# Electricity from wood pt. 2



## Cynnergy (May 9, 2014)

Well, I posted about this ages ago and the consensus was that this was a no-go at a house scale.

Looks like someone else is working on it though!

Not sure if this is really a new idea, but I like it.  Should be enough to power the fridge at the cabin?

http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/news/local/electricity-from-heat-1.1052181


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## peirhead (May 9, 2014)

Even if it did produce a KWhr in a day that is worth what...15 cents....this technology is so old it..I hope it wasn't our tax dollars paying these guys to figure this out.


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## Dune (May 10, 2014)

What do they think they invented? Thermo Electric Generators are hardly new, nor are they cost effective.


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## begreen (May 10, 2014)

It would be interesting to see the numbers for this system. I am wondering how many btus the cooling radiator put out.


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## sinnian (May 16, 2014)

Pellet boiler that produces energy

http://www.newhorizoncorp.com/electricheat-power-generation/


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## Slow1 (May 17, 2014)

Hmm... they must have more efficient houses than mine - if 1kwh is 10% of the average use, then that would be 10kwh/day average.  I'm more like 15 here.

But in any case - I couldn't see what is novel about whatever they are doing.  As stated thermoelectric couplings are well known.  Unless somehow they have managed to make a much less expensive and/or efficient design.


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## Mt Bob (May 17, 2014)

Agree with slow1,no leaps and bounds here.Why didn't they mention you could set battery in car and lay thermo on maniflod and drive around.Some years ago rika(austroflamm) designed and built pellet stoves to do this,was not cost effective until technology gets better.New Horizon looks like a twist on the same format,but nothing except the one page ad has come from them in quite some time.Is still more cost effective to produce with steam.We need more coal and nuke plants!


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## Ashful (May 17, 2014)

Slow1 said:


> Hmm... they must have more efficient houses than mine - if 1kwh is 10% of the average use, then that would be 10kwh/day average.  I'm more like 15 here.


How the hell do you run an "average" house on 10 - 15 kWh???  We average 55 kWh/day, 2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby, oil heat & DHW.


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## Mt Bob (May 17, 2014)

I didn't even want to go there!


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## Enzo's Dad (May 17, 2014)

This guy is interesting ,,, big into rocket stoves


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## begreen (May 17, 2014)

Joful said:


> How the hell do you run an "average" house on 10 - 15 kWh???  We average 55 kWh/day, 2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby, oil heat & DHW.


Is your house is equal to approx 3 of slow's houses? If nothing else that is a lot more lighting. Do you have a lot of yard or security lighting?


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## Ashful (May 17, 2014)

begreen said:


> Is your house is equal to approx 3 of slow's houses? If nothing else that is a lot more lighting. Do you have a lot of yard or security lighting?


Dunno about house size, but I always figured usage is more about the occupants than the size of the structure.

We have about 570W of outdoor lighting (lamp posts and sconces) that are lit dusk - 11:30pm, and another 120W that we turn on only when the dogs go out.  Until recently, I also had about 240W of floodlights trained on the front of the house, same dusk - 11:30pm timing, but eventually decided it was just a stupid waste of electrons.

I think our biggest problem is three dehumidifiers (two in basement, one in third floor attic), and a wife who likes to leave multiple TV's and lights on in rooms she's not using.  Talking with friends and co-workers, that seems to be a fairly common plight.


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## begreen (May 18, 2014)

My SIL complains that her husband is the same way. Never turns off a light or tv when he is done or leaves the room. Lighting can be a surprising load when it is for illuminating a large area or many rooms of a house.


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## Slow1 (May 18, 2014)

Well, we've been working on reducing our power consumption over the last 6 years or so.  Lots of changes in habits as well as the process of upgrading lights (now on LEDs for all that are on a significant amount of time.  We have 4 kids (4,8,10,12 years old) and training them from the beginning to turn off lights etc has paid off well.  Biggest change for us was adapting to line-drying all our clothes instead of using the electric dryer.  Doing 5-6 large loads a week I'm sure this is saving us a major portion of our potential use.

In the last week our power usage has been up - we're averaging 17Kwh/day because of using A/C in the evenings.  Ironically due to allergies we are more likely to use the central air in the spring/fall when most folks can benefit from just opening windows.  Believe me it is irksome to have it 50* outside and still have to keep the windows closed when the A/C was running to keep house down to lower 70's and dehumidified, but I digress.

My original point though is that I believe we are a very efficient house in terms of electric use.  If the best I can average is 15Khw/day then I seriously wonder how the authors of this article can consider 10Kwh/day "average".  Oh well.


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## Bret Chase (Jun 4, 2014)

Slow1 said:


> Well, we've been working on reducing our power consumption over the last 6 years or so.  Lots of changes in habits as well as the process of upgrading lights (now on LEDs for all that are on a significant amount of time.  We have 4 kids (4,8,10,12 years old) and training them from the beginning to turn off lights etc has paid off well.  .



While I have tried for years.... getting my 4 kids, 14,13,12,9 to turn off the f'n lights has proven harder than teaching my dog to play the banjo....


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## begreen (Jun 4, 2014)

Reward them for turning off the lights. Cut back tv, internet time if lights are left on.


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## BrotherBart (Jun 4, 2014)

Joful said:


> How the hell do you run an "average" house on 10 - 15 kWh???



Base load on this all electric barn is 15 Kwh a day. With invalid wife's sat TV, computers and DVR running around the clock. Throw in showers and washing a load of dishes and all bets are off. Well, and tonight when herself didn't turn the bathtub faucet all the way off and the well pump kept cycling for a few hours before I caught it. 

Now when I had what was pretty much a data center, like yours, in the basement I burned the bearings out of a lot of electric meters. Got old, retired, and bought a couple of 20 watt laptops, LED TV, more efficient DVR, bunch of LED bulbs, Energy Star fridge and...


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## Grisu (Jun 4, 2014)

Joful said:


> How the hell do you run an "average" house on 10 - 15 kWh???  We average 55 kWh/day, 2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby, oil heat & DHW.



Our "base load" (no one at home) is approx. 2.5 kWh per day. Our daily consumption is between 8 and 10 kWh in electricity. However, we have nat. gas range, hot water and dryer. Adding the ccfs used and converting to kWh we average about 18 kWh per day total. That goes up to 30 to 40 in the winter as some of our heat is electric plus probably increased demand for lights etc. My wife likes it bright in the room she is in but turns off the lights in the other rooms. CFLs and LEDs also help a lot with that. We rarely watch TV other than the kids maybe 2 hours of cartoons. Our computers are laptops; we have motion-activated outdoor lights, power-strips with on-off switches to further reduce baseloads, unplugging of unneeded appliances (like the garage door opener on our "storage" side), and none of us is big into electronics. My next goals are to beef up insulation to reduce the electric demand in the winter and getting the kids (6 and 8) to understand why consuming less power is in their own interest.


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## Slow1 (Jun 5, 2014)

Bret Chase said:


> While I have tried for years.... getting my 4 kids, 14,13,12,9 to turn off the f'n lights has proven harder than teaching my dog to play the banjo....



Have to get them while they are young, but I have noticed my oldest is regressing rapidly.  Need to please parents going down, need to please self  going up.  Such is the joys of tweens I hear - and no relief in sight until they have to pay their own bills I be.


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## Slow1 (Jun 5, 2014)

begreen said:


> Reward them for turning off the lights. Cut back tv, internet time if lights are left on.



I have to say as much as I dislike the easy access to electronic toys (ipod etc) this is one thing I do like.  Using their addictions against them has proven far more effective and persistent than many things we've tried.  For the lights left on, simply making them interrupt whatever they are doing and walk over to turn it off has been reasonably effective up to this point - will have to see what happens once they are all teens...


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## Ashful (Jun 5, 2014)

What do you do when your wife is much worse than the kids?  

My 4 year old shows all of my somewhat OCD tendencies, lining all his toys up and counting them, cataloging his collections of Thomas traisn and Angry Birds telepods... there is some hope for this one.


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## maple1 (Jun 5, 2014)

Joful said:


> How the hell do you run an "average" house on 10 - 15 kWh???  We average 55 kWh/day, 2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby, oil heat & DHW.


 
Our last 2 months bill was 16kwh/day. Prior to that it was right around 20kwh/day. In the 2-3 summer months that we heat our DHW with electric, it goes up another 4kwh/day. 2 adults + 3 teenagers. I don't consider us 'unaverage' - but seems I spend a lot of time trying to change peoples habits around here (including mine at times). Maybe it's paying off finally.


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## Slow1 (Jun 6, 2014)

Joful said:


> What do you do when your wife is much worse than the kids?



Get the kids to bug her?  ha!  I pretty much have to turn off lights behind her much of the time, but I know her favorite ones and those now have LED bulbs so the impact of being on more than needed is minimized.

I had a roommate in college who would walk into the appt and turn every light on in every room even if he didn't plan to be in that room... seldom turned much off on the way out either.  Thankfully electric was included in our rent - but I wonder if he has changed his habits since leaving school and having to pay his own bills... Hmmm.


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## begreen (Jun 6, 2014)

BrotherBart said:


> Base load on this all electric barn is 15 Kwh a day. With invalid wife's sat TV, computers and DVR running around the clock. Throw in showers and washing a load of dishes and all bets are off. Well, and tonight when herself didn't turn the bathtub faucet all the way off and the well pump kept cycling for a few hours before I caught it.
> 
> Now when I had what was pretty much a data center, like yours, in the basement I burned the bearings out of a lot of electric meters. Got old, retired, and bought a couple of 20 watt laptops, LED TV, more efficient DVR, bunch of LED bulbs, Energy Star fridge and...



That tracks with our bills for an all electric house except for a propane cooktop. We were higher this May than last May because we ran the heat pump instead of the wood stove and are now charging the car too. That kicked us up to 19.2KWh.


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## Ashful (Jun 7, 2014)

Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:

10 x 45w floods in kitchen
12 x 45w floods in family room
10 x 50w floods in living room
4 x 40w in upstairs hall
2 x 60w in laundry
2 x 60w in bedroom
3 x 50w floods in changing room
2 x 40 w in bathroom

My wife was sitting at her computer in the office, in the dark.


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## Mt Bob (Jun 7, 2014)

Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:
> 
> 10 x 45w floods in kitchen
> 12 x 45w floods in family room
> ...


 My dad would have had a heart attack!Sounds like you need occupancy sensors.Not a big fan of the new light bulbs,as a ham,because we have run into many problems with radio emmisions from their transformers.


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## woodgeek (Jun 7, 2014)

Sounds like you can get the boy to go around the house and turn out the lights.  Give him a percentage of the difference in light bills, in toys.


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## begreen (Jun 7, 2014)

Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:



There is a big chunk of the 55KWh/day load. If those lights are on 8hrs it adds up to 17KWh. As noted, lighting can be a surprising load when it is for illuminating a large area or many rooms of a house. More rooms and larger spaces require more lighting. I would be replacing all lights with LEDs if this is a concern. And put some floor lamps with lower wattage bulbs in rooms that are passage ways. These lights can be left on instead of flooding the room with light. We have a  15w CFL and a 25w halogen table lamp that illuminate our living room in the evening. The overhead floods only go on when we want to bathe the room in light, which is rarely. Timers and motion detecting light switches might also be considered.


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## Bret Chase (Jun 7, 2014)

Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:
> 
> 10 x 45w floods in kitchen
> 12 x 45w floods in family room
> ...




My head would have exploded....


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## BrotherBart (Jun 7, 2014)

Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:



That ain't a house, it is a tanning booth!


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## Ashful (Jun 8, 2014)

woodgeek said:


> Sounds like you can get the boy to go around the house and turn out the lights.  Give him a percentage of the difference in light bills, in toys.


That's a very good idea, and with him coming up on 5 years old this fall, I think I'll be implementing that plan soon.  He can reach all the switches in the new part of the house, and about half of those in the old part.  Seems our forefathers mounted light switches up out of children's reach, when electric was new and comfort with using it had not yet evolved.


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## Grisu (Jun 8, 2014)

Joful said:


> What do you do when your wife is much worse than the kids?



You can't change the kids... 

Mine is really good with electricity and having CFLs or LEDs almost everywhere helps. What gets me is how much water goes down the drain for nothing. Like drinking a glass of water and then the glass needs to be soaked in the sink with .... water. Only afterwards it can go in the dishwasher.  As water is a renewable resource it would not be so bad. However, all the dishes need to be rinsed with hot water, of course. There are only so many battles you can win as a husband. I have resorted to doing most of the dishes myself. 


Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:
> 10 x 45w floods in kitchen
> 12 x 45w floods in family room
> 10 x 50w floods in living room
> ...



I know you prefer incadescent bulbs but for utility rooms like the laundry (or changing room?) I would really look into putting LEDs in. For the floods, it would maybe have been an idea to separate them in two circuits for each room with independent switches so you flip one switch and only half of the lights go on. Should still be plenty of light for most tasks. Probably too much effort for a retrofit. I like the idea of motion-sensing switches or getting your son involved. 


Joful said:


> My 4 year old shows all of my somewhat OCD tendencies, lining all his toys up and counting them, cataloging his collections of Thomas traisn and Angry Birds telepods... there is some hope for this one.



Sounds very familiar. Mine is older now but can still spend hours sorting his Pokemon cards.


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## Ashful (Jun 8, 2014)

Grisu said:


> I know you prefer incadescent bulbs but for utility rooms like the laundry (or changing room?) I would really look into putting LEDs in. For the floods, it would maybe have been an idea to separate them in two circuits for each room with independent switches so you flip one switch and only half of the lights go on. Should still be plenty of light for most tasks. Probably too much effort for a retrofit. I like the idea of motion-sensing switches or getting your son involved.


Actually, most of my rooms are already divided into 2 or 4 lighting zones, but she'll just hit all the switches on a panel sometimes, and turn them all on.

I may start looking into LED's for the few fixtures where the bulbs are hidden behind frosted glass (eg. laundry room ceiling light, bedroom ceiling lights, etc.  I really dislike the LED floods, as the ones I have seen are not friendly to look at, and we pretty much always have them dimmed and I like the amber hue of a dimmed incandescent.

When I say "changing room", it's really the room between our master bedroom and master bath, containing our clothes closets.  You can see one of the recessed floods in the first photo, although that old Honeywell round-stat has been replaced with a programmable now.  Bathrooms are less than spacious in old houses...






The kid is the key, I think.  He's still easily trained.


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## Mt Bob (Jun 8, 2014)

http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Products/Pages/Sensors/Occupancy-Vacancy/Occupancy.aspx


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## TradEddie (Jun 10, 2014)

I guess we'll never convince Joful to switch to LED's...

The down side of LED's is that your hard work training the family now produces diminishing returns!  Some of my vampire appliances use more power switched off than my LEDs when lit. I just tried a Cree 6" can for my basement, $20, and I couldn't be happier. The only regularly used incandescents left in my house are 40W candleabra lights in our bedroom, and the 50W halogen over the kitchen table.

Back to the point, 10kWh/day is a fine goal, if I could reduce to that level I wouldn't care of it was 100% from coal!

TE


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## Ashful (Jun 10, 2014)

TradEddie said:


> The down side of LED's is that your hard work training the family now produces diminishing returns!


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## begreen (Jun 10, 2014)

The latest generation of LEDs is getting cheaper and their designs are more conventional. The two floods I am testing in the kitchen look just like an incandescent R30 bulbs and have a light very similar to a halogen bulb. So far I like them, particularly because they were only $9.97 apiece on sale. I dated the bulbs like I do with all modern bulbs. We'll see how they stand up for longevity next to the CFLs in the same application.


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## woodgeek (Jun 10, 2014)

Joful....I think you should resist the pressure.....we've done this with you like what, 5 times?

Do it if/when you want....and then become an insufferable LED snob/evangelist afterward and yell at us for not telling you earlier to get them!


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## TradEddie (Jun 11, 2014)

begreen said:


> I dated the bulbs like I do with all modern bulbs. We'll see how they stand up for longevity next to the CFLs in the same application.


Watch out, depending on what you mean by "next to CFLs", don't mix and match within the same fitting. I used one CFL and one LED in a twin bulb enclosed fitting, luckily I was removing the fitting a few weeks later to paint, and the heat of the CFL had started to damage the coating on the Cree. Only later did I notice that the directions specifically warn against doing this.

I thought I was the only one dating their bulbs.I've been doing it for about 5 years now, and have only replaced one dated CFL. The early ones didn't all last as long as advertized, but it seems when the newer ones die, LEDs might be under a dollar!

TE


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## Longstreet (Jun 11, 2014)

Joful said:


> Walked into the house after working in the yard yesterday evening, and here's what was on:
> 
> 10 x 45w floods in kitchen
> 12 x 45w floods in family room
> ...



You were using about the same power with 12 x 45w floods in the family room than I would be if I turned on every light in my entire house.

Then again, my wife loves to crank down the A/C in the middle of our GA summers.  Let me tell you, that ain't cheap!


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## Mt Bob (Jun 12, 2014)

When you live in a cold climate a little xtra heat only helps.Europe still sells old style 100w bulbs as heater elements.Led cfl and flor. bulbs make things hard for me to read,causes headaches.Had to remove cfls from house,found out they interfere with my ham radios.FCC supposed to be preventing this,yeh right.Field day is coming!KF7BBL


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## Ktm300 (Jun 12, 2014)

Joful I have noticed a little extra steam belching from the Limerick Towers


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## renewablejohn (Jun 30, 2014)

bob bare said:


> When you live in a cold climate a little xtra heat only helps.Europe still sells old style 100w bulbs as heater elements.Led cfl and flor. bulbs make things hard for me to read,causes headaches.Had to remove cfls from house,found out they interfere with my ham radios.FCC supposed to be preventing this,yeh right.Field day is coming!KF7BBL




I dont know which part of europe your referring to but the old style 100w bulbs where banned in the UK years ago. I cannot believe how much energy you use over the pond. If we use over 8kwh per day then we have a witch hunt to find the reason why.


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## begreen (Jun 30, 2014)

Yes, we are spoiled by a history of abundance which led to a lot of waste excepted as normal. That has to change. Is there a luxury tax in the UK on excess power use like there is on gas guzzling cars?


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## renewablejohn (Jul 1, 2014)

begreen said:


> Yes, we are spoiled by a history of abundance which led to a lot of waste excepted as normal. That has to change. Is there a luxury tax in the UK on excess power use like there is on gas guzzling cars?



Not a luxury tax as such just very high energy charges and incentives to insulate your homes which reduces demand.


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## Slow1 (Jul 1, 2014)

Public transportation is also much more available generally in Europe - enough so that the culture accepts it far better than here in the US it seems.


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## Ashful (Jul 1, 2014)

Slow1 said:


> Public transportation is also much more available generally in Europe - enough so that the culture accepts it far better than here in the US it seems.


I can speak more for Germany than the rest of Europe, as I worked in Germany on and off for several years.  There the traditional zoning favors public transportation, as they have very dense and small towns, separated by open farm land, without any of the "suburban sprawl" we have here.  That has been changing over the last 15 years, but traditionally, you can NOT build outside of the town borders, and building a new house usually means knocking down an old one within town.

Looking at my own local area here in PA, most of our towns have spread to the point where you can no longer distinguish the boarders between any of them, and most of us are living on lots of 0.5 to 10 acres.  Buses and trains simply don't work when we're living at 100 - 150 people per square kilometer, but it works very well in Germany's typical small towns of 800 - 1500 people per square kilometer.


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## Mt Bob (Jul 5, 2014)

renewablejohn said:


> I dont know which part of europe your referring to but the old style 100w bulbs where banned in the UK years ago. I cannot believe how much energy you use over the pond. If we use over 8kwh per day then we have a witch hunt to find the reason why.


 Yep,not on uk ebay any more(100 w),were last year,listed as heating elements.


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## woodgeek (Jul 6, 2014)

Um, Bob, you can still find incandescent bulbs on store shelves all over the US, listed as 'decorator' bulbs, 'appliance' bulbs, flood lights, 'can' lights, etc. And it doesn't matter.  Most have switched.



renewablejohn said:


> I cannot believe how much energy you use over the pond. If we use over 8kwh per day then we have a witch hunt to find the reason why.



We do use about 2x as much energy overall as in the UK.  The electricity thing is partly I think a function of the US never building out its natural gas network completely.  Maybe 50% of US homes have access, so we end up using a lot of electric for space heating/stoves/etc. 

And then there is the ubiquitous air conditioning and clothes dryers.


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## begreen (Jul 6, 2014)

Correct, about 60% of US homes have natural gas. The main difference is the low cost of electricity and energy here. That has allowed people to live in McMansions, have second and third vacation homes that still need to be heated in winter and a/c in summer in some areas.


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## woodgeek (Jul 6, 2014)

I don't know about second homes....but we do have a lot more per capita commercial/retail space than other countries.

And a penchant for super-sized appliances of all kinds.  And second fridges.

Looks like 85% of GB homes have natgas space heating:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploa...at-britains-housing-energy-fact-file-2011.pdf


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## Ashful (Jul 6, 2014)

Second fridges are so 1970's.  Now it's third or fourth fridges.  ;-)

 <-- sitting on five, only cuz I just sold two...


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## Mt Bob (Jul 7, 2014)

woodgeek said:


> Um, Bob, you can still find incandescent bulbs on store shelves all over the US, listed as 'decorator' bulbs, 'appliance' bulbs, flood lights, 'can' lights, etc. And it doesn't matter.  Most have switched.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 ??? Certain wattage bulbs have been outlawed,same as uk.Speciality (vainity,etc.)bulbs have been given a lee period.The new incasadent bulbs that "pass the standards" cost 5 times more,they only got certified because they put a reflector in the lamp(same as headlights for many years)to "use more of the energy instead of wasting it".Please do not tell me I am wrong,when I go to home despot and a pack of 3 100 watt bulbs(that used to cost about 1.99) now costs 8.99,but meet the new gov.standards,but it will hurt your eyes when you try to read by them.Do a little research,this is not a new thing,just most people pay the price and do not have a clue.


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## woodgeek (Jul 7, 2014)

bob bare said:


> ??? Certain wattage bulbs have been outlawed,same as uk.Speciality (vainity,etc.)bulbs have been given a lee period.The new incasadent bulbs that "pass the standards" cost 5 times more,they only got certified because they put a reflector in the lamp(same as headlights for many years)to "use more of the energy instead of wasting it".Please do not tell me I am wrong,when I go to home despot and a pack of 3 100 watt bulbs(that used to cost about 1.99) now costs 8.99,but meet the new gov.standards,but it will hurt your eyes when you try to read by them.Do a little research,this is not a new thing,just most people pay the price and do not have a clue.



All I know is that despite the 'ban', the light bulb shelf in my local grocery store somehow has more incandescent bulbs than any other kind.  And a lot of them appear to be simple glass bulbs with tungsten filaments.  I haven't bought one in ~10 years, so I will have to trust you on the price trends...

I thought most people just bought the cheap curly bulbs these days.


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## Ashful (Jul 7, 2014)

woodgeek said:


> All I know is that despite the 'ban', the light bulb shelf in my local grocery store somehow has more incandescent bulbs than any other kind.  And a lot of them appear to be simple glass bulbs with tungsten filaments.  I haven't bought one in ~10 years, so I will have to trust you on the price trends...
> 
> I thought most people just bought the cheap curly bulbs these days.


We're not far apart, woodgeek, but I've seen a pretty drastic shift away from incandescent bulbs in our local stores.  Whereas it was 80% incandescent just 10 years ago, now it's probably only 30%.  I also haven't seen these internal reflector bulbs bob mentions, just standard bulbs and good old fashioned (r20/r30) reflector bulbs.

As to the ban, it hasn't affected me as much as I anticipated.  Most of the bulbs I buy are clear / decorative anyway, and I've even taken to using clear 40W and 60W bulbs in my enclosed ceiling fixtures, whereas I used to often use soft white.  The only place I'm willing to use CFL's or LED's is in utility areas, like garage or boiler room.

I'm still stunned by the choice to ban certain incandescent bulbs.  Seems to me a "luxury tax," which set incandescent pricing closer to that of CFL's or LED's, would have been the better way to handle the situation, from all perspectives.


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## woodgeek (Jul 7, 2014)

One could argue that the higher energy bills already constitute a luxury tax relative to other bulb types.  People are just set in their ways.


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## Slow1 (Jul 7, 2014)

woodgeek said:


> One could argue that the higher energy bills already constitute a luxury tax relative to other bulb types.  People are just set in their ways.



I suspect that if the behavior we want to modify is greater conservation, then raising energy prices is the way to go rather than outlawing any particular tech.  Unfortunately such things are very unpopular - imagine adding a 50% 'tax' on electricity for example to really get folks to conserve more?  Likely if it stuck I would expect to see behaviors change a bit.  Maybe not for everyone, but some folks would (at least for a little while).  Same thing to gas prices, oil, whatever energy source you desire (or all at once to keep folks from just switching energy sources).  I'm sure it would result in changes in behavior (perhaps an increase in home solar arrays just to avoid such unpleasant surprises again, ha!).


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## Grisu (Jul 7, 2014)

Slow1 said:


> I suspect that if the behavior we want to modify is greater conservation, then raising energy prices is the way to go rather than outlawing any particular tech.  Unfortunately such things are very unpopular - imagine adding a 50% 'tax' on electricity for example to really get folks to conserve more?



They are unpopular in the US. Many European countries already have switched their tax scheme to make energy more expensive while at the same time reducing income taxes, social security contribution etc. That an average European consumes 50% less energy than a typical US citizen can at least in part be explained by those political decisions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotax


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## Bret Chase (Jul 7, 2014)

Slow1 said:


> I suspect that if the behavior we want to modify is greater conservation, then raising energy prices is the way to go rather than outlawing any particular tech.  Unfortunately such things are very unpopular - imagine adding a 50% 'tax' on electricity for example to really get folks to conserve more?  Likely if it stuck I would expect to see behaviors change a bit.  Maybe not for everyone, but some folks would (at least for a little while).  Same thing to gas prices, oil, whatever energy source you desire (or all at once to keep folks from just switching energy sources).  I'm sure it would result in changes in behavior (perhaps an increase in home solar arrays just to avoid such unpleasant surprises again, ha!).



 this already happens in a round about way.... I have easily cut my electrical usage in half, gas range, wood stove for heat, cfl's every where I can put them (I.e. non appliance lights).  hell, my house only has a 100 service.  yet my power bill keeps going up.  why you ask?  because my local utility goes crying to the PUC asking for rate hike after rate hike.... because their income has dropped drastically due to *decreased* energy usage!


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## Where2 (Jul 8, 2014)

Bret Chase said:


> this already happens in a round about way.... I have easily cut my electrical usage in half, gas range, wood stove for heat, cfl's every where I can put them (I.e. non appliance lights).  My house only has a 100A service.  yet my power bill keeps going up.  why you ask?  because my local utility goes crying to the PUC asking for rate hike after rate hike.... because their income has dropped drastically due to *decreased* energy usage!



If your power company pleadings to the PUC are public, it's usually quite eye opening to read them. Where I am, they hit us from all sides: Surcharges to fund engineering and permitting of "proposed" new power plants before they ever come on line, surcharges for hurricanes that happened 10 years ago and higher and higher rates every time the PUC says the company can apply for a rate change.


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## Bret Chase (Jul 8, 2014)

Where2 said:


> If your power company pleadings to the PUC are public, it's usually quite eye opening to read them. Where I am, they hit us from all sides: Surcharges to fund engineering and permitting of "proposed" new power plants before they ever come on line, surcharges for hurricanes that happened 10 years ago and higher and higher rates every time the PUC says the company can apply for a rate change.



My utlility rode the coattails of the '98 ice storm for nearly a decade!  Honestly... if an electrical grid wasn't part of the requirements of being "habitable", I'd probably just turn it off.  Hell, my house was a century old when it got knob and tube installed...


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## Ashful (Jul 8, 2014)

Sitting in the dark ain't much fun.  How you gonna access hearth.com with no juice?


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## Where2 (Jul 8, 2014)

Joful said:


> Sitting in the dark ain't much fun.  How you gonna access hearth.com with no juice?


What?? An iPhone, iPad, Android-phone or tablet and a solar charging system can provide plenty of internet surf time...   You just need a cell tower nearby and the iPad or tablet can work on the back 40 acres where the grid doesn't reach, if you bought the iPad or tablet that holds a SIM card for your local cell carrier.

No need to sit in the dark, plenty of "in-town" houses in Maine were plumbed for gas lighting, long before electricity came along. If Bret's home was a century old before knob and tube arrived, it probably still has plumbing for gas lighting in the ceilings.

I have to admit, when I think about houses from the 1800's, I expect it to be like Little House on the Prairie (set in the 1870s-1880s). My wife frequently reminds me one of the houses she used to live in was over 150 years old, and it was nothing like Little House on the Prairie. Many of the fixtures were simply "electrified" gas fixtures, some quite ornate, but probably not UL approved with little holographic stickers and country of origin details.

I have friends with some acreage outside Ely, MN with an off-grid home. I find them on the internet all the time!


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## jebatty (Jul 9, 2014)

Ely is 200 miles NE of my home, fabulous area. And you are correct, a little solar will power almost everything needed.

Behavioral change is taking place. Power outages, major and frequent storm events, rising rates for electricity to fund repairs and additions to a woefully inadequate infrastructure power grid, and an electric power industry built on a failing business model. Forward thinking individuals realize that conservation not only benefits the environment on which we depend for our very lives, but also pays. Businesses are risk-savvy, and they are relocating, building and designing for a new future that conserves energy and water. The pieces already are visible and the puzzle solution is obvious. Those thinking and acting like dinosaurs will follow the dinosaur path to extinction.


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## woodgeek (Jul 9, 2014)

On the contrary....I think 90% of folks will just keep doing/buying what their friends do, and what is offered by their friendly salesman as the best. And big business including utilities will happily adapt to the new ways of making power and money, including big solar.

The grid is here to stay.


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## jebatty (Jul 9, 2014)

> Forward thinking individuals realize that conservation not only benefits the environment on which we depend for our very lives, but also pays. Businesses are risk-savvy, and they are relocating, building and designing for a new future that conserves energy and water.


I'm surprised you disagree with this. You, and perhaps I, are forward thinking; I personally know of two others besides myself who have adopted solar PV for the reasons stated. Risk assessment is a major part of any business operation, and businesses are changing to avoid risks inherent in the current environment.


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## woodgeek (Jul 9, 2014)

Fair enough....coffee just kicking in....sorry

The elec utilities are and will be at the forefront of the transition (at least more so than the oil majors and other fossil peddlers).  Surely some of the less adaptable ones will go belly up and be forgotten by the time we get this RE party started.  I think the future will be electric, and the grid will look a lot more like the current grid (at least in terms of hardware, if not operational modes) than many might suppose.

I would also take a bet on the average price of energy in 2050 being lower than it is now, but perhaps with a decent premium on liquid hydrocarbons from whatever source.


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## Ashful (Jul 9, 2014)

jebatty said:


> Behavioral change is taking place. Power outages, major and frequent storm events, rising rates for electricity to fund repairs and additions to a woefully inadequate infrastructure power grid, and an electric power industry built on a failing business model... Those thinking and acting like dinosaurs will follow the dinosaur path to extinction.


My FIL spent most of his career as an executive VP of what was then the world's largest electric utility.  He spent 15 years in the generation side of the business, and then 15 years in charge of the distribution side of the business.  He was fortunate to retire early / golden parachute / whatever you want to call it.  Not one to sit around, he went to work for Lockheed as a management consultant, where he was working with the group in charge of theater warfare computing development.  He realized their Theater Battle Management System Core could be applied to electric utility grid management, as the current mode of grid failure management is currently just an enhanced version of that developed in prior to the 1970's, where operators look up error codes in books to determine how to route power around a failure in the system.  The current system works very well for isolated failures, but since all combinations must be simulated / calculated in advance, only combinations of up to three failures are available for the operators to reference.  The TBMSC system would provide constant real-time simulation of the most probable failures, based on the instantaneous state of the grid and outside conditions at all times, and could maintain a much larger database of failure corrective measurements than is currently possible.

Unfortunately, both Lockheed and the utility work off government regulated funding.  They got stalled pushing the proposal thru congress, until the Great Northeast Blackout of 2003 happened, which would have been very much contained and prevented by the implementation of such a system.  Suddenly, congress was interested in their proposal, but Lockheed could not respond to budgetary requests quickly enough, and there was a large turnover in the following election cycle.  The issue fell flat on the following session, when Lockheed finally responded.

Point being... our grid is definitely antiquated, but perhaps for reasons other than you may suspect.  The utilities, which are often maligned here, are not unwilling to update their grid for the sake of profit, but are slave to regulation that often completely inhibits advancement.


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## woodgeek (Jul 9, 2014)

A couple more thoughts to stir the pot....

(1) It is clear that the consensus opinion among electricity industry analysts is that solar PV will become close to an arbitrage financial opportunity in the next few years, at least for selling power in the daytime cheaply and at a reasonable profit.  The penny appears to have dropped in the last year or so, and it is now an 'open secret' the whole industry is preparing for.  As you know, the great state of Minnesota is leading the way in terms of market and public policy planning for this scenario.  I for one am fascinated to imagine how individuals will respond to pricing signals such as 'your elec power cost half as much during the day as at night', or perhaps a third if the night power is subjected to a carbon tax and the daytime is not.  Is not hard to imagine many major loads like DHW tanks, appliances like dryers or dishwashers, EV chargers, and space heating thermostats getting rapidly reengineered with simple controllers to exploit these time of day rates (of course, AC is already there).    How far can the PV/RE penetration get without a kWh of storage being deployed?

(2) of course, when all this goes down, the market for coal will likely be significantly altered/destroyed, but oil and nat gas will still be left standing.  Cheap battery-equipped, low cost of ownership EVs will lead to demand destruction for gasoline use, and hopefully many in the developing world will skip the gasoline/ICE step altogether.   Oil will be with us for a long time, but hopefully EVs can avoid the huge projected surge in future oil demand, and perhaps accommodate a modest rate of decline in global fossil oil production without breaking the economy.  Natural gas?  I think every country on earth that wants any heavy industry within its borders will go for shale gas.  And the price of that gas will compete for customers with RE for the rest of our and our children's lives.

(3) Even at my most optimistic, I find it hard to believe we will see an 80+% reduction in CO2 emissions this century, as suggested by many analysts.  40%?  Sure. No problem. Fortunately the Carbon Observatory II made it up last week, unlike the first one that crashed into the ocean.  Right now we know the Earth absorbs ~40% of the carbon we emit, but we don't know exactly where it goes.  A LOT relies on one bit of information...the curve of how CO2 we emit today gets absorbed over decades in the future AND whether these mechanisms get stronger as we increase the concentration of CO2 (the case for most chemical processes) or slower (e.g. if relying on forests that are being killed off by beetles in a warmer climate).  And we really don't know.  Hopefully we will in 10 years.  In my dreams, these mechanisms get stronger linearly with increasing CO2, and a hard but very doable 50-60% reduction in emissions in the second half of the 21st century is enough to effectively flat-line the concentration of CO2, and avoid the worst of habitat destruction, extinctions, and ocean acidification.

(4) the wild card starting to be discussed is the idea that fossil energy reserves may be devalued massively during the transition, since they will have to be left in the ground.  Will Exxon still be as valuable as Apple in 2030? It will certainly still exist, and I suppose move a similar amount of product, and have a similar cash flow, but it won't have the same projected future revenues, and will have higher market risk. I am sure it will adapt.  I suppose many of the reserves are owned by sovereigns, not the majors, so geopolitics might be significantly altered, against the interests of the petro-states, including some friendly ones like Canada and Norway.  Hmmm.


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## Bret Chase (Jul 9, 2014)

Where2 said:


> What?? An iPhone, iPad, Android-phone or tablet and a solar charging system can provide plenty of internet surf time...   You just need a cell tower nearby and the iPad or tablet can work on the back 40 acres where the grid doesn't reach, if you bought the iPad or tablet that holds a SIM card for your local cell carrier.
> 
> No need to sit in the dark, plenty of "in-town" houses in Maine were plumbed for gas lighting, long before electricity came along. If Bret's home was a century old before knob and tube arrived, it probably still has plumbing for gas lighting in the ceilings.
> 
> ...



nope, no gaslight  plumbing in the house.  According to to my dad, my great-great uncle was far too cheap to have anything like that.  the oldest part of my house was moved 5 miles now by oxen from where it was built, to where it sits now. (which was his father's land at the time)  that was in or around 1865.  I have never got the date nailed down.  The house got knob and tube sometime during the heyday of the REA... somewhere in the 40's, most likely after the war.  so, I amend my statement, my house was about 80 when it was electrified.  I finally deactivated and removed the last of the knob and tube a couple of years ago.

Oil lamps were used for lighting here, which esp if you have an alladin mantle lamp... (my dad still has one) they are frickin bright!

my biggest electrical uses are laundry and pumping water.  the water part is easy... windmill and a cistern in the top mow of the barn... it's how it was done in this area before electrification.  laundry would be harder, but not impossible.  lighting and most electrical use could easily be handled by a PV array and batteries.  my house lies N/S and the east side just bakes in the sun all year... the wind blows out of the west constantly all winter, and keeps the east side of the roof clear of snow.  water could be made hot by a gas heater supplemented/replaced by solar, esp in the summer.  the fan I use to push air around the house in the winter could be replaced by a stirling cycle fan sitting on the stove.

as for going online.... I have in the past, during an outage, took the deep cycle battery out of my camper, hooked up an inverter, and powered the router, modem and the laptop chargers.  IIRC, I got almost 24h of use out of it before I had to hook it to the truck to recharge it.


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