Cabbage Patch Kids, Tickle-Me-Elmo, Wii, and now TED

Lines are forming, preorders being filled, sold out signs are on web sites. The great “must haves” for the holiday season have a new member, TED. An acronym for The Energy Device, it is a real-time gauge of your home’s energy use. For a few years now, TED has been used by professionals and curious home owners to measure and greatly reduce home electricity consumption. By measuring at a glance and in real-time energy usage (in KW), you can quickly zero in on what is wasting energy, when, and how much it costs.

So why is this meter so hot now? The makers of the T.E.D. have come out with a new model, the T.E.D. 5000, and have teamed up with Google to provide this information to you anywhere, at any time, on any device that has web access. This is very cool stuff because the all the graphs, energy costs, as well as your current electrical usage can be critical if you really want to tame your energy consumption. This $240 energy meter works by hooking up inductive sensors and a sending unit at your electrical box (this may require a professional electrician). A display inside tells you the measurements and is connected to a Google server through the home’s internet connection. You now have access to a wealth of information about your energy consumption and cost, both current, past and projected on your home computer or even your iPhone or Android.

We are going to pour billions of dollars into “smart grids,” but those smart grids get pretty dim witted when they enter your house. All those solar panels and wind turbines will only make a dent in the power consumption predicted in the coming decades if conservation does not play a significant role. Think of it as “nega-watts”. A Colorado State University study of local high school’s energy consumption has demonstrated that energy awareness and conservation are just as effective as green building. It turns out the smartest meter is you. How much does that new TV use, or that old freezer, or all of your power adapters? Now that you know, you can switch them off or change them out and see your power consumption numbers drop dramatically. Hidden devices like fans, lights, heaters, pumps, etc, that are on needlessly can be detected.

Ok, all you environmentalists. Here’s the deal. Your home is your own biggest single contributor to greenhouse gas (20% of all GHG in fact). Electricity production is the reason this is so. Currently the electricity that enters your house is the dirtiest form of energy we use, and reducing it is the easiest and cheapest way to affect your contribution to our collective climate change. With this in mind, as far as gifts go this year, the TED 5000 with Google’s PowerMeter software (if you can find one) should be at the top of your wish list.

The Rebate Tide

Rebates and tax incentives have been flowing like a tide. High tide for the solar industry in Colorado has just happened. Everybody wants it, and heck the price can be reduced up to half with rebates. The payback is not great but those panels look pretty cool on a roof. Although it’s complicated in Colorado, basically voter amendment 37 requires the private power service providers allow for a small percentage of a renewable portfolio for roof mounted solar power. They got permission to raise everybody’s rate and use that money to subsidize the solar panels. This effectively lets the wealthier solar lovers get half off and forces poorer rate payers to help pick up the tab. Furthermore a clean energy portfolio is out of sequence with what is generally considered a better initial investment, demand side control. None the less the amendment got the job done, solar on roofs.

Now the tide is rolling back as the private energy suppliers have fulfilled their mandate and a lot of solar companies will be left high and dry. The smart ones will expand their offerings by either cutting cost (by potentially doing shoddy work) or expanding their portfolio to include energy conservation, hence lowering the amount of solar needed. Another model has emerged that allows renting solar. This concept started in Africa and the Middle East in the nineties where companies rented a panel and battery to a family to provide basic power. Soon you can rent panels for your grid tied home in Colorado. This solves the lower income solar problem with proper government support, but still cannot address the problem of demand.

The next rebate tide is coming and this time energy audits and insulation will be in it. How will this market develop? Will the emerging green building companies flourish? And most importantly will we finally start to take the consumption of energy seriously? While I remain a bit skeptical I know we are pointing in the proper direction. A real change will require energy prices to reflect their true cost via a tax or cap or simply supply and demand. If the green building industry is properly mature by then we will be ready to lead the effort in adapting to a new energy economy.

Concrete Learns Some New Tricks

First published on the GenGreen Bog.

We love concrete, maybe you don’t know it, but look around. It forms the basis of almost everything built. Think of it as liquid rock. Simply pour it into any shape you want so you can put whatever you want on top of it or underneath. We have been playing around with the stuff since Roman days, where they used it to move water and armies and erect buildings to show their dominance over nature. I have to tell you that my wife, whose Italian grandfather and aunt have made concrete for their entire lives, can make a mean batch. A couple thousand years and not too much has changed, from the concrete’s point of view at least.

Sure, we made it stronger and prettier over time but recently concrete has learned to do more with less. Cement which is the “glue” that binds all the aggregates together turns out to be the problem. Fly ash, a waste product of burning coal in power plants can replace up to 30% of the cement and actually improve the strength of concrete in some applications. Slag is another waste product, this time from the production of steel that also has been proven to effectively replace some of our old friend cement.

This is a big deal because the biggest problem with concrete is that its production puts at lot of carbon into the air. More specifically, portland cement is made from limestone (CaCO3) which you strip off the carbon (CO2) in coal fired furnaces to produce calcium oxide (CaCO). 5% of all CO2 emissions are from just the making of cement. Those coal fired furnaces (418 lbs. coal per ton of cement) can now be supplemented by burning biomass. Not all carbon is equal. If you mine it and it goes into the atmosphere then you are adding to the problem, if you use waste plant material that will simply decay, that carbon is already in the environment.

These are good tricks, but there are more. Concrete as it turns out not only releases CO2 in its production but over time reabsorbs some of it again. New formulas are being tested that will absorb a lot more, most famously an experiment on the new replacement bridge in the Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Maybe in time an even bigger chunk of carbon could be grabbed out of the sky.

Concrete is a big part of our urban landscape, it absorbs a lot of the heat of the day and makes our urban environment much hotter in the summer. This heat makes us turn up the ac, which uses a lot of energy, which ultimately makes it hotter still. New concrete formulas help alleviate this frustrating cycle. White concrete used for hardscapes reflects a lot more of the sun rather holding that heat, and porous concrete pavers can actually help cool an outdoor space by letting water evaporate.

The next trick is inside. Good engineering is now taking advantage of concrete’s ability to hold heat to make our building more energy efficient. By placing structural walls inside the building’s envelope concrete can regulate indoor temperatures by absorbing heat when the building warms up and releasing it later, when the heat is needed.

The Gift That Stops Taking

Welcome to the holiday gift guide from the sustainable line. Rather than soap boxing about how you should stop buying more stuff (want less) or to start giving your money to well-deserving charities, I thought that this holiday season we could celebrate by buying more that uses less. First, of course, don't buy gifts that are cheap crap. A lot of it is on sale and most of it plugs in and wastes a lot of energy before the recipient has to throw it away. Think savings for the gift's lifetime.

For your romantic friends and loved ones, dimmable compact florescent bulbs are a perfect fit. Dimmable CFL's have gotten both pretty good at dimming and are now a great bargain, many can be had for less than $5. Electronics are still a big hit so the new LED bulbs (not the cheap ones, but those with the big heat sink) are now at your local big box hardware store and will make you look like you are up on the new trends. They work best as spot lights. Make sure to compare the lumens, not the "watt equivalent" on the box. Shell out at least $30 for one of these lifetime investments. Test some out by getting a string of LED holiday lights. By the way, the CFLs are electronic too, and really outlast incandescents by a long stretch, so toss those old grandpa bulbs in the trash (it's ok, really, right into the waste basket). Electronics are always a big hit, saving electrons should be too.

Avoid not only a lump of coal in the stocking but also a lot of coal at your power plant by giving a Kill-A-Watt meter. At less than $25 this has got to be the best bargain out there and hours of fun when your recipient finds out how much energy those cheap-crap-that-plugs-in gifts they received use from the house plug.

To show you really care the hot item this year is the T.E.D. 5000 Energy Meter linked with Google's PowerMeter software. It is flying off the shelves at $230 because now anyone can measure their home's energy usage and cost, trends and other data from anywhere, including their mobile phone. You better get it soon before they all disappear. Something an entire family can enjoy.

The Smart Power Strip gives your office mate an easy way to control that wasted electricity. The strip allows them to plug in devices that should never turn off alongside devices that should turn off automatically when they shut down their computer (or other central technology), and start up when they turn it on. This makes energy saving effortless for only $30. Laptops that replace desktop computers are an easy decision to make when you are thinking about that special someone. They don't even have to know you bought it just to help them save a lot of energy.

The $120 eco-fan is a nifty gadget that uses the heat from a wood stove to spin its blades and distribute that hot air throughout the house. The hotter it gets the more air it moves (I do use a wood stove a lot, hint).

One of the best ways to make someone take notice of you is in the shower, so why not give them a super efficient showerhead that actually works better than that old wasteful one they use now. The line of Oxygenics shower heads turn the water drops into little bubbles that feel like a lot more water is coming out. These showerheads use only 1.5 gallons a minute and start at $25 for the basic model. You also just saved them a big chunk of change from all that heating of water.

If you are the kind of person who likes to give the most attention getting gifts in your circle then the dual flush toilet conversion kitwill fit the bill. This kit is under $30 and will save from 30-65% of a home's toilet water. The manufacturer claims that it works on all toilets and the conversion is very do-it-yourself. Of course you can spring for a new super low flow dual flush toilet that uses less than a gallon per flush on average. They run at about $200 before installation.

For those with kids or allergies a thoughtful gift of a home air test will be well received. By setting up a $120 testing unit in the home and sending it to a lab they can get a report on the VOC levels, mold, and other contaminants in the home. Winter indoor air quality can be really bad but you can show that you care with a test like this. Room air filters are mostly pseudo science, so fix the problem with awhole house heat recovery ventilator with a hepa filter. A HRV is $850 before installation but asthma is a lot more expensive.

Here are a few other ideas that are not necessarily about the home but are really environmentally aware. Now that gift cards are so useful, don't get one from the same old retailer, see if your independent shop has one too. What about a gift card for the local used book store, a shop like Recycled Cycles for a reconditioned bike, or your local building material reuse center like ReSource? These independents are following the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) with your support and have what the big box stores don't, a promising future for all of us. So go ahead and buy stuff guilt free because you are really helping save electricity, water, and our local economy.

Generosity is the virtue that produces peace,

Andrew Michler, LEED AP, MIGP

Please Note:

Under the new FCC rules the author is to report any compensation received for the mentioning of products or services. Unfortunately the author received no compensation or samples of the mentioned products.