The Good Life

Some environmentalist was recently described as trying to save this planet whilst living on another one.  Despite having spent a large chunk of my working life in energy related industries, I am bewildered by the options available to prevent my carbon footprint from becoming a skidmark.  When two or more are gathered together, seldom do they discuss domestic energy consumption, but they may touch on rising gas and electric costs.  This section is meant to further informed debate, without necessarily hugging a wind turbine.  Wind turbines have become such icon of green and ethical energy, that they obscure effective and less capital intensive technologies (before you hit the send button on the email, I think wind turbines are an effective technology in an appropriate environment).

I was originally attracted to the concept of energy self sufficiency, seeing myself as a high tech Tom Good, which in reality was simply an excuse to lust after Felicity Kendal (if you are around 50, no explanation is needed).  However, it quickly became apparent that one could spend a lot of money and achieve very little either in terms of being a better citizen or cutting utility bills, Hence this review.

Location, Location and Location

Having become aware of the characteristics of the various technologies, it quickly became apparent that any plan is heavily dependent on location.  At one extreme, a farmhouse in an exposed location is going to have a different set of options from a north facing flat in an urban setting.  Secondly, it was not going to be practical to create model every situation, thus, being a pragmatist, I would use my own property, a four bed suburban semi built around 1901 as a reference.

Money, Money, Money

Supporting renewable energy, including micro-generation appears to have become for politicians, the modern equivalent of baby kissing.  The result is that subsidies have become available for wind and solar projects and the possession of hardware is almost a statement of "greeness".  Whilst this is a "good" thing, it has reduced the emphasis on conservation.  Conservation is well handled in the building regulations, e.g. the requirement  that replacement gas boilers should be of a higher efficiency if installed after April 2005, but few people want to be photographed next to a state of the art central heating boiler.

The starting Point

The exercise sometime during the middle of 2006.  The first step was the purchase of a plug-in energy meter.  You simply plug this into an electric socket and then plug the appliance into the meter.  This cost approximately £20.  This allowed the energy consumption of the fridge and other appliances to be measured, typically over a week.  Once all the appliances had been measured, it was assumed that the difference between the meter reading and the appliance consumption was due to lighting.  Our electricity meter suggested that we were using slightly less than 20 kwh/day broken down as shown in the left hand pie chart.

It was obvious that lighting (7 kwh/day), computers (5 kwh/day) and hot water (3 kwh/day) were accounting for nearly 80% of our electrical consumption.  Without any major lifestyle changes, the consumption was reduced to approx. 7 kwh/day by:

Lighting

The 20 incandescent light bulbs were replaced by CFL's.  The manufacturer's claim that these use 20% of the electricity used by conventional bulbs was substantiated by an 80% reduction in consumption.  This was an investment of approximately £50.00.

Computers

As a self employed IT person with children who spend more time on the internet than in front of the TV, we have a small home network and for no good reason had lapsed into the habit of leaving them on all the time.  The obvious solution was to activate the machine's power management.  Additionally, the "Wake-up on LAN" feature of the server was turned on.  Thus it now wakes up to print a document, or retrieve a file, then goes back to sleep without anyone needing to remember to turn it off.

Hot Water

We tended to use the immersion heater as a substitute for forward planning, after an intensive training programme, we now decide we want to shower/bath an hour in advance and use the gas boiler.  This is an improvement on the "I smell/I must wash now approach".  This has shifted some of the energy use to gas, but there is an overall reduction in CO2 emissions.

Six months into this regime, my overall approach is "Don't sweat the small stuff".  Messing with the TV's set-top box, Christmas tree lights and similar doesn't reduce consumption much and simply alienates people.  Similarly, the washing machine and dishwasher are still a small part of the total and if used sensibly, don't represent a major source of emissions.  Thus what's left:

Fridge

This is an "always-on" device and not in the first flush of youth, replacing this with a modern energy efficient devices will reduce consumption to less than 1 kwh/day.  This is a minority view, but I can contemplate life without a fridge, primarily because red wine does not need cooling and I don't consume many dairy products.

Computers

As the 1 GHz desktops fail to run applications designed for 5 GHz, replace them with laptops.

Lighting

There are two obvious changes.  First concentrating the lighting where people are sitting or working, thus instead of having three lights on in a room, a single smaller desk light is used.  Secondly, turn off lights when there is no one in a room.

My perception, is that electrical self-sufficiency is possible, if the average consumption can be reduced to less than 4.0 kwh/day.  This level of consumption may be possible..

Page Updated: 27-Feb-07

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