure, we could go out and read our own meter every hour to see what’s going on, but that only shows our overall consumption, and it’s kind of challenging to get any kind of accuracy about present usage by looking at a spinning disk. Having a display on our computer screen of how much power is going down the tubes (or out the wires) from each outlet would be great.
Now, a bit of a rant. It is annoying that the most energy efficient appliances are the ones that cost the most, allowing people with the most cash to save the most money on operating costs. It would make more sense to give the most efficient products to the people who need to save the most money. For example, I would buy a fridge with much thicker walls if it used half the electricity of one with a larger interior. Give me a smaller compressor, an LED interior light, no ice-through-the-door, no other gadgets and gimmicks, but 6 inch thick walls, and we should have a cheaper fridge that costs less to operate than the best “normal” ones on the market. In that case I sacrifice interior size for operating costs. Hey, we can’t have it all, and that’s fine. People with money can spend it however they wish. But people with less money shouldn’t have to pay more. Why are the front-loading washers the most expensive ones? Why are geo-thermal heating systems the most expensive? Why is a well insulated house only available for hundreds of thousands of dollars?