Back online
I've decided I've been out of the loop too long. Today has been a big catch up day, so I figured I'd catch up with blogging, too. Catching up with bills, library visits, etc. But the thing I'm most excited about is this: all the bulbs in our house are now compact flourescents, including the dimmers (1000bulbs.com has a lot of bulbs!). And I've just called Xcel Energy and signed up for their Windsource program. Now, 100% of our electric energy from them is generated at a Windfarm in the Southern part of Minnesota. It's $2 per 100kWh (for those of you who are interested, a kilowatt hour is a thousand watts - so a 100 Watt light bulb could stay lit for 10 hours with one Kilowatt.) On our bill last month, we used 584 kWh (which means we used enough energy to keep 584 100 Watt bulbs lit for 10 hours each) which would have cost us about $12 extra if it had been Windsource. But because we're now 100% Windsource, we'll get credits on our Fuel Cost Charge and Environmental Riders - about $4-$6 per bill, I'm guessing, which means we'd 0nly pay $6 or so for Windsource. So for $6 we went with Windpower! That's a freaking drink out, you know?! What a deal!
And with newer lightbulbs in, we're dropping our electrical light usage by %60 or %70 (again by way of comparison, Compact flourescents put out the same light as incandescent lights, but at lower wattage. For example, a CFL that puts out 100 Watts of light uses only 23 Watts of energy, so we could basically have 4 x 584 = 2336 CFL bulbs lit for 10 hours each with our 584 kWh we used last month...! Not that we would want to do that. But if 20 of those kWh came from regular bulbs, we're now looking at about 5 kWh going to bulbs.) And I've just ordered an energy audit from Xcel to find out what else we might be able to do, since we'll be here for 2.5 years.
Much of this energy and action came from reading Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers." It's a fantastic book, which is very readable, that outlines the impacts of climate change; what's already happened and what's going to happen. If we get on the ball right now, he estimates that we can save 1 out of every 3 species in the coming decades from going extinct, and stabilize the climate by 2100 or so (there's already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it is going to continuing warming before it stabilizes). If we continue on with business as usual, 3 out of 5 species will go extinct in the coming years. This book was a huge wake up call for me. This isn't an issue for my children or grand children. It's my issue. In a huge way.
And I hate feeling hopeless about it, so I'm doing what I can. I'm changing to wind energy, looking at solar, and changing light bulbs. And I got a worm farm! (Not that that helps climate change much!). Wind Energy is availabe in Colorado, too, so all you readers out there, if you're not already hooked up with this program, check it out. It's easy to do, and the cost is minimal. As more people sign up for it, more windfarms will be built and the cost will come down even more.
So that's my little update. Yee-ha.
Justin
And with newer lightbulbs in, we're dropping our electrical light usage by %60 or %70 (again by way of comparison, Compact flourescents put out the same light as incandescent lights, but at lower wattage. For example, a CFL that puts out 100 Watts of light uses only 23 Watts of energy, so we could basically have 4 x 584 = 2336 CFL bulbs lit for 10 hours each with our 584 kWh we used last month...! Not that we would want to do that. But if 20 of those kWh came from regular bulbs, we're now looking at about 5 kWh going to bulbs.) And I've just ordered an energy audit from Xcel to find out what else we might be able to do, since we'll be here for 2.5 years.
Much of this energy and action came from reading Tim Flannery's "The Weather Makers." It's a fantastic book, which is very readable, that outlines the impacts of climate change; what's already happened and what's going to happen. If we get on the ball right now, he estimates that we can save 1 out of every 3 species in the coming decades from going extinct, and stabilize the climate by 2100 or so (there's already so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it is going to continuing warming before it stabilizes). If we continue on with business as usual, 3 out of 5 species will go extinct in the coming years. This book was a huge wake up call for me. This isn't an issue for my children or grand children. It's my issue. In a huge way.
And I hate feeling hopeless about it, so I'm doing what I can. I'm changing to wind energy, looking at solar, and changing light bulbs. And I got a worm farm! (Not that that helps climate change much!). Wind Energy is availabe in Colorado, too, so all you readers out there, if you're not already hooked up with this program, check it out. It's easy to do, and the cost is minimal. As more people sign up for it, more windfarms will be built and the cost will come down even more.
So that's my little update. Yee-ha.
Justin
posted by Justin Schroeder at 12:18 PM
4 Comments:
Sweet update. I'll be checking on the windfarm program here, and looking around our house for the other places we can put compact flourescent bulbs. thanks for the info!
Another thing on Wind: Here in Colorado, it can sometimes actually be cheaper than the other forms of electricity generation. Xcel tried to raise rates on wind generated electricity, and as I understand it, they were not allowed because the fuel cost didn't change.
YEAH! Let the invisible hand of economics make wind power cheapter than coal, and we can get rid of some of the crappy smog here.
Way to go on those bulbs. I need to replace the rest of my bulbs - so far I have only replaced those that needed it and those I brought with me last year, though I am generating sufficient energy to cover my usage at the moment.
Thanks for the update.
Nice update, minister man. If you've still got those extra dimmables, I'm down for a beer trade or something. :)
Welcome back to the blog, keep it up!
Hey, glad to see you're back and on the move for energy conservation. I'm going to a cool talk tomorrow night about energy...we all need reminders about how to live green lives. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day and forget to live our principles. I'm looking forward to having my own place or living in an intentional household where I can achieve these things more easily. Way to go!
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