FUSF Green

Green Computing

According to the US Census Bureau, in 2003 70 million American households, or 62 percent, had one or more computers in their household, up from 56 percent in 2001. The number of computers found in the workplace is harder to measure, but it is estimated that computers are responsible for 10-20 percent of power consumption in the commercial sector. With an increase in the availability of "always-on" broadband connections and the convenience factor of leaving your PC on, it is estimated that some 30-40 percent of the  PCs in our country are left running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

“In the old days” frequent cycling (on/off) of computers was believed to be harmful to the computer and reduced the lifespan of the device.   However, if proper procedures are followed (using the operating system to shut down the computer and not the hardware button), powering your computer off and on does no damage to the hardware.  On the contrary, some literature suggests that leaving the computer on all day will actually shorten the computer's lifetime as heat and wear take a toll on moving parts, like our hard drives and cooling fans.

It is estimated that In 2001, PCs and peripherals accounted for a combined 23 billion kilowatt hours of electricity! This is over 16,675,000 tons of CO2 per year! Computers also produce waste heat, which in the summer time increases the demands on cooling systems.  The impact of computers on our environment could be drastically reduced by changing a few of our personal computing habits:

1. Turn your computer off when not in use.  Think of your computer as 150 watt light bulb (the incandescent kind).   We all know that turning off the lights when they're not in use can result in a significant drop in our energy consumption.
2. If you need to leave your computer running all day, turn off the non-essential peripherals.  Plug your monitor, speakers, printer, USB hub, etc, into a separate power strip/surge protector and power it down when not using your computer.  The drain produced by these devices can be significant.
3. Learn about your computers power management features.  Enabling these features or increasing their aggressiveness can save power and extend the life of your hardware (a hard drive in "sleep" mode does not spin and thus produces no wear.)  Enabling power management features can reduce energy consumption by 80%.  That's 965 pounds of CO2 per year.  Search google for "computer power management" to find out more.
4. Don't use a "screen saver".  Let power management turn off your monitor instead.  This will increase the life of the monitor and save electricity.  A monitor displaying a screen saver will often use more electricity than when you are actively using the computer.
5. Upgrade your old CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) monitor with a new energy Star compliant LCD. These use only about a third the energy of a CRT (25W instead of 75W), take up less space in landfills, and contain far fewer environmental contaminants like the lead, mercury, and barium found in CRT's.
6. Consider upgrading to a new energy efficient "green" PC.  Everex (http://www.everex.com/) offers a line of energy efficient computers that include ultra-low power consumption CPU's that use only 20 watts at peak usage and 2 watts when idle. Most desktop CPUs consume an average of 40-130 watts of electricity at peak usage!

If you have any other tips or tricks to save energy while computing, feel free to add them to the comments below!

My Alternative Energy Odyssey (continued)

Well, I finally did it. My Odyssey has come to an end. My solar hot water heater has been up and running since mid-December. If you Live in the Massachusetts area, you may have noticed that the sun went under a cloud one day and hasn't reappeared since. That was the day that my solar unit came online.

Actually, we have had 3-4 Sunny days since the installation was complete. On those days, my new heater did well considering that we have the shortest days of the year in December. How well did it do? To answer that question, you have to consider the solar conditions in a New England in December. Remember that the shortest day of the year is December 22nd.  Also the sun is very low in the sky, meaning that the sunlight has to come through more atmosphere, making the sunlight weak. I had wondered whether a solar heater could work at all in such conditions.

On average, if the sky is clear, the heater is bringing 85 gallons of water in my storage tank from about 70 degrees Fahrenheit to about 98. Because of the way a solar storage tank is setup, that means that the water temp is 98 through the entire height of the tank. Not bad for the worst solar conditions of the year! On partly cloudy days, the heater is still functional. In some cases, it heated the water to 87 degrees when the sun was never fully uncovered.

Now, you can take a comfortable shower in 98 degree water, but you really want your faucet temperature to be about 120. That's "piping" hot. To get my water to 120, I have to supplement with electricity.  But here, also keep in mind that my family doesn't use 85 gallons of hot water on the average day unless we are doing laundry or running the bathtub instead of taking a shower. When all is said and done, this December, the solar heater is supplying about 60% or more of my needs on Sunny Days.

Based on current performance, I expect that that this number will rise 10% to 15% each month. By the end of March, the heater should be supplying 100% of our needs for piping hot water, even on days of heavy use. In the Summer months we will have an excess of hot water. The temperature in the storage tank will reach 160 degrees. 85 gallons of water this hot will last us over rainy spells as well. We will probably have to cover part of the collector with a tarp in July and August to keep it from overheating and damaging itself.

Here are some technical details of the system:

Collector: 44 evacuated glass tubes made in America by Apricus
    http://www.Apricus.com
Exchanger: Double closed-loop heat exchanger made in Maine by Purist Energy
    http://www.puristenergy.com/systems.htm
Storage Tank: Rheem Marathon 85 gallon electric hot water heater made in Minnesota (modified for solar at installation)
    http://www.marathonheaters.com/aboutus.html

continued, click link below  -->

Solar Oven Followup

Folks,

The solar oven arrived several weeks ago, and it does work. It has reached 300 degrees F on a sunny day. Ellen has made brownies and cakes in it several times now, and they all came out just fine. It's very easy to use, but it takes at least 30 minutes to get up to temperature on a warm sunny day.

http://www.sunoven.com/

Go Solar - My Alternative Energy Odyssey Continues

Although we have EverGreen Solar, a large and growing manufacturer of solar panels right here in Marlborough, MA. It is very tough to find somebody to install the panels and hook them up to your house and the grid. In fact, MA is lagging the rest of the country in the number of installed solar panels. Home Depot is now installing PV panels on homeowners' rooftops, but again, not in MA.

I recently found a company called GroSolar in New York that says they will install in Eastern MA. This week, I will be setting up an appointment for them to evaluate my house for a photovoltaic panel installation. I make no promises, except that I will be trying fairly hard to find an alternative energy solution for my house.

Tune in here to find out the result of the evaluation.

Solar Oven

I was sitting in the sweltering heat on my porch this past Saturday, thinking of what I might like for supper. I remembered a spicy black beans and rice dish that I had had recently, and wondered if I could duplicate the recipe in my own kitchen. The idea of running my oven in the 95 degree plus weather was an obstacle, but then it occured to me that I could make my bean dish in a solar oven outside without adding all that extra oven heat to my house. To make a long story short I ordered this oven:

http://www.sunoven.com/usa.asp
It is supposed to reach 360 - 400 degrees, so it will cook anything that a regular oven will cook. You can also boil water and cook anything that will go in a pot. It comes with a black enamel pot.

This one is expensive, but the company uses your money not only to build and ship the oven to you, but also to donate these ovens to third world countries, so they can save energy too.   When the oven arrives, I will cook something in it ASAP. I'll make another post to let you know how it went.

Clothesline

If you remember our Earthday service this past April, we all put sticky notes on the wall describing things that we were going to do help lessen our environmental crisis. Then we traded our notes with others. I took home a note that suggested that I should put up a clothsline to reduce the amount of energy I use. Well here is my new clothsline that I put up today in my backyard.

My Green Energy Odyssey

For six months now, I have been looking into options for using renewable energy in my home. I have looked into geothermal home and hot water heating, solar hot water heating, and photovoltaic panels. Here's what I have learned: