Though it’s only for an hour, Earth Hour is a step in the right direction and should make us think about what else we can do to reduce our energy conservation. Which brings me to another topic that I thought it would be good to discuss (coincidentally, it also rhymes with “Earth Hour”).

I’m talking about Phantom Power, also called Vampire Power, or more commonly, Standby Power.

A typical household likely has a multitude of appliances connected to electrical sockets, even when they aren’t being used. Oftentimes these appliances display a red light indicating that they are in standby mode. However, standby mode does not mean that the appliance is off. Though minuscule, these appliances are steadily sucking electricity.

Phantom Power

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that around 5-10% of residential power consumption can be attributed to standby power, and they have a great summary table that goes into detail about the standby power consumption for different appliances. And they also have a very cool table on standby power consumption in various countries.

Luckily, standby power is one of those things that is relatively easy to correct for. Simple things like using surge protectors or connecting appliances to sockets with a switch, so you can easily turn off appliances when they’re not being used can make a significant impact. I have my home theater system plugged into a socket that can be turned off by a switch and I turn off the switch whenever I’m not using it.

If you’re using appliances or devices with a battery, don’t connect it to the charger all the time. Constantly connecting a charger to a battery-powered device reduces the battery’s life expectancy. Save energy and save your battery life by charging only when the battery is down to 20% of its full charge.

Unplug devices that you don’t use on a day-to-day basis. My keyboard, cellphone charger, laptop charger, and kitchen counter-top appliances stay unplugged until I have to use them.

And saving up to 10% of your energy consumption by minimizing standby power can go a long way to freeing up resources for our current grid system and saving money on your next month’s power bill.

UPDATE:
I had a discussion with some co-workers about the true benefit of unplugging a laptop for an hour, and I thought it was relevant to this post, so I thought I’d share the discussion.

My co-workers made the point that  if you operate from your battery you actually use more power because for every x joules pulled out of the battery it will take x+y joules to recharge it. This is true, since batteries are not 100% efficient with their discharge/recharge cycles, so it takes more energy to charge them than they can provide.

However, using the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory table referenced above, a fully-on laptop that is charged consumes 29.48 W of energy, while a fully-on charging laptop consumers 44.28W of energy. Using that information, I wanted to do a simple calculation to figure out whether it truly does save energy to unplug the laptop for an hour. The calculation goes something like this:

If you stay plugged in for an hour, you consume 29.48 Wh (assuming the computer is fully charged). If you were to unplug, you’d save 29.48 Wh, but when you plug in to recharge the battery, you’ll consume 44.28 W * (time it takes to recharge the battery to full capacity).

So unplugging would only be better if 29.48 Wh + 29.48 W * (time to charge battery to full capacity) > 44.28 W * (time to charge battery to full capacity), which means as long as it takes less than 2 hours to charge the battery for that one hour it was being used, it’s better to leave the laptop unplugged. This of course, assumes that you continue working throughout (i.e. the laptop is “fully-on”).

One of my friends sent me an email about Blog Action Day and its focus on water as this year’s theme. And while I missed it Blog Action Day, which was Friday, October 15th, I will call upon the old adage, “better late than never” and try to make up for it.

Projected water shortages in the future have some claiming that water is slotted to become the oil of the 21st century. Here are some quick facts, courtesy of HowStuffWorks.com: Though 70% of our planet is covered by water, it is primarily salt water, and therefore cannot be consumed. Only 2 percent of our planet’s water is fresh – 1.6% is locked up in the polar ice caps, about 0.36% is found in underground aquifers and wells, and 0.036% is found in lakes and rivers, with the rest being water vapor in the air.

The effects of global warming is expected to melt the ice caps, releasing some of that freshwater, however, it will get mixed in with seawater, rendering it useless. Global warming is also expected to melt snow on land which feeds into rivers and reservoirs, leading to a significant reduction in water in the future. And it certainly doesn’t help that water consumption has significantly increased over time and population growth, increased agriculture, the growth of many industries are expected to double current water requirements by 2025, when scientists believe that over two-thirds of the world’s population will be living in water stressed regions.

As a result, water is big industry, estimated at $400 billion and expected to grow in the future. An article in Harvard Business Week shows the increasing privatization of municipal water operations due to the expensive infrastructure needs and increasing regulations that cities and countries face, leading to private companies providing the necessary resources to ensure proper water equipment and management, as well as the high quality purified water necessary for industries and the manufacture of computer chips, pharmaceuticals, food, etc.

With 98% of water in the form of seawater, many are investing in cost-effective desalination technologies, which will be an integral part of the supply of fresh water for the future. This Fast Company article points out that already, water-stressed countries like Saudi Arabia, China, Algeria, Dubai, Libya, and others are expected to invest significantly in desalination technology, and the market for desalination is expected to increase to around $125 million by 2015. Though desalination is an expensive process and comes with its fair share of waste that could impact the environment, new technologies and developments are steadily making progress to reduce the costs and mitigate the impacts.

On the other hand, other countries and companies are turning to ways to more efficiently use and recycle water. Greenbiz has an article on 10 companies that are turning to ways to more efficiently use water in their operations. Expected to reach over $50 billion by 2015, many companies like GE are investing in ways to use membrane systems, carbon systems, and other technologies to try and recycle water.

It’s definitely going to take an optimization of our current water use, an evaluation of ways to reclaim and recycle water, and a significant investment in cost-effective desalination technologies to ensure that the future demands for freshwater are met.

The National Academies Press is an amazing resource with lots of research reports and studies. Downloading PDF copies from the site comes at a price, however, the NAP website does allow you to read through all of its reports for free.

I was curious about climate change models and the assumptions and calculations behind them, and I came across the Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences (IMAGe). They held a summer school earlier this year to discuss the mathematics of climate change, and they have a few of their materials published on their website here.

The Energy Information Administration under the Department of Energy has a lot of really cool studies on their site. They also provide a mountain of data on nearly every topic related to electricity and energy sources you can imagine.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, also under the Department of Energy has a lot of information on DOE intiatives and programs to advance renewable energy and promote energy efficiency in a variety of areas (buildings, vehicles, etc.). Their publication library also has a lot of reports on various topics in renewable energy.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) is another great resource, with lots of energy analysis models and research reports, as well as science and technology research around renewable technologies.

Another national laboratory, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has some more technical reports on specific research topics.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has posted a lot of their publications and studies on their website, covering topics mainly focused on sustainable development from a business perspective.

Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century, Ren21 for short, conducts a global status report on renewable energy and sustainability energy investments.

Two programs under the United Nations Environment Programme, the Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative (SEFI) and the UNEP Finance Initiative, also have publications on renewable energy investments and the growth in clean energy.

The PEW Center for Global Climate Change has a lot of downloable reports and studies on climate change, its impact on different industries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has all of their climate change assessments online, some of which is available for download, while others can be read directly on their site.

I probably haven’t even scratched the surface of the number of sites out there with research reports and studies. By skimming through a lot of these studies, I hope to get a better understanding of what’s being done currently in the fields of renewable energy, climate change, and clean technologies.

I wasn’t surprised by Intel, Walmart, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Apple’s efforts. However, I didn’t know that BMW was one of the most sustainable automobile manufacturers, or that Deutsche Bank was engaging in green financing.

The slideshow did link to the EPA’s list of annual green power purchases by companies in the United States – there were a fair number of companies that use green energy or purchase renewable energy certificates (REC) at 100% or more of their total electricity usage. I’d be curious to know which of these organizations merely purchased RECs and used Utility green power products vs. actually did on-site power generation

Looking for a cleaner, more environmentally friendly solution, I checked out this really cool class at the Lincoln Park REI’s community center about “green pest control.”

It was taught by Steve Pincuspy from the Safer Pest Control Project, who provided some alternative ways to control and prevent pests, that are far less toxic than insecticides. For example, diatomaceous earth is great for getting rid of bugs, since it’s made out of tiny fossilized remains that dehydrate the insects, and spraying cedar oil is great for repelling bugs. Though the one key thing Steve recommended was to seal up cracks in your cupboards, floors, walls, etc. as the best way to keep bugs from coming into your house. I also found this great resource online at Eartheasy for natural pest control.

I tried out the diatomaceous earth trick (I had to turn to boric acid powder instead, since I couldn’t find diatomaceous earth, but it supposedly works the same way), and also tried out this other trick I found online – putting bay leaves in your cupboards, and it’s been working great so far. The previous tenants in my unit weren’t the cleanest individuals, so there were flour bugs and silverfish everywhere when I first moved in. But now, I hardly ever see one.

I got a few houseplants for the apartment later and on one of the plants I noticed what looked like spider webs. Now, I couldn’t pour boric acid on the plant, and I couldn’t put bay leaves next to it, so I searched online for a non-toxic way to get rid of insects on plants, and I came across…garlic water spray.

Apparently, mixing finely minced pieces of garlic with water, and letting the garlic oils dissolve into the water, then adding a touch of dish soap to the concoction makes for an excellent insect spray for plants. This sounded so simple and easy to do, that I just had to try it. And it just so happened that I had some cloves of garlic that were getting old that I was going to toss into the compost heap, so I decided to put them to better use.

I blended a few garlic cloves in hot water using a food processor. Apparently I have to let this sit overnight, before I add the dish soap and start using it, but I’m pretty excited to see how it will turn out:

Whenever I had new food scraps to add, I’d do something similar: remove the top layer of paper, add the scraps, and mixed it around with the stuff that’s already getting composted.

You can still recognize the carrot scraps that I threw in there, but the plant trimmings I had are less noticeable. The banana peels I put in there seem to be completely gone

I was a little concerned that the compost might smell, but I read that according to the Composting Council of Canada, anaerobic composting can be described as:

organic materials + water = carbon dioxide + methane + hydrogen sulfide + energy

However, aerobic composting (what I did) can be described as:

organic materials + water + oxygen = carbon dioxide + water + energy

So with the addition of oxygen, there is no concern about having methane or hydrogen sulfide fumes coming out of the compost and making the place smell. In fact, when I would check up on the compost every now and then, there would be an almost sweet, earthy smell coming out of the bin.

The very bottom of the compost bin already felt soft and soil-like, but I’m going to give it a few more weeks before using it as a soil additive for some plants I’m growing and planning to grow. When it is ready, composted matter is supposed to be dark and crumbly and the scraps you put in there should no longer be recognizable.

I quickly googled what to do with leftover food scraps, and read some articles on composting. Wondering what the benefit of composting was relative to letting food scraps decompose in a landfill, I looked up composting vs. landfills and came across this article on Sustainablog.

Essentially, organic materials decompose in landfills without the presence of oxygen (anaerobic decomposition), which releases methane gas – much more damaging than CO2. An alternative to throwing this waste away in the trash is to start a compost pile.

Initially, I was under the impression that composting was something you could only do if you had a backyard or some sort of outdoor space. However, a bit of googling reveals that it is possible to compost indoors.

There are essentially three ways to compost indoors:

1) Bokashi composting – though this composting process is anaerobic, similar to the decomposition that happens in landfills, it does not produce any methane. In fact, it does not produce any greenhouse gases. This is because bokashi composting uses a special blend of wheat bran, molasses, water, and microorganisms that break down the food in airtight containers without producing any harmful gases.
2) Vermicomposting – this composting process uses red worms to breakdown the food scraps. It involves creating bedding and a habitat for the worms and providing them with food scraps that they decompose into soil as they poop.
3) Aerobic composting – this is the traditional composting that happens outdoors with compost piles. It can also be adapted for indoor use. This is ultimately the method I chose, because I thought bokashi was kinda expensive and vermicomposting was kinda gross.

Aerobic composting is a relatively simple process to start, and doesn’t require anything more than a compost bin, some soil, newspaper scraps, and your food scraps. I found these great articles on Planet Green and CrazySexLife on how to start your own indoor aerobic compost bin.

Here is what I did to make my indoor compost bin:

1. Took a plastic container and made it into a compost bin by drilling some holes to let oxygen flow through the container and allow the aerobic microbes to thrive

2. Set aside some newspapers, cardboard, and some other paper waste I had and shredded them to be dry bedding for the compost pile. These are the “browns” – they are the dry, carbon-rich ingredients in your compost pile. Browns are essential for preventing the compost pile from smelling.

3. Set aside my food scraps, banana peels, plant trimmings, and used tea bags. These are the “greens” – the wet, nitrogen-rich ingredients that are being broken down.

4. Added a first layer of browns (shredded paper, mostly) to the bottom of the compost pile to provide bedding and prevent the soil from seeping through the bottom holes of the compost bin

5. Added a second layer of potting soil on top of the browns

6. Added my food scraps, banana peels, plant trimmings, and tea bags on top of the soil and mixed it up so the soil and the greens were well mixed.

7. Sprinkled a little bit of water to introduce some moisture to the compost pile

8. Added the final layer of browns (shredded brown paper bags and cardboard, mostly) to the top. You’ll want to have a ratio of 2-3 parts brown for every 1 part green, so that the pile doesn’t smell

9. Closed up the container and stuck some felt pads to the bottom of the container so that the bottom would be lifted up and air could flow through the container

10. Placed the container on top of a tray and stuck it inside a closet

A picture version of the instructions:

Indoor Compost Bin

And that’s it. Every week, I’ll have to check on the compost pile and turn the soil/greens mixture so that it is well aerated.

To add more to the pile, I am simply going to remove the final layer of browns, add in my extra food scraps, add some more soil, and replace the browns.

It’s going to take a few weeks for things to decompose, but I’m pretty excited to see what will happen.

One of the older episodes from August 2008 talked about low emission asphalt, a new way to produce asphalt for roads and pavements that requires 50% less energy.

Asphalt is the sticky, black liquid that comes from the distillation of crude oils, literally the stuff at the bottom of the barrel after all other petroleum products have been refined or processed. It is primarily used as a glue or binder for sand and gravel to construct roads and parking lots, due to its durability in supporting the weight of cars. During construction, asphalt is typically heated to temperatures of over 300 degrees Fahrenheit and laid over a heavier set of rocks and gravel, then pressed with a steam roller.

The main drawbacks to traditional asphalt are the fumes from the sulphur in the asphalt mix, which is hazardous to both workers and automobile traffic, as well as the high absorption of heat due to the black color of the asphalt.

Luckily there are a few novel solutions to these problems. The first, is something called Low Emissions Asphalt (LEA), first developed by a French company called Lea-Co. LEA was then brought over to the United States through an agreement with a company called Suit-Kote.

The great thing about LEA is that it uses the exact same processes and technologies as traditional asphalt with very minor modifications, so it can be produced with significant additional costs to companies. And unlike traditional asphalt, which requires temperatures of around 300 degrees Fahrenheit to mix properly, LEA requires temperates of around 200 degrees, requiring 50% less energy to produce. Suit-Kote contracted an engineering firm to study the environmental impacts of LEA, which concluded that reduced particulate exhaust by 51%, sulfur emissions by 46%, nitrogen by 21%, carbon dioxide by 82%, and other gases by almost 95%!

The other cool new innovation in asphalt, is something called bio-asphalt. Unlike traditional asphalt, bio-asphalt does not use petroleum byproducts as a source. Instead, it uses things like sugar, molasses, and rice, corn or potato starches. Bio-asphalt was first developed in 2004 by another French company, Colas, in a produce they called Vegecol. Another company called Ecopave in Australia also produces bio-asphalt, which they call GEO 320.

Similar to LEA, bio-asphalt also requires lower temperatures to mix, which reduces energy costs. But as an added benefit, since it is not made from petroleum products, bio-asphalt significantly reduces emissions and fumes. Even better, bio-asphalt can be pigmented to be lighter colored, allowing roads to reflect sunlight, rather than absorb it and generate heat. These added bonuses come at a cost, though, since companies will have to redesign their asphalt manufacturing processes to create bio-asphalt. In addition, though bio-asphalt can be made from waste food products, it will still create a strain on the food supply in much the same way as biofuels.

I think these technologies are definitely a step in the right direction, and my hope is that all future road construction switches to Low Emissions Asphalt, and that once we can use plants and plant-based materials more effectively without straining our food supply, that we turn to bio-asphalt and other bio-products.

The great thing about the Tesla Roadster and other plug-in electric vehicles, I was telling my friend, is that you can just plug it into any outlet into your house, and it will charge the car, allowing the car to run for about 250 miles before running out of power.

About this time, my friend stopped, turned to me, and said, “I don’t believe you. You’re making it up.” He then went into a discussion of Ohm’s law:

Voltage (V) = Current (amp) * Resistance (R)

and said that charging a car would overload the circuits in the household, and that it would be impossible to charge a car without blowing a fuse.

My knowledge of high school physics failing me, I didn’t have a good answer for him, and I wasn’t too clear on the mechanics of the battery and charging system – I just knew that they had developed it, and it worked.

So, for my own benefit, my friend’s benefit, and hopefully for the benefit of anyone reading this blog, I decided to do a little research on electric cars and their charging capabilities.

To get an understanding of how an electric car works, I read this HowStuffWorks article on electric cars in general – it has got a great explanation of the electric car motor and how it delivers power when the driver pushes down on the pedal.

Their section on electric car charging is a little confusing, so I did a little more digging.

Let’s first start with the house. An average US household is allotted 100-200 amps of current at 120v. The household is usually connected in a parallel circuit to the power grid, so the voltage remains the same – the standard 120v – but the current running through adds up.

Because of the constant voltage and variable current, it is necessary to make sure that too much current isn’t running through the wires, causing it to overheat and potentially cause a fire. In order to prevent the wires from overloading, there are circuit breakers built in. A home typically has 15 amp circuit breakers for the basic appliances, 20 amp breakers for heavier appliances, with two 120v wires coming together to provide 240v for the really heavy duty appliances. That means that once the current surpasses that ampere threshold, the breaker trips and closes the circuit, preventing the wires from overheating.

So how do the Roadster and other electric cars like the Chevy Volt charge using the normal 120v connection without blowing a fuse? Electrical codes require that at least one connection running through the garage of your house is on a different circuit from the rest of the house. Most garages have also have 20 amp circuit breaker outlets, and some even have 240v outlets if a washer/dryer is present in the garage.

This is more than sufficient for the wall-outlet charging solutions that electric car manufacturers provide. The Volt, for example, has a 120v charger that draws 8-12 amps, well under the 15-20 amp circuit breaker limit. They also provide a charger that connects to the 240v sockets in the household drawing power at 16 amps – again, well under the 20 amp circuit breaker limit for 240v circuits.

In order to understand how the actual charging of the car batteries works, we look at another component of Ohm’s law – the relationship between power (watts), voltage (V), and current (amp).

The Roadster’s battery pack can hold up to 53 kilowatt-hours of electrical charge. Being a high-performance supercar with a large battery, this is fairly atypical of a normal electric car like the Chevy Volt, which can store 16 kilowatt-hours in its battery pack.

A watt-hour is a measure of energy, and it is calculated by multiplying the voltage, the current, and the time. Voltage is the amount of energy an electron has available as it moves through a circuit. Current is basically the number of electrons that flow through in a certain time frame. Now when you multiply these two, you get a watt, which is essentially the amount of energy that flows through a circuit in a certain period. When you multiply a watt by a time period, you get a watt-hour, which is the total amount of energy that flows in an hour. And 1,000 watt-hours = 1 kilowatt-hour.

We know from earlier that the wall socket provides at minimum 120v at 15 amperes – equivalent to a rate of 1800 watts or 1.8kW. Since the Roadster holds 53 kWh, it would take around 30 (53 kWh/1.8 kW) hours for the battery to be fully charged through the wall outlet. For the Volt, which holds 16 kWh, it would take about 9 hours.

If these charge times sound ludicrous, its because plugging the electric car into the wall socket is meant to be an emergency measure. The primary method for electric car owners to charge their cars is through dedicated charging stations which they can install in their home. Tesla, for example, offers a Home Connector charging unit, which delivers 208-240v at 70 amperes, fully charging the car in about 4 hours depending on the electrical wiring in your home. And as manufacturers push for standardized car chargers, electric car owners will only have to install one unit to serve all of their electric vehicles.

Installing these dedicated units, however, requires that the homeowner take the necessary steps to contact the utility company, have electricians install the units to ensure they are properly connected, and have state inspectors check and approve the installations. While it all may seem like a hassle now, it is sure to get easier as electric cars become more prominent.

The future potential of electric cars and their role in the nation’s energy grid and home energy consumption is quite remarkable. With push for smart grid technology and electric cars, the potential exists for electric cars to essentially act as giant batteries, which could store energy from fluctuating sources of energy such as renewables (solar, wind, etc.), and giving power back to the grid when needed – a concept known as “Vehicle to Grid.”

Obama’s stimulus package allows for owners of electric vehicles to receive free charging stations, which is meant to not only spur interest in electric vehicles, but more importantly to study how electric vehicles are being used, when they are being charged, etc. To some this may seem like a waste of money, but it is likely a vital step to understanding how the electric car can best become an integral part of the nation’s future energy grid, allowing for the storage and transmission of energy to ensure our energy needs are efficiently being met.

Green Festival 2010

You can also check out my pictures from last year’s Green Festival here:

Green Festival 2009