Saving electricity

[kiotiken]

Okay... but isn't the nuke just heating water and the steam used to run the turbine ??? So just open a valve & vent the steam if you don't need the power.
Just a few miles (sorry, kms) down the road from me at Hwy401 & Trafalgar Road is a natural gas generation facility put up by TransCanada. It is supposedly just a 'backup' facility, for when demand is high. Well, you can see the vapors from the stacks pretty much every day, so I suppose they're burning gas to keep the water boiling, and venting the steam until they need to run the generators ?
Why not do it with nukes ? Maybe it's not as simple as that.

Pete

I can't say that I know enough to say why it couldn't be done either, but that sounds good to me. I think for the millions we spend "giving" power away, we could come up with something to be able to more easily switch the generators on and off more easily.

We should find an old reservoir up on a hill somewhere and use the extra power to pump water up to it when we have too much. When we need more, let it out and use it for generation. There has to be something better we can do than pay millions to give it away.

 

[kiotiken]

Wes, I could argue a few of your points, but I'm with you on # 2.

Our house has plaster walls, the plaster is close to 1 inch thick. Consider all that mass, and furniture, etc. in the house, to warm up.
When I tried a set-back thermostat, it would take over an hour of the furnace running non-stop to bring the house temp up just a few degrees.
Seemed to take away all the savings of reducing the temp.
If we go away for a weekend, I'll set it back manually, but for day-to-day, for me it ain't worth it.

Pete

I'd argue that with new building techniques that provide a well insulated, completely sealed envelop around the building, your results would be different.

 

[NorTracNY]

Wow 32 posts and I didn't see anyone mention putting up a close line!

If you're using a significant amount of electricity each month be sure to know how to account for it. Kill-a-Watt was mentioned. I know I don't want to be paying for something that I don't even know why I'm using it. If you go and use the meter on just your few major appliances and can only account for 50% of your electricity, you need to do some serious investigating. Maybe your neighbor has an extention cord you hadn't noticed.

 

[aczlan]

I'd argue that with new building techniques that provide a well insulated, completely sealed envelop around the building, your results would be different.

True, but that would cost more to build than would be saved in energy costs...

Aaron Z

 

[KTurner]

Wow 32 posts and I didn't see anyone mention putting up a close line!

Actually, I mentioned that in post #5. Last line in a long post though, so easy to miss...

Keith

 

[RobertBrown]

Wow 32 posts and I didn't see anyone mention putting up a close line!

Post #23 I was looking for the same thing. It's a glaringly obvious way to save power.....

I have always had a solar powered clothes dryer and prefer it that way.

It is surprising that more people don't use these. That saves a bundle right there. Doesn't really take much longer where I live, especially this time of year.

 

[3930dave]

10 kwh/day is a ballpark. A bad month (heavy AC or heavy block heater use, not normal) will push 15 kwh/day. Normal is 10-12 kwh/day. (All #s averaged over a month).

For the folks that pay attention (like us), you pretty quickly realize how we are being "gamed". For someone with a $200-$300+/month, getting dinged for another $5-$10/month is just noise. A friend tells of often thinking his family has been abducted, and replaced by TVs - he often comes home to find 4+ TVs running, and nobody there.

Good examples in this thread about people conserving extensively/consistently, and still get bills for $100+/month - gotta pay for those Ontario Hydro jets somehow, eh ! As the consumer bills continue to drift towards 90%+ in "gaming" fees, and < 10% for real consumption, more of us will be taking a closer look at this.

This is getting bad enough that if you can shed your heavy electrical loads, it may be getting close to the point where you can set up a 12v generator (gas/diesel/propane engine + 12v alternator) and run your light loads (inverters are very low cost now, compared to even 10 years ago) cheaper than being on the grid.

I think I want to be a major corporation - don't pay taxes, and get free power - sounds like a good deal to me !

Seriously though, just being off Time of Use (as most business accounts are here) would be a big benefit. Try fighting your bill when the utility computer decides that most of your use has been during Peak Time - good luck with that.

Unfortunately, this is another good example of us peasants having to pay ALL the freight. At the risk of overstating the obvious, when I use the phrase "gamed" above, we all know I mean something more explicit.

(Good point about outdoor clotheslines, been doing that 20+ years here).

Rgds, D.

 

[Highbeam]

There are lots of fads aroudn being green. The biggest and dumbest is this supposed phantom load from wall warts. It's just not significant. I measured all of my wall warts combined on a power strip and every one I could find was less than three watts combined. Give me a break, it is not worth screwing around with wall warts.

I also measured my deep freeze freezer which sets out in a non-heated room off the garage. It was using less than 2 kwh a day or 20 cents. Ooooh, big deal, 6$ a month.

I happen to know a little bit about thermodynamics and I disagree with the above theory that a warmer ambient temp makes a more efficient freezer. That's just totally silly. For one thing, the freezer will gain more heat from the room with higher ambient temps so the load is greater. Secondly, the heat sink (room air) being warmer means that there is a smaller differential between the coils and the heat sink so a less efficient transfer of heat from the freezer to the room which is how a freezer cools the icebox. It is true that some freezers have design parameters that make them not function at very very low temperatures, think below freezing, but a cooler room makes a more efficient freezer.

My big energy hogs are water heat, clothes dryer, and the hot tub on my patio. Not much you can do about them except more efficient use of hot water with better devices, HE clothes washer to predry the clothes as well as possible, and not using the tub.

 

[kiotiken]

There are lots of fads aroudn being green. The biggest and dumbest is this supposed phantom load from wall warts. It's just not significant. I measured all of my wall warts combined on a power strip and every one I could find was less than three watts combined. Give me a break, it is not worth screwing around with wall warts.

Well, I bet you I could find AT LEAST ten of them plugged in around my house. If your 3 watts is right, that's 30 watts per hour (.03 kwh) X 24hrs a day = .75 kwh / day. You might still say who cares, but if you're trying to get down to 10 kwh / day like some here say they are, that's 7.5% of your daily usage, for nothing.

Phantom loads also refer to everything else like the T.V sitting on standby, the microwave, clock radios, coffee maker, anything that has a remote control etc that all have a small phantom load, but together, they can start to register.

I also measured my deep freeze freezer which sets out in a non-heated room off the garage. It was using less than 2 kwh a day or 20 cents. Ooooh, big deal, 6$ a month.

Again, it may be on a percentage of daily use.

I happen to know a little bit about thermodynamics and I disagree with the above theory that a warmer ambient temp makes a more efficient freezer. That's just totally silly. For one thing, the freezer will gain more heat from the room with higher ambient temps so the load is greater. Secondly, the heat sink (room air) being warmer means that there is a smaller differential between the coils and the heat sink so a less efficient transfer of heat from the freezer to the room which is how a freezer cools the icebox. It is true that some freezers have design parameters that make them not function at very very low temperatures, think below freezing, but a cooler room makes a more efficient freezer.

I've been waiting for somebody to correct this, I didn't feel like getting into it.

 

[Bird]

I happen to know a little bit about thermodynamics and I disagree with the above theory that a warmer ambient temp makes a more efficient freezer. That's just totally silly.

Maybe not so silly in reality. Maybe it's a matter of terminology. I won't say more or less "efficient" but I have a 2-door refrigerator (freezer on top) in my shop/recreation room and the manual shows in bold print:

CAUTION Do not install the refrigerator where the temperature will drop below 55 degrees F (13 C) or rise above 110F. At these temperature extremes the compressor will not be able to maintain the proper temperatures inside the refrigerator.

A few years ago, I forgot, or had overlooked, that part of the manual, and even called a service man because I could not get the freezer temperature much below 32F. The freezer in the house is set for 0 degrees F. But the ambient temperature in the shop was a little below 50F and that was the problem. So whether you want to use the word "efficient" or not, this one doesn't work too well below 50F and works great at 60-85F. I guess it might not be more efficient if you're talking about the amount of electricity used, but warmer ambient temperture is sure more efficient at getting the temperture down in the freezer.:laughing: