MGPC Sustainability Blog

Click Here For Wholesale Prices on Air Conditioner Efficiency Products!

In an earlier article, we discussed how air conditioning works. The important fact from that article is that some sort of water cooling function, such as a cooling tower, increases the efficiency of the condenser to allow for more effective cooling. This is due to the fact that, as water evaporates, it absorbs a great deal of energy (heat) from the surrounding air, making the job of your air conditioner’s cooling coil that much easier.

Why Businesses Save More Energy on Major Appliances

(Image courtesy of: Bryant, Charles W., and Marshall Brain. “How Air Conditioners Work.” 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://home.howstuffworks.com/ac.htm> 21 May 2008. Please visit their site for a terrific explanation of air conditioning and other systems.)

Even if you could afford a cooling tower, the neighbors would not be too happy about you installing one unless you had a few hundred acres of land in a remote area.

The trick is in scaling down the high efficiency cooling systems, or at least the underlying technology, so that it is accessible for you and me.

Scaling Industrial HVAC Technology for the Small Consumer

Luckily, I have been researching, and installed at my own house an extremely affordable solution which utilizes that same principle, which is that the evaporation of water mist draws a large amount of energy from the air in the form of heat, allowing your air conditioner’s condensing coils to cool faster and pump that coolness into your house or small office.

I was immediately impressed with the simplicity, and the fact the I installed the device in 15 minutes without using any tools whatsoever. Notice here that it is installed on a residential heat pump, and will work on almost any similar split system air conditioner or heat pump. The important factor is that the condenser (the outside portion of your air conditioning system) is upright and has a fan which blows air upwards through a grate.

The top portion of the Cool-n-Save is glued onto the condenser and connected to your home’s outdoor water nozzle with the included plastic tubing. The included filter provides water without small particles which would clog the misters.

The top of the Cool-n-Save base contains a paddle (flap) which moves upwards when air is blown from the condenser’s fan as shown above, opening a water valve which sends water down through three plastic tubes. Three misters send a cool, moist mist towards the condenser intake, cooling the ambient air by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Here we see the Cool-n-Save mister in action, spraying a super fine mist and using a tiny amount of water.

Proving Cool-n-Save Energy Savings

Although it is too early to give definitive figures on energy savings, and it will be difficult to compare month-to-month energy bills due to fluctuations in temperature and other variables, I can attest to its ability to reduce the load on my air conditioner and thus cool my home quicker than before.

If nothing else, this product increases our comfort level on hot days.

Instead of accepting my subjective opinions on the Cool-n-Save, you can download the Cool-n-Save Study by Tulane University for a comprehensive engineering analysis of the device.

When in doubt, the Energy Star Partner seal should give you confidence:

Calculate Your Savings

According to Con Edison, the amount of energy used by your air conditioner is a function of outside temperature and thermostat settings, and will range from 50% - 80% of your total energy costs in the summer.

How much did you calculate? We conservatively estimated $ 170 per month savings at our home.

Would you think it would be fair if Cool-n-Save paid for itself in less than one summer? Before answering, consider other upgrade projects you have completed in your house. Have you installed new windows to improve insulation? The payback period for new windows can run over 10 years!

For the Cool-n-Save, let’s use: 3 months x $ 170 savings per month = $ 510 savings in one summer!

In our situation, Cool-n-Save is paying for itself in 2-3 weeks! Plus, we noticed our house reached a comfortably cool temperature much quicker, even on the hottest, most humid days!

If the Cool-n-Save cost only $ 100.00, then it will be EARNING you money for 2-1/2 months of the summer, or even longer in hot, southern-US States.

$ 170 savings per month x 2.5 months = $ 425 PROFIT you made this summer by using an energy efficiency device!

Buy Cool-n-Save Below Retail Price!

So, consider the $ 425 or more profit you are earning when installing the $ 99.00 Cool-n-Save, and then take an addition 5% discount Maryland Green Power Co. gives you against the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, and you have a real money saver!

Special Offer: Get 5% off the suggested retail price of $ 99.99 by clicking on the secure Google Checkout button below:

(Purchase link temporarily removed on August 20, 2008)

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August 29, 2008 - Note: MGPC will not be replenishing its stock of Cool-n-Save, instead favoring the custom-designed air conditioning and heating solutions at:

Green HVAC Solutions for Home and Office

Click on the HVAC link at that site to view the many options available for business and residential customers.

Lately much is being written about energy saving and how phantom power leakage in your home and office is costing you more than you know. But how much of that is pure hyperbole? Are you really throwing money away when you leave your television and stereo set plugged-in but turned off? We’ll show to how to find out for yourself if it’s even worth bending over to unplug that device. And we promise not to use any more worn-out power puns from now on.

Unfortunately, the companies making claims about phantom power leakage are the ones selling the tools to measure it, so you try not to fall into their trap. Here’s the good news: I’ve taken the dive and splurged on the $ 20.00 Kill-a-Watt power meter to find out for you, so you can save the money and buy 5 gallons of gas for your car instead (at current prices in late May in Maryland - by the time you read this, that $ 20.00 might buy significantly less.)

What is phantom power? It is a term coined to describe the power being consumed by an appliance when it is switched off but not unplugged. For example, turning off your television screen might not stop power consumption because the internal transformer is still connected to the socket and “leaking” power. In addition, other components, such as an LCD clock, display or status light might consume additional power.

How does one solve the problem? Most effectively, unplugging the device entirely from its socket is the best cure, but that can be inconvenient, and might also wear out your plug. Who wants to bend down and reach behind the entertainment center so many times a day to unplug the TV?

Another option is to use a power strip or a smart strip. You can plug multiple devices into a power strip, but just make sure that the total wattage of all the devices does not exceed the power strip’s electrical rating to avoid a fire hazard, or more likely, tripped fuses. How do you know if you have exceeded the maximum? We’ll get to that later.

What is the difference between a power strip and a smart strip? A power strip lets you plug a number of electrical appliances into a single outlet and has a single flip switch which turns all of the appliances on or off together.

A smart strip is similar, except that one of the outlets is “smart,” that is, it senses if it is being used or not. If it is not being used, it will turn off all the appliances on the strip. Why is this useful? For example, if you leave your computer on overnight, you can program it to shut down if its power manager is easy to use. When the smart strip senses the lower power usage of your computer, it will turn off the other plugs to, thus turning off other power consumers like your printer, fax machine, table lamp, external computer speakers, etc. It is estimated that this can save over $ 100.00 per year in electrical power, far more than the cost of the smart strip.

Not too bad from an ROI perspective: Pay $ 30 for a smart strip, save $ 100 per year. Want more returns? Install more energy saving products! After all, do you own stocks or real estate that return over 300% annually?

Like we mentioned above, the smart strips work well with an enhanced power manager for your computer, which operates on all Windows platforms and MAC better than the natively installed utility application. Download a trial copy for free now! (While it’s still free…)

Terrific - it pays for itself in a matter of months on a computer, but what about the other appliances? As promised in the beginning of this article, this is where we show you the money, or power, using an inexpensive electric meter called a “Kill a Watt.”

The following tests were done with the above pictured Kill-a-Watt device as described:

Figure 1 - Kill a Watt measures 10 watts when TV, VCR, DVD Player, and Entertainment System are plugged in but turned off. As you can see, this is NOT costing you a fortune.

Using Maryland BG&E electricity rates of 11 cents per kWH: 10 watts = 0.01 kW.

So, 0.01 kW x $0.11/kWH x 24 hours / day x 365 days / year = $9.64 per year.

At this point, the Kill a Watt device’s annual ROI is about 50.

Figure 2 - No big surprises here. 0 watts measured when the power strip button was switched off. It just proves that it isn’t hard to save $ 9.64 and reduce some carbon dioxide output into our atmosphere too.

Figure 3- This time I turned on the VCR and DVD player, but did not press play. They were just sitting in standby as if you had finished a movie and did not turn them off. Do you want to know how much that is costing you?

As above, we calculate: 0.036 kW x 0.11 x 24 x 365 = $ 34.68 wasted per year. The Kill-a-Watt more than paid for itself by giving you the knowledge required to save energy.

And that’s at competitive Baltimore Gas & Electric rates of 11 cents per kWH. What are your electricity rates?

Remember, your electric rates are going up every year! By alot!

Figure 4 - Same as in figure 3, but I also turned on the entertainment system, but did not play anything. Just left it on as if a song had finished playing and we went to bed for the night without turning it off.

0.067 x 0.11 x 24 x 365 = $ 64.56 per year in wasted electricity costs! That’s not much, but it’s 3 times the cost of the Kill-a-Watt meter, without which you would not be discovering these opportunities to save power.

Wait! This was just the VCR, DVD Player, and Entertainment System, and they weren’t even being used.

What happens when you leave the TV on? How about the space heater when nobody is using it? Why don’t you calculate those numbers yourself? You might be shocked by the answer! (Hint: A TV can easily consume 240 watts of electricity, and more, depending on its size and technology, while a space heater typically consumes between 1000 - 1600 watts.) Go ahead and run those numbers!

Click on the Kill a Watt banner below and buy one for a miserly $ 20.00+ and you will be on the road to saving HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS! Remember, you can’t save what you cannot see, so the first step to saving hundreds of dollars, if not thousands, is to buy yourself a Kill a Watt and a Smart Strip or two. With the $ 30.00 Amazon Card rebate you get prior to check-out, you will get these devices almost for free. Buy them now and start saving:

Well, you might say that it’s not solely up to you to save money by turning appliances off. Your spouse, kids, in-laws love to stick it to the man (you) by leaving everything on.

If that’s the case, stay tuned for the next blogs where we show you how to stick it right back at them! (In a way that won’t leave you living in the dog house.)

Or, if you are interested in saving REALLY big money, take a look at our blog on why you are paying about 30% more for your home cooling than a commercial customer would! After all, in the summer, air conditioning can account for 50-80% of you electricity costs, depending on how you set your thermostat.

Here is a snippet from another blog with similar ideas:

Going Green, Really

I’ve always suspected that a good portion of the “Going Green” options are questionable if not outright scams. A good example is the latest rage in Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs). They are touted as being longer lasting and using less energy for the same amount of light (they are, of course correspondingly more expensive). This seems to be true. BUT (and this is a big BUT), they also contain Mercury, a highly toxic chemical. When the bulbs are disposed of they will poison landfills, etc. (The caveat that they should be “properly disposed of” is manifest nonsense – they will just be thrown in the trash). So it is an open question as to whether CFL’s just amount to trading a current problem for a future one (you can always use less electricity; can Mercury poisoning be undone?).

But here’s an idea that DOES make sense. How many of the little power cubes do you have attached to various devices - computer speakers, portable docking stations for laptops; docking stations for older smart phones, LCD monitors, answering machines, printers, etc.

Each one of these devices uses 3-5 watts an hour even when the device they are connected to is switched off, and the average household has 6 to 10 of them. If you pick out the devices that you want to be truly off when you turn off what they are connected to, and plug them all into a single power strip, and if you turn off the power strip at night (or whenever), then your monitors, speakers, etc. will stop using power. And this actually represents true savings. Not a major amount perhaps, but real nonetheless.

Luxim’s Plasma Light Bulb is More Efficient Than Even LED’s

However, until Luxim’s product is available on the market and affordable, you can find information about our LED lighting products, and distributors can receive wholesale price lists at the following link:

Click here for LED lighting brochures and wholesale prices!

Nice feature: The light closely mimics sunlight - much more pleasant than fluorescent.

Here is an example of the use of front organizations to create what appears on the outside to be a “grass-roots movement” which is actually subtly supported by corporate interests. Next time you hear about the damaging effects of wind power on our environment, you might want to dig deeper.

The following is an excerpt from www.treehugger.com, a fantastic site for environmental news. Here’s an eye-opener from their webpage - check out their sponsors’ link - there are none! No special interests interfering with their agenda!

Excerpt follows:

Eco-Scandal or Clerical Mistake?
Well, well. The cat’s out of the bag: “The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound [...] filed a federal document last month reporting that its work is partially funded and shaped by an international energy conglomerate. [...] The disclosure represents the first documented financial connection between the group opposing the wind farm and Oxbow Corp., which mines and markets energy and commodities, including coal, natural gas, and petroleum.”

It doesn’t always take grand gestures to save energy. As Hollydale Elementary students are proving, something as simple as a little red ticket can serve as a useful reminder - and now their school is saving $800 a month in energy costs! The Watt Watchers team, comprised of Hollydale students, put their warning tickets in classrooms that leave lights on or waste energy in other ways, and the little savings are certainly adding up.

Click Here for Wholesale Pricing on Solar Electric and Solar Heating Systems!

Of all the types of solar power systems available today, solar water heating is one of the most effective so far. Below you will find some links to very cost-effective solar power systems, some of which are very efficient, like the thermosiphon solar water heater which does not even need a pump! The thermosiphon solar water heater is carried exclusively by our partner.

To download a full catalog with even more power saving solutions, please see our contractors’ catalog request page - you can download a catalog even if you are not a contractor:

Power Saving Solutions Catalog

40 Gallon Passive Solar Water Heater Uses the sun to preheat water for a standard electric or gas water heater. Save up to 20% of total household energy costs… Quoted	Thermosiphon Passive Solar Water Heater Solar Panels contain food grade glycol, which, when heated by the sun, rises up to circulate through the ceramic lined water tank, heating the water. Quoted
Rheem Tankless Gas Water Heater Eco-$mart offers a full line of energy efficient tankless gas water heaters. Rheem tankless water heaters deliver hot water on demand with a digital control system designed for highest safety and lowest energy use. Quoted	Building Integrated Solar Water Heating Installed under a metal roof during new construction or a re-roofing process, the system collects the sun’s energy as heat, which is then conducted by the metal roof into a proprietary collection system. Quoted

Pool Heating

Enersol Solar Pool Heating Kit The Enersol solar pool heating system is simple, clean, easy to install, virtually maintenance free, and most importantly - it works. Do-it-yourself installation kit available. List: $258.00 Eco-$mart Price: $215.00

Solar Attic Pool Heater Heat exchanger that cools your attic while heating your pool. No roof-mounted panels, efficient and quiet operation. Fully automatic system with controller.

Sometimes the simplest and cheapest power-saving strategies are the most effective!

Vote on Sierra Club for your favorite Green Technology:

Try to find the connection before looking for the answer at: Mark Joyner’s Atomic Mind Bombs Blog:

(I’d like to personally thank the mainstream media for ensuring that I’m far more familiar with Obama’s pastor than I am with his energy policies.)

We need to pick up the pace, folks. Our governments are moving on this, but not nearly fast enough.

What are you going to do about it?
I think some of the people who commented on his blog got the idea: No investors, no patents = not a good product.

As you can see, Mark Joyner looked for conclusive test data which showed a reduction of energy used or a reduction of pollutants created. This should give you a clear answer on that technology.

Now, do a Google search for any of the following terms: HHO, Brown’s Gas, Water Car. You will end up with hundreds of websites selling e-books on how to build a water car. Why aren’t they shut down? Because the sites are selling a book, which is protected in the United States under freedom of speech. If they were selling the actual product, the business would fall under much more scrutiny, depending on where it is based.

This is just another warning to not confuse wishful thinking with productivity. The water car will probably disappear like cold fusion.

For some productive, real solutions, see the blog entry on Energy Saving Systems.

This is not a prototype - it’s a production model car! Pretty sharp, until you are rear-ended by a Hummer. That’s why you won’t want to laugh too hard when you are passing up the gas station…

I recently visited a couple websites which tried to explain how to run a car on water. The sites are selling e-books or manuals on how to do the conversion yourself for a few hundred dollars. They even claim that you will qualify for Federal tax credits for converting to a “hybrid” car, as this one infers:

http://water-for-gas-reviews.com/RunYourCarOnWater.html

(I do not even want to link to them on the fear that it will legitimize their scheme, but you can make your own decisions.)

I won’t even address the possible trouble with the IRS on this topic, since in effect you are designating your car as a a hybrid without any certification. Check the tax code yourself on the IRS.GOV website. You will have to stretch your, and your auditor’s imagination a bit to get that one.

After deciphering the poorly written explanations of how the technology is supposed to work, it appears that the proponents (shall we call them snake-oil salesmen?) are telling you to use your car’s electricity to create electrolysis, or the process of breaking water down into its component parts of hydrogen and oxygen. Hopefully, they have two paths of collection for the gases so they remain separated prior to injection into the fuel line, but I doubt it. That would be quite a modification to do by yourself.

Then, some of these site discuss the resultant gas, HHO as increasing the combustion rate of engines. I wonder why the automobile manufacturers couldn’t figure that one out? Oh, I forgot - these sites are implying that the automakers are knowingly creating inefficient cars! If that were the case, Toyota wouldn’t have had to sell its Prius to conquer the fuel-efficient car market - Toyota could have done this couple-hundred-dollar modification itself and saved the money on the hybrid drive system and the expensive batteries. Of course, that’s part of the conspiracy - Toyota wants to sell these expensive cars to us unsuspecting customers!

Another thing that concerns me, is that if this system does inject hydrogen into the combustion process, wouldn’t that create more moisture in the engine? Yes, moisture is created in gasoline and diesel combustion too, and can be a major problem if you don’t run your engine long enough to create the heat necessary to evaporate the moisture from the engine and exhaust systems. This is called wet stacking and will reduce the engine’s life. I suspect that if the gas-to-water system really works, then it would only aggravate that problem.

Another consideration is whether the hydrogen adds power to the fuel-air mix? Maybe it adds a little bit, but since energy is neither created nor destroyed, it had to come from somewhere. Did it come from the water? No - water is a stable molecule which does not burn, and thus, does not give any energy via combustion. Then, the extra energy had to come from the hydrogen, right? Yes, it did. But the hydrogen was separated from water by adding energy via the electrolysis process. That energy came from the car battery, which was charged by taking energy from the drive train, which derives it from the engine, which is powered by the gasoline or diesel fuel. Since a perpetual motion machine has never been developed due to frictional and heat losses, we have to assume there are losses in this system too. Reference the Wikepedia article on HHO, which clearly states: “The energy required to generate the oxyhydrogen always exceeds the energy released by combusting it. (See Electrolysis of water:Efficiency).”

This would be similar to a homeowner trying to generate his own electricity by buying an electric motor connected to his home utility grid, and connecting it to a generator into which he plugs his appliances. Sure he generates electricity, but the power ultimately comes from the utility grid, and he loses some of the power due to friction in the drive train between the motor and generator, and the resistive heat losses of the circuits. By the way, I have seen this proposed on the internet as a way of “generating free electricity.” The inventor of that system, like the inventor of the gas-to-water system, also mysteriously disappeared due to another conspiracy.

Here’s my challenge: While the engineers reading this are probably agreeing with me, the snake-oil salesmen are probably outraged.

I would love to hear comments from both sides of this argument, and I will publish all opinions as long as they are not SPAM or overtly commercial.

Let’s see if someone convinces me and I wind up eating crow on this issue!

hho