Good Power Question

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/05/02/1539221.shtml

What hobbyist level things can I do to add renewable electricity to my existing home?

What things can I do to lower our current electical usage?

Slashdot can be scary... reading a few of these, and there are so many experts out there who don't know their head from their ass.

Easiest tell... current /= voltage..... anyone who uses them interchangably will kill themselves.

Atomm wrote:http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/08/05/02/1539221.shtml

What hobbyist level things can I do to add renewable electricity to my existing home?

What things can I do to lower our current electical usage?

Just take a common sense approach to this. I liked the solar attic fan, that was pretty nifty. I also liked the one guys approach to using solar panels just for his 10000btu AC unit. To tie handyman projects back into the grid with a $2k switch is stupid unless your generating mucho wattage.

Again, if I lived in a sunny state, I would of tried everything under the sun to save a buck, F' the green bs, but to save a buck for sure. As mentioned there also, the Solar HWHeating is more savings. Put what you save into gasoline.

This stuff can work, but its a shame when big brother steps in and regulates it to the point where you give up.

Best solution is if your going to generate enough energy for any material use, simply pickup a scissor switch used to disconnect certain circuits and turn them over to a generator. This costs about $500 and you can control up to 20 circuits. This could be automated by timers and transfered back to your power box for nighttime.

I've got a lot to learn about this stuff.

I think the first thing I'm going to do is evaluate my current electrical usage and figure out how to control it better.

Are there any easy ways to handle vampire appliances? I need something my wife won't have to mess with when she wants to watch TV. Otherwise, I'd uplug the master power strip.

I try to keep it simple and not go too extremes on this topic:

- Recycle
- Don't waste water
- Going to install ridge vents in attic (no electric fans)
- May install a heat barrier as well
- Will replace my 15 year old AC units and hot water heater with energy efficient ones
- Buy LED and energy saving light bulbs when I can
- Try to turn off my monitors when not in use

I'm sure I could improve on things if I really tried, but these are easy and I think they help!!

There are special circuits and switches that you can now buy that detect vampire devices and only power them up when you put something on them, like plugging in a cell phone, etc. Beware, they will cost more than the vampire devices themselves will ever use. I think most if not all green solutions are going to cost you more, and may never pay off enough to cover the costs.

LED lights when they become available perhaps. The twisted 'green' lights are filled with mercury so I wouldn't advise them to anyone that has children. You need a hazmat crew out to clean up if one falls and breaks ;p For the life of me, I could never understand how anyone could work under those lights, then come home and use them, uggghhhh!

Oh for the love of Christ! NEVER buy a electric HWT, ever! Worse energy wasting appliance in your home. Spend the $1000 and get an instantaneous propane version if your house isn't tied into the natural gas company. While your at it, dump the electric stove, space heaters, electric dryer, and put those on propane/natural gas at the same time.

Yap, a 15yr old AC window unit can use up to twice the amount of electric that a cheap $100 new one will. It will only cost you $75 each to throw away the old ones ;p

Things I'd definitely already be using if I was in a 150+ sunny day location: Replace all outside lighting with solar power ones w/battery backups. The attic fans were nifty, and built to install and forget about for 20 years. I'd definitely have enough panels to power the AC during the daytime, and for sure I'd have some setup of H water heating going on from the roof. You don't need mirrors or tracking mirrors, just black box with timed water transfer. Store your water at least a 80gal tank stored underground, or in the corner of your basement if you have one. Just buy a steel glass lined tank and cinderblock it into the corner and fill 6" around it with quickqrete.

Timers, X10 with home controlled software, remote and motion detection equipped rooms you can shave even more power. I'd say you can shave up to 70% of your electric bill once you make the big ticket purchases such as removing heating with any electricity.

Lexx, Texas is a big Natural Gas State. It's the whole Oil situation down here. Even in our crappy house, the Heat, Water Heater, Dryer and Stove/Oven are all Natural Gas.

X10 is one router. I'm actually looking into the GE Smarthome stuff. Amazon has a bunch of programable systems that sync with either a small adapter that fits between the plug and wall or a device that fits between the bulb and lamp. The controller can be programmed to turn things off and on. I plan on putting this on all the main lights and adding a movement detector for the hall light so the little one can set it off if she needs to go to the bathroom. She hates dark halls, so it should be fun.

I was really impressed by how affordable the GE Smarthome stuff was. I did read that there are two lines. If you decide to look into this, keep in mind that the Plus controllers can control any of them, but the basic controllers can only control the basic modules.

BTW, how important are the attic fans? How do the metal turbine things play into this? I can't remember what they are called, but ours don't move so well.

I plan on working up a solution for the vampire stuff. Will a power strip that is set off actually stop the flow of juice?

Atomm wrote:I was really impressed by how affordable the GE Smarthome stuff was. I did read that there are two lines. If you decide to look into this, keep in mind that the Plus controllers can control any of them, but the basic controllers can only control the basic modules.

BTW, how important are the attic fans? How do the metal turbine things play into this? I can't remember what they are called, but ours don't move so well.

I plan on working up a solution for the vampire stuff. Will a power strip that is set off actually stop the flow of juice?

Don't forget with the x10, you will need to purchase a phase connector. It connects to both phases in your circuit panel so you don't have to switch circuit breakers around. X10 is great, but I've found some of it is flakey at times, and/or the wall switches are kinda funky.

The turbines are generally great, but the bearings wear out. If they are going slow, its time to replace them or install attic fans. I prefer the fans myself. They last forever and rarely run that much. Supplement them with a full ridge vent, not those little 12" ones here and there and you have a pretty efficient cooling solution. Don't forget to include a vent in your upper floor hallway ceiling to draw heat from the second floor, providing your using window AC units and want to help them work better.

I've rigged up a lamp timer to a power strip in the kitchen where I put my battery charger units. Its set to turn on/off 12a to 4p daily. Set it for the times that make sense. When the power is off, its off. Now some of the smart units can be adapted to your home entertainment system, but those have an annoying way of losing your electronic settings, but you can separate out things like PStations, etc, that use power blocks on a seperate power strip.

Remember this stuff is all cut and dry. The problem stems from wiffy and daughters that have never paid a bill. Getting them to turn off a light can be a major pain in the ass. The more automated and dummy proof you can make it, the better 🙂

No Window AC units here either...everyone has central. So when I said AC unit, sorry I meant the 2 outside fans and the main units in the attic. I wish they were only $100!

In the market for a new video card? Consider N9600 GT "Hybrid Freezer" from MSI. It runs in two modes; a low power one for general word processing and web browsing, and a full on mode for gaming. From the sound of it, it basically shuts off the fan for low demand use, saving some electricity and relies on thicker heat pipes to remove the heat from the chip.

Estimate is for a cost in the $160+ range. I can't find any information on how much less power it uses in the low demand mode.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1622/

or

http://www.goodcleantech.com/2008/05/msi_p...ofriendly_n.php

I call shenanigans on this... what does it cost to power the fan .5 watts? Granted the amount of energy the card is drawing will change based on what you are doing... a game draws more than excel, but that regulation of power is already happening. So the only thing this saves you is the fan. Bill it as quieter, but not greener.

I want to see numbers!!!

Overclockers have been doing this forever. They use NTune to make their fan run at a certain speed under regular mode and full on under stress.

Atomm wrote:Overclockers have been doing this forever. They use NTune to make their fan run at a certain speed under regular mode and full on under stress.

And many MB will do it with the system fan