Penitence

Well, I've lived in my home now for a few months and have finally received my first full month's utility bills... and it's not pretty.  Of course it's very hot here in the summer, so both my water and electricity usage peak in August (the current billing period).  Still, I am shocked.  I can't even look the environment in the face any more, I'm so ashamed.  This is me, to the environment:

I almost didn't want to post the actual numbers because it's so embarrassing.

Here's why:

Water:


My daily water usage came to 1.26 CCF, or about 940 gallons... per day!!!!  This makes my head spin.  I'm estimating that 85-90% of this must be from watering my yard alone.  And I already reduced the sprinkler watering time from the previous owners' times by 25%.  Well, it's time to experiment with just how little water my yard really needs.  We've just passed the Autumnal Equinox, the days are getting shorter and cooler, and the sun is less high in the sky.  I just reduced the watering times by another 40%.  We'll see how that goes.  I've got a few other ideas for saving water as well.  In the long term, I'm looking at reducing the amount of turf grass in my yard.

Electricity:


I used 615 kilowatt-hours for the month.  This comes out to an average rate of 827 watts on all the time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  That is atrocious.  In fact, it's about 5.6 times more than I used in the same time period last year when I lived in a studio.  Once again, I'm guessing that more than 85% of that is air conditioning.  I finally figured out what the ton unit is on my air conditioning unit.  When my AC is running, it's using 5 kilowatts.  That is a huge number.  My AC only has to run for 238 minutes every day to account for all of my used energy.   I can probably bump up my thermostat another degree (F) during the day, but that's about it.  My cat really can't handle more than 82F.  I never have the AC set below 80 when I'm home, so I can't increase it that much more.  There is one thing I can do.  My AC unit is 15 years old.  Comparing SEER ratings, I could upgrade to a new, ultra-efficient unit and decrease the energy used by 35-40%.  The city of Riverside gives rebates for purchasing efficient air conditioners, but it will only cover 15% or so of the cost.  That helps, but it will still be very expensive.  Even with these rebates, I estimate that it will take me 20+ years to recoup the costs of the air conditioner with saving on energy bills.  Ugh.  If it were between buying an efficient versus inefficient air conditioner, the return on investment would actually be pretty quick (5ish years).  But when it's between a whole new air conditioner, and not buying one at all, the purchase just doesn't pay off.  I will probably be buying a new air conditioner in the next year, but it will be out of the goodness of my own heart, not because it will save me money.

Gas:

The first full month bill of natural gas has not come in yet, but I can tell from the first partial bill that it's going to be extremely low.  Most of my appliances (including my stove and oven) are electric.  Only my water heater, heater (which I'm obviously not using), and dryer use gas.  I'll update the post with actual number when it comes in.

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All of these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.  They will come down dramatically on their own, simply because of the changing season.  Nonetheless, there is a lot of work to do...

More Units

I'm not done ranting about stupid units.  I'm going over my first utility bills to see how much I'm using, and how easy it'll be to decrease that usage by a significant amount.

Well, I ran into another stupid unit.  My water bill gives my usage in CCF.  What percentage of Americans actually have any idea what these units mean?  I'll bet it's less than 30%.  It turns out a CCF is 100 cubic feet.  Great.  That's something we can all relate to.  Can a brother get a number in gallons or liters?

Anyway, 1 CCF is equal to 748 gallons.

Units of Power

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." -Abraham Lincoln

I've posted before on the importance of understanding where you are using the most power.  How can you effectively decrease energy consumption if you don't know where it's being used?


Unfortunately, this is complicated by the absurd and antiquated ways in which we quantify power:  electricity in watts, heating in BTUs per hour, cooling in tons, driving in horsepower.  With all of these different units, it's difficult to compare them and understand which appliances consume the most power.  There are historical reasons for these units, but it would be much simpler if all power was given in kilowatts (kw) and all energy was given in kilowatt-hours (kwh).


At the end of the article, I give the relevant conversions, but here is the typical power consumed by various items, all in kilowatts, so you can directly compare.

Keep in mind that these are units of power.  To convert to energy (which is relevant for CO2 consumption and your costs), you need to multiply these numbers by the amount of time (in hours) that you are using each.  For example, a microwave uses a hefty 1.5 kw, but only for a few minutes.  If your CFL light bulb is on for three hours, it uses about the same amount of energy as that microwave did heating up your dinner.  


Notice the huge range in numbers there.  Your air conditioner and car use massive amounts of energy in small amounts of time.  A car on the freeway is using the same amount of power as 650 CFL light bulbs.  This is the first place to start when cutting your energy usage.  If you're cranking the AC or commuting an hour each way to work, turning off a light bulb for an extra hour doesn't make a dent in your total energy consumption.  


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Here are the equivalents to 1 kilowatt:

3,412     BTU/hour
1.34       horsepower
0.284     tons

Low Hanging Fruit I: If It's Yellow...

[Prologue:  I'll be periodically posting about small, cheap changes that have a relatively large benefit for the environment - the low hanging fruit.]

Southern California is perpetually in drought.  Growing up here, we would occasionally hear pleas from local officials to reduce water use in various ways.  One common phrase people threw around was, "if it's yellow, let it mellow.  If it's brown, flush it down" - meaning, don't flush the toilet after urinating.  Despite growing up in SoCal, I never heeded this appeal.  I guess I thought there'd be some unseemly, unsanitary downside.

Well, now my damn yard is using a ton of water and I'm trying desperately to think of ways to use less water (working on the yard thing too, but that'll take longer).  So, I've started to let it mellow.  Basically, I flush only about 1/3 as much as I normally would have.  After a few weeks, no drawbacks.  Of course, I would only do this in my master bathroom, not the bathroom that guests would use.

It's probably saving about 6 gallons of water per day.  It's not a huge amount, but it requires no work at all.  In fact it requires doing less.  So why not?

Stop Driving Further to a Cheaper Gas Station

Gas is expensive, and it has been for the last six months or so.  Because of this, I've heard several people talk about driving out of their way to pay less for gas.  If you're doing this, you're probably not saving money.  In my experience, gas prices don't vary all that much.  The biggest swings I see in a city are typically 5 cents/gallon, maybe a bit more.  So is it worth driving an extra couple of miles to get to that cheap gas station?  Probably not.

Here's why.  I'll use numbers for average American cars.  Let's say you're filling up your tank with 13 gallons of gas, and your car gets 20 mpg in the city, and the gas price at the nearest station is $3.65/gallon.  But you know of a station where you can get gas at $3.60/gallon just one mile away.

1.  First of all, 5¢/gallon × 13 gallons = 65¢ is what you stand to gain if you didn't have to drive any further for that gas.  That's not all that much, compared to the nearly fifty bucks you're about to drop.

2.  But what if you have to drive an extra mile to get the cheaper gas?  Well, at 20 mpg (in city driving), you burn an extra 1/20th of a gallon just getting to the new station.  That extra gas costs you $3.60×(1/20) = 18¢.  Now your savings is only 47¢.  

3.  This gas station was out of your way.  So now you've got to get back to where you were before.  That wastes another 18¢ worth of fuel, and you're down to just 29¢ in savings.  

Put simply, your percentage increase in gas consumption is similar to your percentage decrease in gas price.  So you're not saving much.

Congratulations, you've now gone out of your way to save a quarter, which begs the question- How much is your time worth?  At 25 mph average speed, the round trip two miles takes about 5 mins, assuming you don't catch a bunch of lights.  Optimistically, you spent 5 minutes to save 29¢.  That's $3.48/hour, or about half of the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour).  

And I've said nothing of the additional mileage put on your car and additional smog and CO2 put into the air.  

Long story short, it's got to be a big difference in price, and the cheaper gas station can't be far out of your way.  Next time, save some time and just pay the extra quarter.