The Energy We Use
To put things in perspective for you, the average house consumes just under
900 kWh of electricity every month, which is the equivalent of having about 5 100 watt light bulbs being run for 6 hours a night every night. If you knew that one light bulb could have such a huge effect, would it cause you to possibly turn that light off? Knowing how much turning any light or appliance is costing in terms of energy causes people to make more intelligent decisions about their energy usage.
Update average home info, Insert graph of usage of electricity in residences and businesses by use, also (89) Is interesting scientific journal article on behavior of feedback from 2006 http://www.ase.org/section/_audience/consumers/homecheckup/ (91) Is link to energy audit website with scorecard There are obviously a number of things that affect the amount of energy used by a household, such as the size of the house, the climate, the appliances and heating and cooling systems, the usage, and finally, the behavior of the occupants. This is why there was a large controversy in the news about Al Gore's huge home electricity use; it was the result of a combination of these factors, but
most people assumed it was purely behavioral. An experiment is being run in a community outside of San Francisco that built a number of homes in a similar way. It is an experiment run by the Department of Energy called the Building America Program. The houses are cost-effective, zero energy homes that have higher than average insulation and windows, tightly sealed ductwork, tankless water heaters, etc. They also have two kilowatt photovoltaic systems on the roof. These homes present a best case scenario for current homes. The experiment is seeing how much the families living in them actually cut energy consumption. While the total reduction is interesting, more interesting is the fact that some families are consuming twice as much energy as their neighbors in nearly identical homes. This shows that not only does behavior matter, but that it may matter even more as technology and proper construction cut down on the total energy usage.
The project is looking to give all these experimental homes feedback devices that will hopefully cause people to cut energy usage little by little.
Parasitic Loads
Parasitic loads, also known as phantom loads, are the result of devices that are plugged in and turned off, but still consuming power. There are three typical reasons for this; the first being that the device is in a standby mode ready to turn on as quickly as possible, this occurs with most televisions, DVD players, and computers, the second source is from devices with batteries or power adapters that will trickle power in to make sure the battery is full, and finally, appliances with digital readouts use energy to power those. For example, a microwave uses more power for its clock than it does cooking food over its lifetime on average
Look this up, I know its out there . The second cause, while bad for the environment, also turns out to be bad for the devices themselves, with constant charging reducing lifecycles. According to the International Energy Agency, devices plugged in but not in use consume between 200 and 400 terawatt-hours per year. It is estimated to be between 5 and 25% of all residential energy used in the U.S., a number that is constantly rising.
Feedback Systems
These systems provide information on energy usage and electricity costs in real time, with varying levels of detail. Simple systems hookup to your electrical meter and provide a real-time readout of energy usage, sometimes with a remote readout as well that you can carry through the house. More advanced systems also include real-time energy costs and may be attached to each circuit or each outlet as opposed to the electrical meter. They can cost as little as $150 for a simple device. Studies in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and the UK have shown that people who install even the simple devices
reduce energy consumption between 5 and 15 percent. While there are currently less than a million smart meters in existence right now,
ABI research expects that there will be 52 million in 2013, which would be more than a third of the nation's meters. Below are some things you
should be looking for if you are in the market for a feedback meter:
- How many points does the device read? Is it just the meter or is there information for different parts of your house?
- How accurate is the meter? Does it measure in 10 kilowatt increments or 100 kilowatt increments?
- Is there a remote readout? And if so, is it hardwired to a wall or can it be moved around so you can watch the effect of turning things on and off as you do it?
- Does the meter need to integrate with an energy generating system, such as a PV array or wind turbine? And if so, does the meter you are looking at support your inverter?
Automation Systems
Despite all of the automation that exists in our world currently, all of the improvements in cell phones, televisions, and cars, when it comes to electricity, the technology we are using is over a century old. In addition to the smart electrical grid discussed in the energy production section, there is also set to be a revolution on the consumer end, with home automation systems becoming more prevalent. These systems will not only report energy usage over a period of time using some monitor, whether it be a computer, TV, or separate screen, but it will also allow for comparisons with your neighbors and, even more powerfully, allow you to program the house to do things on its own to
reduce your energy consumption by following tips that may be automatically recommended for you. Automation systems consist of sensors that can sense anything from temperature and humidity to air quality to light levels and occupancy, a controller that is programmed to act in a certain way and that can be manipulated by the homeowner to turn varying levels of control on and off, and a communications protocol that serves as the intermediary between the sensors, the controller, and the output devices. The current wireless protocols leading the charge to become the standard for home automation networks are ZigBee, Z-Wave from Zensys, and LonWorks from Echelon. LonWorks is already a popular communications protocol in Europe and has the advantage of being able to communicate not only wirelessly, but also over power lines. In the US, however, it seems like
ZigBee is becoming the industry leader, although it is possible for more than one protocol to coexist in the same way Wi-Fi and Bluetooth do. These systems can do things such as turn lights on and off based on occupancy, adjust temperature levels based on current climate, weather predictions, and occupancy, and directing appliances to turn on and off based on the cost of electricity. All of these different things can
reduce energy consumption by as much as 30-40% according to some, depending on how wasteful your habits are to begin with. The beauty of these systems is the almost infinite levels of control that can be implemented, with different size and sophistication being appropriate for each installed location. One primary advantage of these systems, especially for businesses, is that they can combine a number of controlled systems into one smart controller that allows the different systems to share information. While these systems used to be prohibitively expensive, they are now down into the
5 and 10 thousand dollar range, which is much more reasonable, and less sophisticated, less expensive controllers are coming out all the time.