Bill Gates calls for 'Energy Miracles'

[Gary]

Yes, great pics Greg.. I am wondering what people are paying for setups like those, especially the people who are energy independent. Must be a decent amount considering once you do it, no more utilities...

[gmeast]

each case different

Yes, great pics Greg.. I am wondering what people are paying for setups like those, especially the people who are energy independent. Must be a decent amount considering once you do it, no more utilities...

Hi Gary,

The installation in that last pic was a no-brainer for the customer. That installation cost them about $36,000. That included a propane back-up generator that only runs when it enters "exercise" mode (running only to make sure it still runs).

They put a manufactured home on a nice hillside lot. The local utility (SDG&E, Sempra, sometimes it was Duke Energy) was going to charge them $70,000 to hook up to the utilities. That settled that.

People who go 'off-grid' don't qualify for the state grants like grid-tied customers do, so they paid 100% of the costs ... no buy-down. However there were grants and discounts they took advantage for things like batteries and some related hook-up hardware. These are available form more local sources and the Feds. They are hard to find. You have to go search out these grants, discounts and other programs ... they won't come to you.

Thanks,

Greg

[ewizard]

Having lived in the Rockies it is definitely one of the places for solar with some areas getting an average 300 to 330 days a year of sunshine. Unfortunately I think it's one of the few areas that get enough solar to make such houses grid independent. We need another source of power for much of the rest of the world to at least supplement solar.

[Aaron]

start with good insulation/radiant package

I still firmly believe that the house should be built around a strong radiant
barrier and insulation solution moving towards R100 as a standard. If you
keep your heat in the winter and keep it out in the summer at a very high
efficiency, then your energy needs are down to next to nothing then it
becomes financially practical to get off the grid with solar or whatever else.

50% of the average American's energy bill is heating/cooling so if that is
down to next to nothing, the energy need for a home just dropped in half
and the solar panel quantity requirement just dropped in half or whatever
proportionate amount.

From October to the present time, I have used 3 cords of wood at $185
per cord and one 220 gallon tank of oil that I just had refilled. I bought that
oil at about $2.20/gallon. The replacement oil just recently was about $2.90
per gallon or so. The woodstove is a Lopi Answer, which is one of the most
energy efficient non-catalytic fireplace inserts available.

So October to now I spent $1039 to heat a little over 1600 square feet to
73F, I like to keep it warm. I don't believe in having to wear a sweater in
my home to "save energy." So that is $148/month over this time or an
average of $86/month over the year for heating. My cooling bill is
non-existent. I simply open my attic access panel and put a box fan
over the opening and blow the air into the attic. Cool air from my basement
goes under the basement door and towards the fan and out my attic
cooling the whole house for practically free. A box fan running in a place
where electric cost is 5.5 cents per kwh is cheap!

The biggest weakness in my house is the original insulation in the walls,
which I'm not going to do anything about. But I may put on a R20 paint
coating on the outside of the house when I repaint, which will reduce
those heating cost even more.

I have a foot of insulation in my attic with radiant foil barrier on top of it
all, nasa ceramic additive on every square inch of paint inside the house,
and low-e energy star windows with triple silver glaze radiant barrier
coating on them.

To do it from scratch, I'd build a stabilized earth brick home with r20
insulation (not just radiant) coating on the outside - it's transparent.
And with the same coating on the inside of the home under the paint,
it would be close to R100. That is my goal when I sell this house, which
I'm too busy to think about that right now. But starting with a home
with a top notch insulative/radiant solution will make it practical to get
off grid, in my opinion anyway. And that kind of home is way more
inexpensive than a conventional stick built or other home. It is literally,
dirt cheap.

[Gary]

Aaron, I must be doing something wrong then because where I am I do not have to heat or cool my house 90% of the year and I am still paying a huge electric bill!

[Aaron]

high bills?

Gary,

Is a pool heated often? Or maybe a bunch of music studio equipment?
How much do you pay per kilowatt hour? We're a little less than 6 cents
per kilowatt hour here.

Most people won't benefit from something called power factor correction
for their home electricity. That correction means to "align" the volts and
amps so to speak so that there aren't a lot of surges on the line from a
lot of inductive loads like power transformers, etc... But in your case,
if you do have a significant amount of electronics like a studio where a lot
of inductive loads on big amps are going off/on or something like that,
you may actually benefit from power factor correction. My house, I probably
wouldn't tell a difference.

You can get a kilowatt meter
P3 - Kill A Watt
for around $30 or so. You plug it into the wall and you can plug things
into it to see what volts/amps/watts is being drawn. You can punch in
how much per kilowatt hour your electricity costs and it will tell you how
much that thing you have plugged into the meter will cost you per hour/
day/month/year, etc...

It will also show you the Power Factor (PF). 1.0 is perfect and most things
will be under that. Real old refrigerators might be 0.5 - my friend's parents
have one of those. That means it will put a lot of surges on the line,
which means they're paying for power that isn't being used. My fridge
came power factor corrected and was 0.98 when I measured it.

The correction is basically capacitor(s) matched to the power supply,
appliance, etc... so when the power transformer kicks off and on, it doesn't
have to pull a surge on the line, it takes that initial inhalation from the
capacitor preventing the surge.

Greg and others here probably have actual experience in the field with
this. Power companies will either fine or will completely yank a business
like some industrial site if their power factor is too low because it strains
everything.

Maybe someone else here has ideas of what is up with your bill.

[gmeast]

your bill

Gary,

Is a pool heated often? Or maybe a bunch of music studio equipment?
How much do you pay per kilowatt hour? We're a little less than 6 cents
per kilowatt hour here.
everything........................................ .............................

Maybe someone else here has ideas of what is up with your bill.

Hey, check to see if your neighbors are stealing power. In the shop I leased for 28 years, I had a neighboring dirt bag tenant grab wires from one of my light switches mounted on my side of a common wall. He ran a big table saw (surprised it wasn't 240AC), a grinder, a light, misc. electric hand tools, a heater, and God knows what else. I did notice my bill steadily climb for no reason. It was only when I was going suite to suite looking for my dog that I saw the wires hanging out of the wall and then took a closer look.

He got evicted for that but I never got compensated.

So you know it happens. Another thing, how long have you been living in the house? These utility companies are so cheap that they don't actually "READ" the meter every time. Often they "estimate" based on "historical" use. I know this because a local news station covered a case where a man bought a house from some family, but before he moved in he went on a 6-week vacation and before he did he turned off most of the breakers and shut off the gas. He got a bill from SDG&E that was even bigger than for the previous owners and for the period he was on vacation. The house was shut down, for all intent and purpose. When He confronted the utility co. they said "...well we don't always read the meter ... sometimes we skip a month and use an average ... " And they arrogantly told this to the investigative reporter, on-camera. This same reporter interviewed the CEO of the same utility about some 'spike' in the coast of power and the CEO said "...as the CEO of this corporation, my job is to make this company work for, and pay its shareholders and not to be so concerned about whether the customer is well served ...". Well that may be so, but when your "company" has no competition, and you take out $250,000 prime time TV adds blowing smoke up everyone's ass by telling us all the things your doing to provide better service ... BS. Damn! that $250,000 comes from overcharging the rate payers ! ..... aaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

So whatever the reason for the size of your bill, it's probably very complicated or a blundering recurring error on the part of the utility... or the family dog is up to no good.

Greg

[Gary]

Thanks for the tips Aaron and Greg,

I do have a pool and I seldom heat it but the pumps run and I bet they eat quite a bit. Probably replacing the older pool pumps would help.

I doubt it is gear related as equipment seldom runs for long periods of time.

I will pick up the killawatt device and do some testing. I have also considered the possibility of something being tapped. It would be more likely that some sprinkler system was tapping as opposed to a neighbor actually using power. that would be tough to hide.

As for reading the meter, the guys usually show up and read it. I have seen them on several occasions but I guess there is a chance they don't show up every month.

Will post anything strange that i find going on once I start investigating..

[Aaron]

bill errors

Utility bill auditing used to be promoted a lot as a great home based
business. Probably still is. The reason it was a good business is because
it was found that about 80% of utility bills had errors and a lot of customers
were due money. That was for residential and commercial. Almost
20 years ago, I almost considered starting one of those businesses.

It's partially related to what Greg mentioned about power companies just
making average guesses on what to charge based on history but some is
literally because of outright blatant errors.

These days, more and more power companies are using wireless meters that
send signals out to a remote meter reader.
Itron - Providing knowledge to optimize the delivery and use of energy and water
That company is probably the world leader in wireless utility meters and
they happen to be based right here in my town.

The meter readers here just walk by the front of the house as they're
looking down at some hand held gps thing and they can take readings
from there. Scary in a way but if it is all digital/electronic, it 'might' reduce
the errors, possibly. But at least the meter still has an analog reading that
can be corroborated with any wireless data.

By looking at my own meter, I wouldn't suspect any wireless transmission.
I keep the gate locked that goes to my back yard so they must be doing
it wireless in - in this town at least.

Anyway, outright errors on the bills is something to be considered. And that
applies to water and any other utility.

[brenie]

Hi Gary, that sounds like you live in the UK, the energy companies call it 'Treasure Island' for obvious reasons!

Regards, Bren.

[ashtweth]

Ted, your pics made me think of that type of self sustaining homes, the earthships:







Short video about earthships:
YouTube - Garbage Warrior: Trailer

Official website:
Earthship Biotecture Sustainable Green Buildings - earthship.com

Greg head over to scribid all the earth ship books are there