Good & bad news on compact fluorescents....

Today’s post: Weds, 4-23-2008

The good news about compact fluorescents is very simple.

1. They do use only about 25% of the electricity of incandescent light bulbs.

2. The cost is coming down. Our first few were a bit over $25 each. Now GE makes them for less than $10. And, they are widely available for less & even given away free on occasion.

3. More people are using them, so we are beginning to use less electricity for lighting.

The bad news, however, is sobering.

1. Based on the recycling figures for cell phones, about 15 to 20 %, it’s likely that at least 80 to 85% of broken or burned out CFL’s are simply thrown in the regular trash every day.

Since they contain a good bit of mercury, this is poisoning our planet & likely some of our future food supply.

It has become illegal to throw them in the trash; but few people likely know of the law or what to do with them instead.

I have read that WalMart & Ace Hardware stores will help you properly dispose of burned out CFL bulbs.

2. Despite it not being at all publicized nor do I remember seeing it on the packaging for the CFL bulbs I’ve purchased,

breaking a CFL light bulb is actually a health emergency.

If you break one, here’s what you need to do.:

a) Open every nearby door or window you can & have every person, including you, leave the room for at least 15 minutes.

b) If you have an air conditioner or air filter running shut it off immediately so you don’t contaminate your future air they process.

c) Young children, babies, & pregnant women should not be in the room until at least 15 minutes after someone else cleans up the pieces.

d) wear rubber gloves & a dust mask if you them when cleaning up the mess. At least use dry or damp toilet paper to pick up the pieces so you don’t touch them directly.

e) After bagging up the larger pieces use damp toilet paper or paper towels to blot up the tiny pieces. You can also use index cards very carefully for the in between sizes.

f) Seal the bag as well as you can. Then see to it goes to a hazardous waste facility.

(If smaller pieces fall on a rug, it would be ideal to remove it also & replace it totally.)

Ouch !!

As I see it, CFL’s will likely be made illegal to make, sell or use as soon as LED lights are economically viable.

We do need to use CFL bulbs now for their energy reduction. But we also need to know they are not very safe & what to do about that.

Since LED lights do NOT have these hazards & are also even more energy-efficient, they are clearly the likely desirable next step in lighting.

But it will take a LOT of development to get good replacement LED bulbs that are even down to twice or three times as expensive as CFL bulbs AND some kind of financing mechanism for that to happen.

The good news is that I think both these things will happen within 20 years though 5 would be a lot better.

Meanwhile, be extremely careful of any CFL bulbs in your home. Keep them away from lamps small children or pets might break. And, dispose of them both with great care & properly.

Good & bad news on electric cars....

Today’s post: Weds, 4-16-2008

I very much approve of Tesla Motors & the rationale on their website that guides their car designs. (See http://www.teslamotors.com/ .)

They understand why electric cars are important for advancing renewable energy & turning off our reliance on oil. And, they realize that electric cars will only succeed in the marketplace if people want to drive them.

I’d love it if they start selling truckloads of their cars & would like that to be soon.

However, they have not yet gone into full production on their first car, the sports roadster, & have not yet begun making their second car that will have a larger market since it is an upscale sedan.

So when I read earlier today that another company, Fisker Coach Build of Irvine in California was developing a good looking plug-in hybrid & that the two companies are suing each other, I was both delighted to see more electric cars that people would want to drive enter the market & sad that the management time of these two companies was going to these legal hassles. Unfortunately, it may add delays to their cars getting into full production as soon as I’d like for both companies.

That said, unlike Tesla, Fisker cars are not yet at all well known.

So, here’s what I’ve found out about the Fisker cars.:

I did read that they will have up to a 40 mile all electric range. That would make them effectively all electric for many people. And it would make them all electric for morning commutes for almost everyone who drives them. Driving one would slash gasoline use in virtually every case. This is not quite as good as the Tesla or Miles cars but is very close.

The company is called Fisker Automotive. I didn’t enter their website as it requires one to install flash which I detest.

But I found this: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/News/articleId=122489

"Fisker Automotive: New Plug-in Hybrid Maker
Date posted: 09-05-2007 IRVINE, Calif. - Betting that they can beat bureaucracy-burdened major automakers to market with today's hottest new green-car technology, a pair of Southern California automotive firms will announce plans today for a new, American-made plug-in hybrid car to go on sale by 2010.

The companies, Fisker Coachbuild LLC and Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide, both located in Irvine, will form a joint venture to design, build and market the car, said spokeswoman Cristina Cheever. The new company will be called Fisker Automotive.

Its plug-in hybrid will team an internal combustion engine and a battery-based electric drive system that can be recharged from the commercial grid via common 110-volt household current.

Details and performance figures, including range on all-electric drive, are being kept under wraps, but Cheever said the new vehicles would handily outperform the 8-mile all-electric range Toyota is promising for its next-generation Prius plug-in hybrid, a 2009 model.

General Motors has said it will bring an extended-range Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, with 40 miles of all-electric range, to market by 2010 and will sell it for under $30,000. Ford also has shown a concept plug-in hybrid but has not said when, or whether, it will build the vehicle.

Design and technology development for the Fisker plug-in are underway and a working preproduction prototype will be unveiled in January at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show, Cheever said.

The car, to be designed by Fisker Coachbuild, would sell for under $100,000 and plans call for initial annual production of 15,000 vehicles, Cheever said.

Fisker Automotive will contract with an existing private manufacturer to build its cars, she said.

Henrik Fisker, the former BMW and Aston Martin designer and chairman of Fisker Coachbuild, will head Fisker Automotive's management team.

Privately owned Fisker Coachbuild designs and installs new coachwork and interiors for high-end BMW and Mercedes-Benz models, creating rebodied exotics in the manner of the custom coachbuilders of the early 1900s who created new sheet metal for all types of luxury cars including Bugattis, Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces. The company won't release sales data but says it has delivered 13 of its Tramonto convertibles and Latigo coupes (based, respectively, on the Mercedes-Benz SL and BMW 6 Series.)

Quantum, which owns several chassis-building companies and specializes in clean propulsion and fuel and energy storage technologies, is developing the plug-in power plant and drive system for the Fisker. The company has built plug-in hybrid conversions of the Ford Escape Hybrid for the Southern California Air Quality Management District.

What this means to you: If you've got the bucks, you could be zooming by decade's end in an earth-friendly exotic car with substantial all-electric range while your neighbor is still putting along in a Prius."

(The article in today’s paper said their car will sell for about $80,000.)

& I found this on Wikipedia:

“Fisker Automotive From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fisker Automotive is a joint venture between Fisker Coachbuild and Quantum Technologies.

All models will feature a cutting-edge plug-in hybrid technology named "Quantum Drive", developed by Quantum Technologies exclusively for Fisker Automotive. This all-new plug–in Quantum Drive chassis layout will allow Fisker to design innovative luxury cars with uncompromised proportions.

The Fisker Karma is a plug-in hybrid electric sportscar shown at the North American International Auto Show in January 2008.”

X* X* X* X*

I wish both companies the best & hope they both sell a lot of cars.

In addition, I hope their electric car & plug-in hybrid car technologies make their way quickly into less expensive, even more widely sold cars.

This may happen through licensing by larger car companies or by those companies rapidly rolling out their own versions. It might even happen by these two companies doing it themselves if they do well enough.

It will definitely open the marketplace to truly green cars that can run all or mostly on renewable energy & begin to help us get off of using oil to power our driving.

Slash your Air Conditioning bills this summer....

Today’s post: Weds, 4-9-2008

How does cutting your bill to zero or by 70 % sound?

Hot weather is coming soon to where you live & work this year.

(In our area, in the Silicon Valley, after below average temps recently, our first hot weather of this year is literally predicted to start tomorrow.)

Unfortunately, in many homes & buildings a huge amount of money & energy is spent on air conditioning to pump heat out of buildings it could easily never have gotten into to begin with.

For many buildings & most homes moderately inexpensive fixes can keep enough heat from getting in to cut well over 50% from air conditioning costs & energy use or even eliminate them totally & do it each summer after they are installed.

In addition, the more people do this, the less new electric generating capacity has to be built to manage peak demand for electricity which is now driven by afternoon air conditioning use on the hottest days.

In climates where the temperature falls enough at night, you can let in cool night air to remove any left over heat from the day before by opening the windows &/or by using fans to pull in air from outside & push out the inside air. Often, if you have things well set up to prevent heat from getting in &/or have ceiling fans to lower the perceived temperature a few degrees, from 76 actual to 72 perceived, for example, on most days you then will need NO air conditioning use at all.

In climates where it is much hotter or only falls to a level where you still need to run the air conditioning, if you have things well set up to prevent heat from getting in &/or have ceiling fans to lower the perceived temperature a few degrees, you can get a triple play. You only will need to run your air conditioner at night on most days. That means you can get maximum efficiency per unit of energy as the AC works better with cooler temps to dump the excess heat into so your bill is less. And, you use the electricity at night when it often costs less per kilowatt than at peak times in the afternoon. Lastly, you no longer need to add a lot of load in the afternoon to overstress your local power grid. The idea is to have the house at or office at 68 degrees F or even a bit less in the early morning when it’s coolest outside & have it not set to turn back on until the inside gets to 76 degrees (or perhaps 72 if you don’t have ceiling fans yet.) Then, if your heat proofing is good enough, your AC will rarely need to come back on. And, if it does, it will need to run a LOT less.

Well insulated buildings with a lot of thermal mass, ideally with few windows or with double pane windows, that also have good passive design to prevent heat from entering do this very well.

New buildings with part underground or with thick walls made of rammed earth or adobe or straw or well insulated concrete block & heat resistant roofs do this well.

But in most homes today & some commercial buildings, the main problem is in the roof crawl space.

Usually there is no insulation between the roof & the crawl space -- & in some areas not much below it. In addition, the crawl space has almost no ventilation. As a result, instead of the under the roof temperature being only slightly above the outside air, it can be as much as 70 or 80 degrees hotter. Then this trapped heat re-radiates into the rooms beneath acting as a solar heater all afternoon. Even worse, this heat continues to radiate well into the night making the people inside miserable or running up their AC bills like crazy.

My wife & I had a house like that which was also badly insulated and had no air conditioning. On sunny days much above 79 degrees for a high, it was often well over 80 or even 90 until about the time the next morning we had to get up to go to work. This was NOT fun. And, if we had decent air conditioning then, we would have run it a LOT.

We then discovered & installed a system that uses NO OUTSIDE ENERGY AT ALL which prevented this under the roof heat build up. And, we installed ceiling fans.

We didn’t even get to upgrading the insulation and got this result.:

After doing this, we experienced a day well into the high 90’s outside. It would have been over 100 inside from 3 PM to midnight before. After installing this system & adding ceiling fans, it only got up to about 75 inside & then only from about 3 to 6 PM – AND the 75 felt Ok with just the ceiling fans alone. It was in the high 90’s outside and we needed NO air conditioning at all. And, remember that was before we upgraded our ceiling insulation to R19 or better.

Here is the magic trick we used that I cannot recommend more highly after this experience.:

Hot air rises. So, what we did is to install several very well screened air intake vents around the perimeter of our roof’s crawl space that were under the shade of the roof & we had a competent workman also install several convection powered turbines in the roof near its peak. Then we added ceiling fans to our bedrooms & living room. The entire project cost less than $1,000. And, this was a one time fee.

The very same hot air that was giving us such grief before now happily spun the turbines as it rose & drew the much less hot outside air in behind it. This was all solar powered. We needed no outside energy at all to run it.

If we had more money at the time, I would have liked to add the extra ceiling insulation & a radiant heat barrier in our attic and installed wood frame double pane windows.

Even better would have been to add a decent heat pump system to deliver efficient air conditioning if we ever needed it for days above 100 degrees & install enough solar panels to run it all. And, added window shading on the west & south sides of the house would have also helped.

But, much to my delight, we got close to 100 % of the cooling we needed from this single inexpensive fix that still needs no energy bills at all to operate these several years later.

So, if you have a roof that traps heat the way our roof then did, you can add all sorts of useful extras as I would have liked to do. But for about $2500 or less you can heat proof your house better than you might imagine with this simple system.

(In our area we bought the convection powered turbines & ceiling fans at Home Depot.)

Forward to the Future – of cars....

Today’s post: Weds, 4-2-2008

As I see it, cars will gradually evolve to be more energy efficient & the kinds that will increasingly be our transportation will be hybrids, all electric cars, plug-in hybrids, --

& possibly fuel cell cars run on hydrogen – IF the technology for safe storage advances & if they can be fueled by using renewable or possibly nuclear power to liberate the hydrogen from water or methane.

The cars look set to appear in our marketplace in large numbers in about that order. Hybrids are here now & more will be arriving soon. Two or three all electric car models will arrive within a few more months from Tesla Motors & Miles Electric Vehicles. And, plug-in hybrids now in development will arrive soon after that.

In addition, cars will be more comfortable & safer to drive and, for energy efficiency, will tend to get lighter, more aerodynamically streamlined, -- & somewhat smaller, perhaps.

To see all of the above, but in a car a bit extreme appearance-wise, go to www.aptera.com -- This is the website of Aptera Motors.

They do not yet make a car that most people would buy or one large enough for some family’s needs.

(It is a 3 wheeled car that looks like a tiny airplane with no wings & reminds me a bit of R2D2 of StarWars with its back leaning look. And, it only holds two people. It’s well engineered NOT to be fragile in a crash but looks like it is. My personal preference is for a larger more normal looking car with 4 wheels. I prefer the look of the Honda Civic Hybrid over the Prius for example.

Some early adapters & some younger buyers WILL buy their limited production cars now. But they don’t yet have a design ready for prime time, large sales to the general public in my view.)

However, their design innovations are extremely impressive. I hope designers & executives from GM, Ford, Honda, Nissan, Chrysler, & the other, still large, car makers adapt many of them.

The bad news is the larger companies will lose market share if they don’t as the newer car companies will do so I think.

On Aptera’s website I found an article from TreeHugger, www.treehugger.com

This key paragraph describes two of the most useful & desirable innovations that any car maker could add to its cars.:

“You'll get some pretty slick features, including solar cells embedded under the roof operate an always-on climate control system, ensuring the interior never gets too hot or too cold, and a computer-controlled “Eyes Forward” vision system. By replacing the side mirrors with embedded cameras that display a 180-degree rear view in the front of the instrument panel, Eyes Forward "gives the driver complete situational awareness without taking their eyes off of the road."

These two innovations are extremely desirable features I wish our car we currently drive had now.

In addition to the added comfort of not having to get into a horribly hot car on a hot, sunny day, this system eliminates or sharply reduces the outside power needed to run the air conditioning on such days by using the available solar energy. This is something I’d like to see on all cars soon.

Secondly, highway patrol officers & car safety instructors teach to check your rear view mirrors often as you drive. Even good drivers, probably including most of the officers & instructors, have trouble remembering to do this often. And, if you do it at just the wrong time so taking your eyes away from looking forward causes you to miss a sudden threat in front of you, it can even be a bad idea sometimes.

This eyes forward TV display of what is behind you & what is in your blind spots, is a brilliant idea which solves both these problems at the same time. Good job.

It will be interesting to see how cars develop from here given all these innovations.

The good news is that a lot of these things will happen within 10 years; & most of them will happen, I think, within 30 years.