Alternative Energy thread

We've replaced all the incandescent lightbulbs in our house with compact fluorescent bullbs. They now have the same color as incandescents, last 10 times longer, and use 1/4 the electricity. I've seen them sold at $8 for a six pack at Home Depot. Cuts down on your airconditioning load as well.

For saving on hot water, check out these drainwater heat recovery devices that recover 30-50% of the heat used when you take a shower by using the drainwater to preheat the cold water going to the hot water heater.
http://gfxtechnology.com/

 

Did I ever lose track of this thread. :?

Yes, you are correct, that they would still require more power than the rooftop commercial system could supply. We currently have more than enough generation capacity now to take care of this shortfall. As older dirtier plants get decomissioned, they can be replaced with wind farms, or large dedicated solar arrays. There is still some need for conventional power generation even under what I'm trying to envision as the next step in our power production grid. I believe that once solar systems become more widespread in use, this will also further drop the overall price per watt of the panels, making it easier for the consumer to purchase.

I think it would be an easy sell to a homeowner to fashion a package where they get all the power they need without major comprimise to their lifestyle, if you could get the package down to a few thousand dollars. Once this milestone is met, then the "conventional" systems become backup systems only. We're still a ways off from this though.

 

I haven't tried the recent CF bulbs. At least two years ago, when I last tried some, the color still wasn't there; and they didn't fit our lamps very well.

We do use fluorescent lights in various places in the house -- basically, spots where we will leave the lights on 24/7, or in the laundry room, where we find that fluorescent light makes it easier to find spots on clothing.

We've got this in our house -- added it when we remodeled some years ago. Unfortunately, I have no idea how much energy we've saved overall, because we didn't move into the house until after the modifications were done.

 

Funny that the topic came up of CF bulbs. I recently have gotten on CF bulb kick lately. In fact I was has Home Depot yesterday to buy a three pack. They certainly have come a ways since the early days. They will fit in just a about any fixture now. Also, the warm light ones are close to regular incandesents. There is some noticeable difference, but for the most part they are close in color temp. For grins I got a couple daylight ones and put them in the bedroom. The color of these lights are quite unique for bulbs as they do seem quite close to daylight. Kind of like seeing the difference between HID headlights and halogen headlights.

The next lights I'm thinking of tackling someday are those globe lights used in the bathroom. There are CF versions of those, but of course, not the clear ones I have in there now. Has anyone replaced the globe lamps with CF bulbs?

Another set of bulbs that will be a bit of a challenge are the ones I have in the ceiling fan on a dimmer. They do have dimmable ones out there but they are not as common. So also, has anyone done anything with the dimmable CF bulbs?

 

I've lurked this thread for a while now and I would like to make a few points.

Wolfman- I love you sir, but solar panels are currently averaging 5.06 USD per watt and the lowest cost available is 4.32 USD. This is just the cost of the panel and the total cost of a grid tied system is between 9 and 12 USD. Stand alone systems are substantially more and their batteries would be replaced on a semi-regular basis. If you ignore the cost of the interest on the capex, and give the panels a 30 year lifespan and no maintainence allowance, then the cost per kilowatt hour is around 30 cents. If you figure the cost of the capex and maintainence, forget it. We pay around 10 cents per Kwh. Solar panels have other problems as well. If they are roof mounted, you will need to remove them when you do roofing repairs and that is if they don't cause the leak in the first place.

I really want solar to work. I'm kind of excited by the possibilities that nanotechnology might bring to the PV and storage battery industries. Until they reduce the cost per watt by something like an order of magnitude, solar is not going to help us. The price per watt has actually been rising slightly for the past 5 months which is a historic reversal of downward pricing trends.

On another note, GFX technologies in a residential application is PURE snakeoil. I won't even waste the keystrokes to describe in how many ways this is just BS buck grabbing. The energy savings possible in a typical residential application will not even equal the embodied energy in this product.

Oh, I really should just hit the delete key but I can't help myself so I submit this in good faith and with apologies in advance for those whose toes I may be stepping on. The last time I posted something like this on priuschat, the site crashed about three minutes later and a months worth of postings were lost. Oh well, here goes.

 

Aaaaaaaagh!!! I\'ve gone blind!!!

Oops, sorry, false alarm -- not your fault, Ray. I fell asleep, and the cat climbed on my face.

 

ray;

the prices you quote are waay different from what ive seen. there is a retired (semi anyway i think) computer engineer living just east of Monterey Bay. he is a conservationist who has done a lot towards doing what he thinks is right. he has a solar array at his house and i admit, his is not totally roof mounted and his computer background no doubt aided in his ability to do it well.

he has a website where he has links to what he did with his house.

you might want to check out the rest of his website. in it is pictures of every inch of the California Coastline. some fabulous scenery. he did the pictures to get a reference point to track the erosion of the coastlines and any possible parallels to civilization.

http://www.californiacoastline.org/

 

This is a good source of actual pricing of solar cells. I think you will find it to be the most comprehensive and current info available on solar energy costs.

http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm

The info I gave is all well researched and documented. I have even more interest in home energy conservation than I do in the Prius. I develop energy conserving building systems for residential construction. My home is as advanced as my car in that regard.

The goal is to have a very comfortable luxury home that has an electrical load that is low enough to be satisfied with solar energy. I intend to be able to use 900 sq. ft. of PVs to power my home and charge my future fully electric car. The technology that must be improved, is in the cost and efficiency of the PVs, the batteries (both for the home and the car) and in the lighting. I believe nanotechnology will get us where we need to be on all the remaining issues.

On the HVAC side, we are already there. Our heating and cooling loads are already improved to the point that they are no longer a cost effective target for improvement. Hot water is already there as well. Our indoor air quality is excellent and the durability of the structures is far superior to normal wood frame construction methods. The cost of our methods is no greater than a typical custom home We cannot yet compete with low-end production housing but we are not that far off. The future looks bright.

 

i posted a while ago about adding solar to my family's house. We pull 54,000 KW'h a year... don't shun me.

I'm slowly switching my family over to instant on compact forescents. Although never instant.. it's not too bad.

 

Anyone know of a good place to order bulbs from? or a good local store to pick up bulbs from? i know home depot has the recessed lighting bulbs we need. but there are other specialty bulbs we need. bathroom lights? the clear ones? recessed lighting.. might need to just replace the units... and we have others that are smaller 25 watt bults.. kinda look like flames (the make simular models that flicker like fire)

 

Ace hardware near me sells these bulbs for an extremely good price. They have stores nationwide.

I have no idea how their selection might differ from state to state but the Ames in Rhode Island have a great selection.

They have real small ones that go up to 100 watt output so they can fit where incandescent bulbs go.

Here's a store locator
http://ace.inserts2online.com/zipStateLocator.jsp

 

I came across these guys in a Google search for CF bulbs: http://www.buylighting.com/ It looks like they have a nice variety of CF bulbs in different color temps, etc. Also, some of those dimmable ones I have been looking for.

 

i dont think that current pricing for solar should be a consideration for a move towards solar.

prices are set by market conditions. if solar had 30% penetration into 30% of all major markets in the US do you still think you would be paying those prices?

EVERY ultility was heavily subsidized. if solar received a tenth of the backing, it would be a fraction of the cost it is now

 

Current pricing must be a consideration in any move towards solar.

Solar energy is already receiving major subsidies in many major markets. In nearby Austin Tx. the rebates are approximately half of the total upfront cost. The current rise in panel costs is directly related to massive German subsidies putting pressure on the supply side. The longer that the solar industry is developed in a lean and mean atmosphere, the better off we will be in the long run. Dumping massive government subsidies on a fledgling industry is a recipe for corruption, waste, and bad public perception.

The technology needed to bring solar energy into the mainstream is only just now being developed. Once the product becomes an apparent value on its own merit, then the changeover will begin.

It is not just PVs that need to be developed for this to work. We will also need efficient and low cost storage systems before solar energy can become a major player. As long as the we use the grid as our storage system, we will always need massive conventional power plants and solar energy will remain a fringe source of additional power that serves to primarily shift the peak load period from day to night.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ray Moore\";p=\"68637)</div>

This is a good point and I agree completely, but the current business model favors the entrenched energy providers and encourages them to remain entrenched. Leaving it to a free market would work only if we truly had a free market. The very definition of "entrenched" means that those that are entrenched have innapropriate control over the market, the antithesis of free.
Make no mistake about it, the free market will eventually solve this problem, but can we afford to wait for oil to run out for REAL alternatives to be considered? I don't think we can.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ray Moore\";p=\"68637)</div>

Again, an insightful point. But lets not forget that the major players in energy told us that the kinds of batteries needed to run hybrids or plug-in hybrids did not exist and would not exist for decades. Then Toyota went out and did it. The Prius 04-5 battery is 1/2 the size of the original with twice the power. Who knows what they could do if they started 25 years ago.

And if we had no government investment in big public works projects like what a solar project would become, then we wouldn't have electrified nearly the entire USA, we wouldnt have the Hoover dam, and we wouldn't have the Interstate highway system.

And most of all, we wouldn't have Teflon or Tang. :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(V8Cobrakid\";p=\"68514)</div>

It all depends on what is driving that level of consumption in your home. Let's play a numbers game for a moment: Equally divided over 12 months and you're using 4,500 KWH a month.

Up here you will easily use that much in an average 1,300 sq ft bungalow with electric baseboard heat and two cars plugged in 24x7. With Manitoba Hydro it would cost you around $290 taxes in.

Is it a huge house, more than 5,000 sqft? Therefore high demands for HVAC? Especially multiple A/C systems? Swimming pool heater??

Although lighting can amount to a good 1/3 or more of a typical non-electric heat power bill, you also have to examine where heavy demand is coming from. I doubt you're using electric baseboard heat and I doubt you have two cars plugged in at -40.

If the house is huge with the typical "glass wall" facing south, your A/C bills will be enormous. There are various exterior window treatments (Awnings, films, fabrics, etc) that can make a huge difference in cooling costs.

I've seen folks in Mesquite Nevada, a popular Snow Bird retreat, put something that looks like nylon window screen on the *outside* of the window. This blocks just enough of the solar gain to dramatically lower cooling costs.

 

let's start with size. approximately 4,000 square feet. A/C system is not very effective. I told them i wanted to install line boosters.. they simply didn't understand why.

Design: we have windows.. after a very expensive renovation we replaced all of them with new fiberglass double pain windows... all except a few.. which i'm not sure why we didn't yet.

Electricity from lights is a huge part. 500 gallon shark tank is a huge part. Spa is a decent amount. Most is probably from lights and the shark tank. i've already cut bulb output by almost 1,000 watts. There is this one light we have taht currently pulls about 360 watts.. it's inside.. it's an entry light with way too many bulbs in it. If i were to replace it with 15w CF then it would pull 90 watts. We have a lot of recessed lighting. i changed the bulbs in our hallway. 200 less watts with more light. but yeah.. the list goes on.

as for lighting. the majority is that light, which i shut off constantly. the dining room light which uses funky smaller bulbs. then there is my parents room which i think currently pulls 520 watts. The kitchen which pulls about the same. The outside lights pull about the same too. outside lights are left on for at least 4 hours at a time. Parents rooms lights are always on.. and yeah.

I think changing all the bulbs over would be a good starting investment.

 

Cobra-
How many tons of AC are you running?

 

*shrug*

 

Wow -- big tank! If I may ask, what sort of sharks? Nurse? Leopard?