March 2009 Archives

Forest fires cause a lot of damage, according to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) the ten year average in California alone is 9,649 fires per year consuming over 299,458 acres. That's not to say that fires themselves are bad, in fact they are necessary for the germination of certain kinds of trees and there are even some species in California, such as the giant redwood and sequoia, that are fire resistant. When people interact with the environment however, they sometimes upset the natural cycle of small forest fires - creating prolonged "no burn" periods which allow biomass fuel to build up leading to catastrophic fires. People can also disrupt the natural fire buffer zones that might have protected the region in previous generations by building houses and clear cutting forests. This is a problem that is harmful to the environment in many ways, at the single home level, when a house is burned toxic fumes from unnatural products such as plastic are released into the atmosphere. Over a period of time larger fires are able to consume barriers and an entire ecosystem can be destroyed.

The problem of raging forest fires, habitat loss and home destruction isn't just limited to California. Slash and burn agriculture throughout the tropical rain forest regions around the world can also spur on seasonal wild fires capable of mass destruction. What begins as a way to release nutrients from tropical plants in order to produce bean crops quickly (slash and burn) turns into blight and starvation as vast grasslands overrun the lands as nutrients are lost. This all leads to wild fires. In recent years the problem has grown, forcing thousands of farmers in lesser developed countries around the world to move deeper and deeper into the rain forest destroying more and more habitats and animals as they move forward.

In February 2009 Willie Smits was featured on Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) which is a network much like YouTube focused on educational videos presented in 18 minute segments. His talk entitled A 20-year tale of hope: How we re-grew a rainforest addresses the problem of forest fires and deforestation. Many of the discoveries made during his experiments in Borneo may be applicable to California and other places in the US where forest fires are a real problem. His initial goal was not to stop fires but rather to save orangutans. This goal resembles the challenge of saving homes in California and his solution can be applied in much the same way.

What Mr. Smits found is that reforestation can take place, even in the most remote and hostile environments. By creating a perimeter of thorny Salak Palms he was able to keep the people separate from the orangutans and the rain forest zone which attracted moisture and rainfall. Around the Salak Palms he created a "people zone" where villagers could resettle and grow beans and sugar cane (used for ethanol in some cases). A final perimeter was created around the settlements made from fire resistant trees and shrubs to protect from the seasonal forest fires. All of this was tracked using Google Earth and as the reforestation and planting work was being done a culture of sustainability, based on protecting the inner forest and orangutans, was fostered in the native culture of villagers who chose to join the project.

With this same type of environmental engineering and community involvement Californians should be able to create a fire boundary for their own communities. Advanced irrigation techniques that are not available in Borneo could be used to grow back swaths of Redwoods and other fire resistant trees and new vegetation might also attract moisture release from otherwise dry clouds.

Last week I had a conversation with my favorite engineering friend Lee Devlin. Lee's articles have been featured numerous times here on the CleanTech Authority Network and he's the guy I turn to when I need advice about EE challenges. This time I was asking Lee about Vampire Power loss, which is a phenomenon that occurs in millions of homes nation wide in the US and other countries.

When you leave appliances plugged in they drain power or create heat which wastes power. I was wondering, aren't there smart outlets that stop the flow of energy for appliances when not in use? If so, how would these work and where can I get them? I know there are power strips that you can manually turn off, but what about a smart outlet that could be used in houses across the nation. I asked Lee if he knew how to build something like this or if it exists already. Maybe it would require an actual switch at the outlet or maybe it could be smart enough to figure it out on its own.

Below is an image taken from a recent National Geographic story we covered about saving energy at home, the bright red represents heat from the flow of electricity even though none of the chargers are being used. Take note that while this image is very dramatic in it's appearance, the actual power loss experienced may not be so.

Lee responded to my question with the following tips: There is a device called a Kill-A-Watt that will measure current draw on power cubes and that would help to determine whether leaving a charger connected is a cause for concern. It will measure down to a very low power consumption, about a watt. I have yet to find any modern chargers that consume much electricity when nothing is connected to them. My iPhone's power cube doesn't even register a watt until I plug in the iPhone. Then it registers about 4 watts while it's charging and 0 watts after the phone is charged. The iPhone's battery has a capacity of 7 W-h, which is about .07 cents worth of electricity. Even if I drained and charged it every day, it would use only 25 cents in electricity per year. So if a charger left plugged in for a year drew another 25 cents in electricity, it would be hard to justify spending very much to prevent it.

Suppose there was a device that cost $25 that sensed whether any DC current was flowing from the charger, and if not, turned off the current at the wall outlet. It would take 100 years of energy savings to pay for itself, provided it didn't consume electricity. But it would need to use electricity, and therefore would likely create a net loss of energy overall.

Generally speaking, something that is left on all the time but draws less than a watt isn't a major concern. A one watt load over the course of a month adds about $.07 to your electric bill.  Having said that, there are plenty of items that even when they appear to be turned off will draw 5 to 10 watts or more, and these things can add up on your bill. Over the course of a month, a persistent 15 watt load will add about  $1 to your monthly electric bill. That's the best place to direct one's attention when looking to save energy.

Regarding the image above, images from IR cameras can be very misleading and should not be used as a way to estimate relative power consumption. An IR camera is self-adjusting so that it can read even the slightest change in temperature variation in its view and then it adjusts its color range to achieve the maximum color differential. This often gives the false impression that there is a wide variation of temperatures and a large amount of heat being generated. However, it may only be a few degrees of temperature variation even though it shows colors going all the way from blue to red, causing people to think that some parts of the picture are below freezing and other parts are 'red hot'. A small temperature differential can be achieved with just milliwatts of power. Rather than using an $2500 IR camera, a Kill-A-Watt, which costs $18 at newegg.com, is much more useful to show where in your household you can achieve energy savings. In general, it makes sense to attack persistent loads that are more than 5 watts, and ignore anything less than 1 watt, because those loads will make little difference in the grand scheme of things. I know that every little bit adds up, but the best use of your time is to go after the big offenders, and you'll be surprised where you'll find them. My very expensive Bose Wave clock radio draws 10 watts continuously whether it's playing music or not, whereas my el-cheapo clock radios, that essentially perform the same function, all draw less than 1 watt.

If you don't have a Kill-A-Watt, I would highly recommend you get one.  They are very valuable in helping sort out where your electricity is being wasted, or not being wasted, whatever the case may be.

The best kind of smart outlet I see in the future will be the kind that is connected to a smart grid. This grid will monitor use and charging so that appliances can actually store electricity and act as a back up power source, a sort of distributed battery... Stay tuned for more on this topic and check out EV Authority for more battery related news and stories.

The cover story for this month's March issue of National Geographic, 2009 shows an infrared image of an older house in Connecticut, reproduced below. The article follows three families who have created a friendly neighborhood pact to track and reduce their CO2 emissions by cutting back on electrical use, car driving, and performing home audits. The story is full of interesting images including the science barge, an organic floating farm on the Hudson River in New York that uses solar panels to generate electricity, a General Electric test site for the GEnx-2B development engine (meant to produce 15% less CO2 than previous airplane engines), and many more infrared shots.

The article is also full of factoids and charts that are sure to make any home owner reconsider their daily impact on the environment, facts like "69% of the electricity produced for homes is lost in transit and heat" that's 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every 1 that is used. There are some interesting solutions posed in the article and anecdotal short stories from around the country. In one such story the building of a 730-megawatt power plant in Austin Texas was avoided through the use of rebates and energy saving appliance incentives in the community, the same amount of electricity was simply "saved" proactively. Peter Miller, the senior editor at National Geographic who wrote the story, does a great job covering the different lifestyles that readers might have, from farmers to city dwellers, and delivers a story that is empowering and fun to read all at the same time. For example, did you know that 85% of the energy produced from gasoline or diesel in most cars is lost in the form of heat?

Unfortunately, most of the experts I know who work in the field of energy have dismissed many of the statistics in the article. Specifically, there is one statistic commenting on the reduction in power generation of coal plants that are converted to cleaner technology. While there may be a small impact it is not nearly as drastic as the National Geographic article suggests. It is estimated by one expert whom I work with, that the use of scrubbers and secondary power generation techniques would increase electricity cost by $0.25 which would move us from $0.04 per KWH to $0.05 which is not much, especially if there were a carbon tax. Furthermore, a carbon tax could provide an incentive to capture and store CO2 from coal fire plants which can be resold to oil developers - CO2 can be pumped into the ground to bring up Oil in what is called "Advanced Oil Recovery". Similar techniques can be used to force out Ethane from deep coal mines, the CO2 will bind with the coal and push out Ethane at a rate of 1:3.