MGPC Sustainability Blog

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.

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.”

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

Vote on Sierra Club for your favorite Green Technology:

Electricity price inelasticity means that the laws of supply and demand are unlikely to cause electricity prices to drop in the future due to a lack of demand caused by rising prices. These higher prices will make it difficult to pass legislation encouraging the use of green energy. Consumption will probably not decrease and electrical power prices will continue to rise.

The Wall Street Journal puts it well in this quote below, taken directly from their article “Pain at the Plug: Fuel Costs Push Up Electricity Rates, Too

That raises some interesting questions. How easy a sell will climate-change bills like Lieberman-Warner be for Congress, when the bills will add between 11% and 64% to the cost of electricity which is already going vertical?

What will higher electricity prices do to demand for juice? When gasoline prices spiked in recent months, demand slumped for once. Normally, demand for gasoline is pretty inelastic in the short-term. Only sustained high gasoline prices lead to big changes, like more fuel-efficient cars, carpooling, and the like.

Demand for electricity is even less responsive to price than demand for gasoline is. Spot market rates for electricity aren’t posted across town, and you don’t pay the power bill every week.

Caveat Emptor: Watch out for businesses and products which promise to save you gas by adding some expensive liquid to your fuel tank, or, as I have recently seen, a company which sells a car engine conversion kit to allow your car to run on gas.

It seems that a large number of people believe this hype, and with gas prices increases at their current rate, maybe many of us are willing to suspend our disbelief in the hopes of finding a solution.

However, the reality is that mineral oil appears to have replaced snake oil as one of the preferred means of reducing the mass inside your wallet.

These additives, at best, have a one-time effect of cleaning parts inside the engine to allow it to run more efficiently. Nevertheless, those types of cleaners are available at your local car parts or hardware store, usually much less expensively, and do not have to be added to every tankful, as these outfits claim, because they do not do anything to the gas to make it more efficient.

For real benefits, you could buy a more fuel efficient car, or just take the proven advice offered on the following website:

Sierra Club: Filling Up For Less

Congress has another brilliant method of reducing gas prices - here’s my over-simplified solution:

CNN.COM Strategic Oil Reserves

Estimated savings: 1 cent to 25 cents per gallon. I guess you can pack your bags and take that road trip across the country now.

Furthermore, it’s strange that we drill for oil and pump it out of one hole, only to buy it from the market and drop it down another, in this case, an abandoned salt mine set up as the strategic oil reserves.

We could have been lazy about it and just left it in the first hole.

I’ve got an idea: Why don’t we take Alaska’s ANWAR reserve and designate it our Strategic Oil Reserves? That way, we can just leave the oil in Alaska, save money by not extracting it, let the caribou live in peace, and have a huge oil reserve which won’t cost the taxpayers anything and won’t increase current demand on oil.

Great! But where’s the pork?

Congress will never touch that!

ETHANOL PLEADS NOT GUILTY!

BY: KENNETH C. REED
Natural Alternative Fuels, Inc.

Ethanol is currently on trial, charged with causing world hunger and civil unrest. It is alleged that the corn and grain diverted from the food chain to produce biofuels has lead to severe food shortage and disrupted food security around the world. Alternative fuel production has been blamed for high food prices at the grocery store and causing a “silent famine” among the world’s poor. Some have gone as far as to claim that production of ethanol and biodiesel from grain is a “crime against humanity.” To the charges, ethanol pleads “not guilty.”

The purpose of this article is to set forth the truth and debunk the myth about ethanol and biodiesel. The public deserves to know the truth so that they can discern fact from fiction and propaganda. Armed with truth, consumers will be less inclined to succumb to biased media hype, special interest group propaganda and knee-jerk decision making by political leaders. The truth will expose the real culprits behind high food prices and the hunger crisis.

The real perpetrators of the current world food crisis are: Fear, greed, rising demand, dwindling supply, prolonged drought in Argentina, heavy rains and flooding in the mid-west U.S. and other parts of the world, and foreign government decisions to reduce grain exports in an effort to drive down domestic prices. These factors all play a pivotal role in the price and availability of food. U.S. ethanol production uses 25 percent of the nation’s corn output, however, the corn used is field corn and not sweet corn used for human consumption. The actual net impact of ethanol production on food prices in the store amounts to a few pennies. Now compare this to the following facts.

Truth 1.

A barrel of oil sold on the New York Stock Exchange for $75.00 in July 2007. On May 7, 2008, this global commodity sold for $122.00 per barrel. By May 9th, the price hit $126.00 per barrel. It takes approximately 6 weeks for a barrel of oil to make its way from the refinery to the consumers’ gas tank. In addition, oil companies switch from winter gas to summer gas; a process that will soon take place and will result in an upward spike in gas prices.
Truth 2.

Consumers paid approximately $2.78 per gallon for gas in April 2007. On May 7, 2008, the average cost of gas was $3.61 a gallon. The American public will soon feel the effects of $126.00 per barrel oil and the summer change-over gas as the cost of a gallon of fuel will exceed $4.00 and move toward $4.50 by the end of June, 2008.

Truth 3.

Rice is the number one food staple for nearly ½ of the population of the world. The record price of $894.00 per ton was set on May 6, 2008. The previous record was set in May 2007 when the price was $327.25 per ton. Much of the world’s population that relies on rice as their primary dietary supplement are poor and have been the hardest hit by this sharp increase.
Truth 4.

Thailand, the world’s largest exporter of rice, ships 1/3 of all rice exports. The world is gripped by the fear that Thailand will soon restrict rice shipments, thereby furthering the global food crisis. The Thai government has said it will not impose such restrictions. Nevertheless, worry has caused consumers to hoard rice which has lead to a $2-$3 increase in price in the grocery store. Sam’s Club and Costco have placed limits on bulk rice purchases claiming their decision is “based on recent supply and demand trends.”

Truth 5.

Fear concerning Thailand’s potential to restrict rice exports is fueled by the fact that other major world exporters (India and Vietnam) indicated that they will reduce rice exports in an effort to drive down domestic prices. China, Egypt and Cambodia have imposed such restrictions.
Truth 6.

By December 2007, the price of wheat had topped $10.00 per bushel. This is after experts had predicted that wheat would sell for $3.80 per bushel by June 2007. May 2008 wheat sells for $12.92 per bushel, having fallen back down from $19.80 per bushel in February 2008. This price volatility is coupled with the fact that the world’s wheat supply has diminished to its lowest level in 60 years.

Truth 7.

A bushel of corn sold for an average price of $3.40 in June 2007. By May 5, 2008, a bushel of corn sold for $6.02. Soybeans sold for an average of $6.35 per bushel in 2007 and reached $13.32 per bushel by May 2008. Corn and soybeans are the primary feedstock for producing ethanol and biodiesel fuels.

Truth 8.

Developing nations like China and India have become more affluent, resulting in increased food consumption particularly meats, poultry and vegetable oils. People who once ate approximately 44 kilograms of meat are now eating 110 kilograms of meat per year. Increased meat consumption requires increased livestock which requires significant increased grain feed for the livestock. This increase in demand for grain has been a trend for the past 5 years, significantly impacting world-wide supply and is a cause of surplus levels dwindling to their lowest point in 60 years.

Truth 9.

Prolonged drought in Argentina, floods in mid-western U.S., heavy rains in other areas of the world have slowed the planting season for farmers. Unless the weather changes soon, crop yields will be significantly less in 2008. Lower supply, world-wide population growth and increased demand results in higher prices. Add to these factors the decline in the value of the American dollar and the shift of investment dollars into global commodities, and you have the ingredients for higher food prices in the grocery stores. At the same time everything is rising in price, household incomes remained flat or declined. Unfortunately, the poor of the world suffer the most. Civil unrest in areas of predominantly poor have nothing to do with production of ethanol, but everything to do with the widening gap between the “haves and the have-nots.”

Truth 10.

This time, ethanol and biodiesel is here to stay. In prior generations, major oil companies and special interest groups have been able to block the penetration of biofuels into the market. With rising energy costs, increased concern for global warming and greater emphasis on reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, the time is right for America to invest in alternative fuels. The renewable fuels industry achieved 25.4 billion in revenues in 2007 from sales of 15 billion gallons of fuel. The market is projected to grow to 81.1 billion dollars by 2017.

Major oil companies raked in 123 billion dollars in profits this past year while the price of gas at the pump reached levels which force people to choose between driving and eating. American truckers are unable to afford to fuel the trucks that deliver most of this country’s food to the stores. Truckers have paid in excess of 22 billion dollars more in gas in 2008 than they did in 2007. Higher gas prices are passed from the truckers to the stores and from the stores to the consumers. The sad truth is that there is no food shortage. Food is in the store and rotting on the floors of the warehouses; but the people of the world are increasingly unable to afford to purchase the food due to severe price increases fueled by ungodly price increases for oil. If it had not been for the

availability of ethanol and biodiesel as a competitive alternative to petroleum-based gasoline, the price of gas would be even higher than it is now.

In conclusion, the charges against ethanol and biofuels are wrong. At best, those who promote these charges are misinformed. At worst, these people and groups are part of a conspiracy to reverse U.S. government policies that promote alternative fuel development; the goal being to protect big oil profits.

Knowledge is power. Power is the strength and ability to effect change. Without knowledge, our people will perish. To ignore the knowledge shared herein is to fall victim to the smoke and mirror tricks intended to divert attention away from the real culprits behind the suffering of the people. The facts speak for themselves. It has very little to do with the production of corn-based ethanol. The real ringleaders for the alleged “crime against humanity” are fear and greed and the people or companies that trade on that fear. On the basis of the facts and truths set forth herein, the charges against ethanol and biofuels must be dismissed!

Respectfully submitted by:

Kenneth C. Reed,

© All rights reserved. Kenneth C. Reed. Natural Alternative Fuels, Inc. May 9, 2008

Here is a beautifully-constructed short film except from Leonardo DiCaprio’s recent film on Global Warming.

Here’s another reason I admire Howard County’s Commission on Sustainability - they are responsive!

Fortunately, Cathy Hudson of the Commission corrected one of my opinions from the prior post on Government Greenwashing, and offered some helpful advice for activists and concerned citizens.

An excerpt from Cathy Hudson’s reply:

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that the Board of Education is its own entity-separate from Howard County Gov’t. (as is the Community College and the Library system). That means that they are responsible for their own priorities and budget. So, if they have different priorities for their funding, neither the county executive nor our board can “make them do it”. However, your observations in a letter to the editor would be useful-but direct the onus to the Board of Education. Another thought-the school board also has a “listening post” before each board meeting where citizens can address them. That might be another good place to share your observations.

***********************

Thank you, Cathy! We will take that approach!

It would be interesting to know whether most readers believe that enough is being done for the environment by our government, corporations and individuals?

Although in previous posts I have criticized government interference in commerce with the perceived intention of helping the environment, e.g. the inefficient production of “green energy” ethanol which mostly benefits large agricultural concerns, nevertheless I still believe that government must do its part through responsible stewardship of the resources it does consume.

For example, while playing with my daughter in her school’s playground on a chilly early April day after school, I heard noise emanating from the roof of the building. I noticed that the chiller was left running after-hours. (It was a containerized air-handling system, so I can’t be sure, but it sounded like a compressor running leading me to believe that the chiller was on.)

In any case, many parents and pupil complain that the air temperature from classroom to classroom varies so widely, that sometimes children in one classroom have to wear thick sweaters on a hot, late-Spring day, while others in a different wing are perspiring from the heat and humidity.

Not only is this wasteful, but it is unhealthy for the children!

Teachers try to solve the problem by running space heaters in one classroom while the entire school is being air conditioned. Nothing can be done locally about this, because I learned that the thermostats are remote-controlled from the Howard County Board of Education building in the next town.

Another example was on a warm Sunday when I decided to practice my tennis ground strokes against the large gymnasium wall on the outside of the same school. Although there were a few children in the playground playing basketball not far from me, all of the school parking spaces were entirely empty, as to be expected on a Sunday afternoon.

So why was the air conditioner running, keeping the school cooled at the taxpayers’ expense for nobody at all?

Again, this is a waste of energy and taxpayer money.

Who is keeping track of this and who is responsible? Unfortunately, as anyone who has contacted their local school about such issues knows, it is difficult to corner the responsible party. Nobody local has the authority, and the distant authorities are eternally “not aware” of the problem, are constantly “looking into it” or are “hearing about this for this first time from you.”

How does one get people motivated to fix the gaping money sinkholes at our schools? Another Howard County school (names will be left out of this blog in order to protect the guilty) had maintenance problems and even rodent infestations which were not being handled until the issue reached the newspapers.

It’s no surprise that voter turn-out is low when we feel so powerless to affect change in our democracy. Yet, we have to pay the taxes for these less than acceptable services. Sometimes it feels like “taxation without representation.”

Luckily, the USA has the best method of creating a revolution - peacefully at the ballot box, and I think the current Howard County administration has been working hard to improve things.

Most impressive is how Howard County Executive Kenneth Ulman has created an “Office of Sustainability” under Director Joshua Feldmark, which is being replicated in other Maryland counties. I was fortunate to be able to observe one of their meetings as a guest, fascinated by the amount of issues on a wide range of topics they were endeavoring to tackle, as the meeting continued until almost 10:00 P.M. (You can stop complaining that government doesn’t work for you - they called to continue the meeting at 7:00 AM over coffee.)

While they are working on matters such as Baltimore Gas & Electric’s unilateral decision to clear-cut trees through public land in Columbia’s Owen Brown Village, or the impending insufficiency of the sewer system to handle the expected growth in Columbia, they informed me that they have very little influence over the school system. Matters like that have to be taken to the Board of Education.

Here is a short list of items we should be bringing up at the Board of Education meetings, not only here in Howard County, but wherever you happen to be reading this blog:

1) The heating and cooling systems should be optimized and shut down when unused,
2) Lights do not have to burn at 100% intensity at night: some should be switched off while others dimmed;
3) Unused computers in the computer labs should be hibernating when not used: $ 75 Saving per Computer!
4) Plus many other smaller items like, hibernating vending machines at night, using motion-sensing lighting in lesser-used auxiliary classrooms, etc.

These are inexpensive fixes which offer the quickest payback time. The schools do not need to implement expensive projects like solar energy, etc.

I have confidence that there are those in government who can still turn things around. Let’s support them in their efforts - get involved with your local governments, observe, write to the newspapers, write to the politicians, attend a meeting, organize an advocacy group, and complain when you see problems!

Democracy’s worst enemy is indifference.

As a sidenote, which also pertains to schools, read this blog about how Daylight Savings Time waste more energy than it saves:

…Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills. They conclude that the reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during daylight-saving time is more than offset by the higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings…