Before You Invest in Photovoltaics, make sure your house isn't haunted by phantom loads.Some Devices Suck Power While They Sleep

When writing about energy efficiency in California, I know that emphasizing heating systems doesn’t carry much punch. I might as well try to get Californians interested in who makes the best deep- dish pizza. (That’s Chicago, of course. Zachary’s isn’t bad though.) Cooling systems are accounting for more and more of a share of residential energy use as we continue to build out from the cities near the Bay in hot dry climates. But overall, when it comes to climate, the inside and the outside of Bay Area homes are pretty much the same for most of the year. But let’s not get soft on energy efficiency! There are other energy users in California homes that threaten to lift us in the future to the level of, say, what a Wisconsin home uses in the winter today.

Miscellaneous electric loads are electric loads other than heating and cooling, water heating, refrigerators, and lighting, and include consumer electronics, outdoor lights, and portable inside lighting fixtures. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency estimates that these “other” electric loads, along with televisions and office equipment, made up close to 30% of U.S. residential electricity consumption in 2006; this will rise to about 35% by 2020. Part of the reason for the growth in energy use of these devices as a percentage of total home energy use is that homes are heating and cooling more efficiently, with better HVAC equipment, tighter building envelopes, and more insulation.

Rich Brown and Greg Homan of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured electricity use in 13 new California homes in 2007 and came up with some interesting results. They metered plug-in devices in standby, off, or low-power mode. Since the homes were not yet occupied, they estimated the annual energy use by using typical use patterns and the energy use of the plug-in devices in active mode, or “on,” measured in other studies. Some of the homes were model homes and packed with appliances and electronics like TVs, and others had only the plug-in devices installed by the builders. Builder installed devices include things like garage door openers, structured wiring, and gas fireplaces. The homes were in four different subdivisions and span the range of typical new construction to super efficient homes with PhotoVoltaic (PV) systems installed.

The builder-installed devices use on average 800 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, or about $80 worth with electricity at a low $0.10 per kWh. That does not include lighting energy. That’s interesting. About half of the energy used by the builder-installed devices is used by devices that are supposed to be turned off, or are in standby mode! That’s very interesting. This is like having a 50-Watt light bulb on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, lighting nothing.

One of the model homes, the biggest energy user of the 13, used close to 2,500 kWh per year ($250) for two large televisions, a structured wiring panel that uses 20 Watts continuously to power three security cameras and an Internet router, smoke alarms, garage door openers, a washer/dryer, a very big refrigerator, and a few more devices. Add in lighting and that house is a major energy hog, even with super efficient heating and cooling systems and PV panels on the roof.

So what to do? Don’t even think of getting that PV system until you spend some time reducing your electricity load. The PV system you need to meet that load then won’t be so expensive. When it’s time to buy a new appliance, always look for the Energy Star label. Energy Star appliances use about 20% less energy than typical new appliances. Anything that uses a remote control, such as televisions and set-top boxes, or that displays the time of day all day, such as some stoves and microwave ovens, uses energy when officially off. Look for electronic devices that are really off when they say off, or that use 2 Watts or less in standby mode. For your other sleep slurping electronics, plug them into a power strip, and turn the power strip off when you aren’t using the devices. Then look into that sexy new PV system for your roof. More on that in my next blog.

And old, 19th Century windmill in contrast to wind turbines today.

Last summer I visited the Netherlands, the original home of the windmill. Surprisingly, I saw hardly any of the quaint structures we associate with Dutch wind power. One hundred years ago Holland had about 10,000 wooden windmills dotting its landscape. Today, barely 10% remain. What I saw instead were high tech wind turbines, white and spare and gracefully generating electricity with wind from the North Sea. Many view these modern day towers as an eyesore, but I see them as a sign of hope. Like giant flowers across a landscape, they symbolize for me a clean energy future. But wind power, and solar, have a handicap that fuels claims that renewables will never be more than a small percentage of U.S. power. These energy sources can't be counted on when night falls or the wind subsides. Their inconsistent and therefore unreliable nature poses a problem for a world with an enormous appetite for electricity. If only excess power could be stored on a grand scale, it might solve many of our energy problems.

It isn't that electrical energy isn't currently storable, but as Andrew Tang, Senior Director of PG&E’s Smart Meter program points out, the current generation of batteries can’t store electricity at a price that's cost effective. But both he and Steve Berberich from California System Operators were optimistic about future storage possibilities. Tang described an experimental project that uses a sodium sulfur battery the size of an 18-wheeler trailer. The battery would be located next to a substation, or somewhere in the network, and its stored power would be used during times of peak demand. He also talked about the future of plug-in electric cars whose batteries could both store energy and in theory put it back onto the grid when the car's not in use. Steve Berberich envisioned several possibilities for storing excess power. He proposed converting it to hydrogen, which could be burned in a gas plant or could be used in a fuel cell. And he suggested using power to compress air, which could be injected into the ground and called upon when the wind's not blowing and the sun’s not shining.

Whatever the final solution to storage, you can guarantee it will be a game changer in the renewable power industry. No longer will wind and solar be looked upon as unreliable. Hopefully this missing puzzle piece will go a long way towards helping us detach from our dependence on fossil fuels. But we’ll still be left with the challenge of getting all that clean, green energy onto the power grid. And you can be sure that environmental concerns, zoning, aesthetics, and cost will undoubtedly be cantankerous issues for years to come.

Watch the Climate Watch: Unlocking The Grid television story online.

More people appear to be saying "yes" these days, even if grudgingly. The question is: Is it too late?

The Public Policy Institute of California has been tracking public support for expanded nuclear power over the past several years. Survey participants are offered a menu of four potential energy options, one at a time.

The question posed is: "Thinking about the country as a whole, to address the country’s energy needs and reduce dependence on foreign oil sources, do you favor or oppose the following proposals?" Then the four options are offered, including: "How about building more nuclear power plants at this time."

As recently as 2002, adults surveyed in California opposed the idea by a margin of 59% to 33%. But that gap has been closing steadily in the years since and by this July, Californians were split just about down the middle on the question, with 46% in favor and 48% opposed. The poll has a margin of error of about 2%, making it a virtual tie.

When you dig into the numbers a little deeper, some demographic preferences emerge: support increases with both age and education. Californians 55 and older support more nuclear by a wide margin (58% to 36%) as do college graduates (50%-43%).

Many people use cost as an argument against nuclear but just as the PPIC was phoning around for opinions on the matter, the Palo Alto-based Electric Power Research Institute was finishing up its own report , concluding that trying to reach greenhouse gas reduction goals without baseload technologies like nuclear power, could end up costing much more. Dan Kammen, who runs an energy lab at U.C. Berkeley, would appear to agree. He said in a recent interview for Climate Watch that "Without knowing exactly where things will come down on nuclear, I think that it absolutely has to be part of the equation in a way that it has not been in the past. Energy costs from fossil fuels are rising at almost 5% a year now, and the damage we are doing and are going to do more of, if we don’t stop our fossil fuel expansion, in terms of greenhouse warming, is so large an issue that these technologies have to be back on the table.

But there's a serious question of whether the nation– let alone the state– is in a position to embrace nuclear as it did in the 1960s. Kammen is also a professor of nuclear engineering, and noted with some alarm the rate at which the industry is "graying." Now in his mid-forties, he told me that when he attends technical meetings for nuclear engineers, he's often "the youngest guy in the room–by 20 years." Since the U.S. more or less abandoned its nuclear hopes following the Three Mile Island debacle, the nation has ceded most of its nuclear industrial capacity to other nations, and few young people have chosen to enter the field.

The effective ban on new nuclear plants that California has had in place since 1976 could be reconsidered. But ultimately electric utilities will have to want it and I sense a certain "nuclear fatigue" in that arena.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) shut down its only reactor in 1989, after a thumbs-down referendum. When I called to ask for an interview on the prospects for a nuclear revival, they declined. They didn't even want to talk about it. Managers at PG&E, whose twin reactors at Diablo Canyon produce nearly a quarter of the utility's output, still claim an interest in nuclear. But when I asked CEO Peter Darbee about it recently, he said he had the sense that most people in California would prefer to look elsewhere for energy solutions. Of course, that was before the latest PPIC poll.

Listen to the New Nuclear radio report online.

Check out an interactive "atomic timeline," marking some of the milestones in nuclear power history in the U.S. By former Climate Watch intern Amanda Dyer.

Hourly energy use data, now online.

I've never paid much attention to my electric meter. For most of us, it's just that box on the side of the house with a small white disk spinning inside, keeping track of our energy use. But over the next three years, all the meters of PG&E customers will be getting a major upgrade to a new, digital SmartMeter.

I met one customer, Ken Kube in Castro Valley, whose meter has already been upgraded. Since the new meters track his home energy use digitally, Kube can log into his PG&E account and see his real-time energy use. On one level, it's really the ultimate tool for parents who like to remind their kids to turn out the lights. But it's also a powerful conservation tool. Kube could see how much energy he uses at night, when his appliances are drawing power in stand-by more (what's known as "vampire" power).

These meters are just a small piece of the puzzle when it comes to a smart grid. Just what the smart grid is depends on whom you ask, but most people agree it comes down to one thing: communication. The energy landscape is changing rapidly. In addition to increasing demand, there's more renewable power like large-scale solar and wind coming online – which are often far from urban areas and are available intermittently. There's also small-scale solar on building rooftops – which means energy consumers are becoming energy producers. There will also be plug-in electric cars, which need to draw power from grid.

To manage all this, utilities and grid operators need more information than they have. And that's where meters come in. But as Kurt Yeager of the Galvin Electricity Initiative describes, it's a huge networking challenge – and a huge market opportunity.

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A number of companies have jumped into the smart grid market as a result, from Silicon Valley start ups to international corporations. As Eric Miller, the Chief Solutions Officer for Trilliant describes, managing the information flow in smart grid will be the biggest challenge.

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Other smart grid companies are banking on the consumer market. Google is developing the PowerMeter, an online tool that tracks home energy use. They're partnering with GE, who is positioned to work with utilities, with its meter technology, and with consumers, with smart appliances, as Sunil Sharan, the Director of the Smart Grid Initiative explains.

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More on the smart grid: check out the Smart Grid at Home radio report and a slideshow of grid technology, old and new.