Letters to the Editor
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where's the data?
I have tried to follow the trail at DOE and EPA websites to find the basis for statements like the subtitle of this article..that 'vampire' appliances account for X% of use or cost. I have failed. Maybe the data are out there, but mostly one finds repetition of the same assertion and no study to support this claim. As appealing and interesting as the claim is, what if the real number is 1% or 0.1%?
If I am missing the right place to look, please point me in the right url/direction.
LK
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power strips with sensors?
I think the two power strips mentioned in the article are a good idea, but i looked them up online and they are both about $60 each, so about 5-10X as much as a standard power strip. And they have sensors? What exactly do those sensors run on? Electricity, 24 hours a day? A little ironic that one of the suggested strategies for eliminating vampire appliances is to run out and buy more of them.
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Electric heaters - a better way...
Let's replace all electric heaters with computers of equal power output. It all ends up as heat anyhow, and if the computers were connected to the Web they could be working on numerical tasks for science while keeping our pinkies warm.
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Williedigital
"I was under the impression the base load plants (nuclear, coal) were designed in such a way that there was very little variability in their actual power output. Essentially, that they are designed to run 24/7 at essentially the same "speed" to maximize efficiency."
Nukes are like that. Coal is somewhat better, but still slow to make changes.
But those aren't the only two sources. Gas turbines, hydro, wind, and pumped-water storage (which isn't really a source) adapt much more rapidly to load changes. A typical hydro turbine can go from dead stop to 100% output in a few minutes.
"I was also under the impression that in most urban areas, nighttime "lulls" in electricity demand reduced overall electricity consumption to levels below what is produced by these baseload plants, which are still running because they are designed to always be running. It's quite possible that I'm wrong about both of these points, but I seem to remember that for the typical urban area, approx 70% of peak demand was met by base load plants, but that nighttime demand was less than half that of peak demand periods. Just doing the math in my head, that would indicate that there is "unused" electricity on the grid."
Electricity is a unique commodity in that it cannot be stored except by changing it into something else. There is no "unused" electricity on the grid, only unused *capacity*. There is always the possibility of reducing total output from various plants if demand drops.
Of course the best contribution can be made by reducing peak demand, because it is during peak times that the system has to run flat-out to meet demand.
The grid is actively managed by control centers that monitor demand and decide which plants need to generate how much to serve the various loads on a real-time basis.
If we all figured out how to reduce our electrical use by 10% (or whatever), the control centers will deal with it by generating less. It's what they do, and they are very very good at it.
How much difference shutting off various "vampire" loads will really make depends on what those loads really are. For example, if you have a computer/monitor/printer/cell charger/etc. household that draws 100 watts while in sleep/standby/hibernate/not being used mode, and it is idle 20 hours a day, it uses 7300 hours x .1 kilowatts = 730 kilowatt hours per year *in standby mode*. At 10 cents per kilowatt hour, that's $73 per year.
Your savings may vary...and that's the challenge.
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If you really want to get worked up...
check out how electrical rates vary across the USA:
http://www.econsci.com/rates/rates.html
All sorts of info broken down by region, type of customer, etc.
For residential use across the country, look at:
http://www.econsci.com/rates/residential.html
The lowest is 4.46 cents per kilowatt-hour (City of Tacoma WA)
The highest is 16.38 cents per kilowatt-hour (Con Ed, NY)
Imagine if the price of gasoline was that different across the nation...
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A little insight
I've had to deal with of these issues in the last couple of years buying new appliances for my own home. So this is what I have found: there are definitely more EnergyStar brands than Whirlpool. I have an LG refrigerator from 2004 and it's EnergyStar compliant, and I had a choice of a number of other brands (I believe GE, Maytag, Frigadaire and Samsung all made EnergyStar models). They do cost somewhat more, but I noticed a significant electricity savings over my replaced 14 year old refrigerator immediately. And the difference is significant, maybe $10 per month. And this was in '04, there should be more EnergyStar choices than that today.
Ditto for energy savings front loader washer/dryer pairs. Some people mistake the front loading washer's real contribution as less water: it does use less, but not as much as you think (check Consumer Reports for a detailed explanation). The real benefit is that it spins the clothes much, much drier -- which means they require less (expensive) drying time. (However, the choice of a matching dryer is purely aesthetic -- the dryers don't do anything special by themselves, although you should insist on a self-timing dryness sensor.)
Washing in cold water is an iffy proposition though -- maybe for lightly soiled items, towels, etc. It won't cut it for heavily soiled items, stinky stuff, diapers, etc. If you can't afford a front loading washer, it is more important that you recalibrate the washer water level to how much laundry is put in -- many people leave the setting at "full load" and use a whole tub of hot water to wash a few pairs of socks and undies. That's where your biggest waste comes in.
When I had to buy a new water heater about a year back, I looked into on-demand electric heaters. They are a great idea, but they have HUGE upfront installation costs, like over $3000. Depending on how you heat your water now, it could take a very long time to recoup. (I live in the Midwest, where we mostly heat with natural gas.) Furthermore, you need an entire on-demand unit for EACH bathtub/shower -- if you have 2 full bathrooms, that's six grand. In comparison, a good gas waterheater rated for 12 years costs under $400. (Interestingly, gas water heaters are not energy rated, and the only differences between models has to do with the sturdiness of the interior parts, and how long they are rated to last, usually 5-12 years. In other words, they are all equally inefficient.)
As a society, we've made a lot of piss poor decisions over the last few decades regarding energy useage, and we are paying for it now in the form of higher costs, and in time, we will be paying for environmentally. We've developed some awfully selfish greedy habits -- how many families own multiples of TVs, computers, video game machines, etc. and in the evening each family member is entrenched in their own room, burning up all that power? We can't even bear to watch the same TV shows at the same time, and god forbid we don't have TIVO or satellite cable, and 200+ channels to choose from.
And we've come to think that it is utterly normal to bath in steaming hot water one OR MORE times a day, and most women I know wash (and dry) their hair every single day. I'm not suggesting a return to filth, but this is cleanliness on an obsessive level.
Perhaps even more relevantly, we made some awful decisions in the 70s and 80s about not investing in nuclear power plants -- as they have in France, which is often held up as an ideal example -- and we did so largely because we heeded a lot of ignorant, left-leaning shrillness and the kind of snarky anti-nuke humor exemplified by The Simpsons (where father Homer is a lazy and neglient nuclear power worker, due to the anti-nuke sentiments of creator Matt Groenig). The sad results are that we now lack capacity in many areas, and use outdated, polluting methods of generating power.