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My Christmas lights this year are now “award-winning!” We won the Town of Tonawanda Paramedics Award for Best Classic Display for the 2007 Ken-Ton Energy Efficient Holiday Decorating Contest (try saying that in 1 breath)!

So what’s so energy efficient about my display?

• The lights flash on and off to the music. On average, less than 1/3 of my lights are on at a time (if I have everything on, it uses about 1.6 Kw of energy… when it’s running, it stays at about 550 watts)
• We only run the lights a few hours a night (3-4). Because of the speaker, I don’t want to disturb the neighbors too much. As I drive to the gym at 5:45 in the morning, I’m amazed at how many people just leave their lights on all night long.
• The spotlight on my sign is an LED spotlight. That baby uses 1.5 watts / hr; my average cost of electricity is $0.15 / Kwh, so running it for an hour costs me $0.000225. Or, I can run it for nearly 45 hours and it’ll cost me $0.01.
• All of the power in the house is provided by Green Mountain Energy Corporation. Currently, that’s 90% hydroelectric and 10% New Wind. (For comparison, the average mix of resources supplying New York includes: Natural Gas (22%), Nuclear (29%), Hydroelectric (18%), Coal (15%), Oil (14%), and Other (<3%)).

Mr. Parker: It’s a Major Award!
Swede: Shucks I wouldn’t know that. It looks like a lamp.
Mr. Parker: What is a lamp, you nincompoop? It’s a Major Award. I won it!
Swede: Damn, hell, you say won it?
Mr. Parker: Yeah, mind power, Swede; mind power.

This entry was posted by Eric on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 4:26 pm and is filed under Christmas, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

A few months ago I compared Al Gore’s House vs. mine. I recently finished the “upgrade windows” project, so all that’s left now is the solar panels (by 2010 – that’s my goal).

The new windows are great – no more drafty spots in the house, no warm areas & cool areas, and I can’t believe how quiet these things are! I don’t hear the cars stopping & leaving the corner, and I barely hear the super-loud motorcycle that comes down the street every night.

On a windy, blustery day like today, they’re well worth it. I want to see my next heating bill!!!

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 9:49 pm and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Exciting title, eh? Some things on my mind…

I saw a cool episode of Modern Marvels on TV last night, all about renewable energy. It was so good, I saved it on the Tivo, so I can burn a DVD then rip the DVD and put the episode on my iPod. Then, in the middle of the show, a little ad appeared that Modern Marvels is available on iTunes! I’m so excited… this particular show isn’t on yet, but others are. I wonder how long they take to get posted online?

Also yesterday, it was a big delivery day at my house. I received an order from Land’s End, which included a pair of Beach Trekkers. I love them… they’re just a bit big. I should’ve ordered a 1/2 size smaller, since you don’t wear socks with them. So I called them up, and was talking to a person before it even rang on the other side! And… get this: the person was speaking perfect English! On a Saturday morning, I called customer service and spoke to a real person within 2 seconds. Amazing. The exchange process was even easier… she took my new order, and when they arrive, I can choose which pair to keep, and either return the other using the prepaid postage label or take it to my local Sears store. Land’s End has just won a lot of my future clothes shopping.

I also received a couple books from Amazon.com, along with Snatch on DVD, and a Christmas decoration that, I must say, I’m a bit disappointed in. Oh well, good thing Christmas is still 4-1/2 months away!

This entry was posted by Eric on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 10:46 am and is filed under Energy, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Al Gore, the environmental activist stung by criticism over his house’s energy efficiency, said Friday that renovations are nearly complete to make it a model “green” home.

Aside from the solar panels, I don’t know what else he’s actually done, since there are a bunch of things he’s still planning on doing:

• install a geothermal system that will, among other things, drastically reduce the cost of heating his pool.
• upgrade windows and ductwork.
• install more energy-efficient light bulbs.
• create a rainwater collection system for irrigation and water management.

Compare that to my plans:

• Solar panels in 3 years, when the price is right. Sorry, it’s not ALL about the environment… I need to make sound financial decisions, too
• Install a solar heater for the pool – DONE! And the pool is already warmer this year than it ever has been. We hit 78 yesterday!
• Upgrade windows – hopefully this will be done this year. Depends on the finances. 22 windows cost a lot of money to replace.
• Install more energy-efficient light bulbs – DONE!
• Create a rainwater collection system for irrigation and water management – DONE!

So Al’s got a big one out of the way… I’ve done the inexpensive ones so far. Now I need to figure out the windows & how to pay for them. They’d take 23 years to payback, assuming my assumptions are correct, and save $10k over 30 years (gross savings of $27,500 over that time, minus the cost of windows and finance charges is $10,000 savings).

The funny thing is, Huges Co. probably would’ve gotten my business for windows, doors and a solar system months ago, but they refused to install storm doors. So for $400 in storm doors, they walked away from a $35,000 job. Oh well, I’d rather work with Stockmohr, anyhow, for the windows.

This entry was posted by Eric on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 9:22 am and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

I got a lot done this weekend, which is good because I hate wasting life away doing nothing.

On Friday, I got some pool chemicals & took off the winter cover – the water was BLACK. Remember back in October we had a little storm? Well, that threw tree branches through the winter cover, allowing leaves & other stuff in the water. We tried cleaning it in November, but didn’t have enough time. However, since the pump wasn’t hooked up, I couldn’t do anything with it.

On Saturday Mr. Bishop & I hooked the solar heater up to the pool. I think it’s going to work great, since I burned my hand on the roof while up there. The temperature up there was at least 120°, if not as high as 140. There are now 72, 1/4″ black tubes that carry the water along the roof, heating up before going back into the pool. Photos coming soon. Of course, we get that hooked up, pump going, and a hose breaks – after all the pool stores are closed. So I had to stop the pool from draining into the backyard, and turn off the pump.

Since Mr. Bishop helped me on Saturday, I went up to the cottage on Sunday with Jason and helped cut the grass & dig up a new garden. Nothing mind-blowing… just lots of manual labor. We did, however, find a stone path leading to the cottage that’s at least 35 years old, since Mom Bishop doesn’t remember it being there, but we dug it up while putting in the garden. That slowed us down a bit. Can’t wait for harvest time to eat the veggies that we worked so hard to get planted.

We got home Sunday just in time to fix the pool, get the pump turned on again, and watch it POUR outside. I figured (incorrectly) that it’d take 3″ of water to fill the rain barrel. Here’s what I thought:

It’s a 58 gallon barrel
58 US gallons = 13 398.0001 cubic inches
My roof (back 1/2) is about 20 feet by 30 feet. That’s 600 square feet, or 86,400 square inches.

That’s where I screwed up the first time… I took 600 * 12, not 600*12*12. So now,

13,398 / 86,400 = 0.155. Really, it only takes .16, or far less than a quarter inch of rain to fill the barrel. Needless to say, after yesterday’s rains, the barrel was overflowing & I switched the bypass on & put the water into the storm sewer. And now I have 58 gallons of rainwater stored up, ready to use for the lawn & gardens.

The pool is now a blue-gray color, with just a few leaves in the middle that need to be scooped out. We should be swimming in there next weekend, if the weather’s nice!

This entry was posted by Eric on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 8:49 am and is filed under Energy, Family, Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

In a typical business that involves the modification of materials to create a product, ideally the cost of the product is greater than the cost of the goods + cost of labor. That’s called profit. For a business, profit is good.

Still with me? Simple so far.

So let’s say that a product costs $3. Labor is $2 and you sell for $8. You profit $3 ($8 (sell price) – $3 (raw materials) – $2 (labor) = $3).

Now, to increase profits (per piece), you either get the product cheaper, get more for your buck from the labor department, or increase the selling price. However, any of these can cause adverse effects, like a cheaper quality product, or fewer sales because of the higher selling price.

Long intro, but here’s the big point: there are businesses that pay negative money for their raw materials! What I mean is, they get PAID to TAKE the raw materials. A few examples of free or negative-cost materials:

• RWA Resource Recovery – They pick up used kitchen grease (at no cost to the restaurant), clean it, and sell as biofuel
• Modern Corporation takes used tires, chips them up, and sells the byproduct as a track/playground surface or as a fuel that burns cleaner than coal. These guys are amazing… they also operate landfills, which give off methane gas. Most landfill operators vent the gas into the air; Modern captures the gas and burns it in generators to power nearby homes. Burning methane gas gives off ANOTHER by-product: heat. The heat is then pumped into greenhouses where they grow vegetables and sell in local supermarkets. A landfill operator, selling vegetables.
• Changing World Technologies converts “organic waste from chickens, cows, hogs, onions, and Parmesan cheese into light crude oil”. Again, something that was going to be thrown away, possibly having to pay to dispose of, getting new life.

If you can come up with a business model that uses waste to create a high-demand product, you may as well be printing money.

This entry was posted by Eric on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 1:07 pm and is filed under Business, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.