My Energy Conservation project

_OS_

Since we bought our house in 2001 I have been graphing our quarterly electric power usage and gradually applied power-saving steps.

A little bit about my electric power usage. In Norway, where we live, electric power is cheap compared to other European countries and it is common to use electricity to everything: heating, cooking, hot water and so on. It is not common to have AC systems in private houses over here because you only have use for it a few weeks of the year. But we have a balanced air-to-air system in our house that is supposed to save some energy.

In the winter we heat the living room with a wood stove and electric panel heaters. In the kitchen we use electric panel heaters and in the hall, basement and bathroom we have electric heating cables in concrete floor. We do not heat the bedrooms.

The first energy conserving step I did was to install new thermostats that had a 6 hours energy saving mode (90% lower energy for 6 hours). You press a button when you want to start this mode and the unit remembers it everyday thereafter.

Then I installed a central control system for our electric heating panels. This system gives us even more control than the thermostats.

I have also changed all light bulbs to CFL's.

Below is a graph of our electric power usage from a year after we moved in. My short term goal is to get below 17,000 kWh before taking more drastic and expensive measures.

I have today also measured most of our phantom loads. More on that later.

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

I have now measured most of the phantom loads in the house. Some of them, like the cordless phone needs to be on at all times so it should probably not be considered a phantom load. Here are the results:

Wlan router+modem+ethernet switch.....................: 19W
Home alarm............................................: 18W
Cordless phone........................................:  8W
Remote control for electric heating panels........... :  1W
Hard drive video recorder (stand by)..................:  4W
DVD player (stand by).................................:  4W
Digital watch on microwave oven.......................:  3W
Digital watch on electric stove.......................:  3W
PC speakers (switched off)............................:  2W
Music server when off (a powerful stationary PC)......:  9W
Logitech Squeezebox Duet Receiver (switched off)......:  4W
LCD computer monitor (switched off)...................:  1W
Two laptop PC's when off and battery fully charged....:  1W
Digital radio/watch in bedroom........................:  3W
Total.................................................: 78W

I new that the digital watches draw some but the two that surprised me most was the speakers and the stationary PC because both have a power off switch. The stationary PC has another power off switch on the back close to the AC plug. When this is used to switch the PC off the power is 0W.

We also have a transformer for the doorbell but I have not been able to measure the standby power since it is hidden in the AC breaker box.

Here are the first measures I will do to reduse the power:

Turn off the watch on the microwave oven since I only need one watch in the kitchen. Install power bars with on/off switch on the computers, pc speakers, monitors, squeezebox and dvd player. I will also install a timer on the wlan that turns it off during night and when we are at work. The internet modem needs to be on since I have a web and ftp server on 24 hours a day. More on that later.

OS

Dave Angelini

Re: My Energy Conservation project

It sounds like your next step is to get a monitoring system that will show the total usage at various times in a convenient place. Maybe a wirless system! Over on this side of the Atlantic Black & Decker and others make them for sale on amazon.com Forgive me if you have done this but it is such an important tool that every home should have.

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Dave,

Funny you should say that because I am working on such a project. Of course using a Nordic Semiconductor RF transceiver!

BTW: Do you live in Mariposa? I have stayed there a few times times on vacation. Very friendly place and nice people.

Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Ole,

I guess that is 21 000 kWattHours per Quarter (3 months?).

21 000 / 3 = 7 000 kWhrs per month?

78 watts * 24 hrs per day * 30 days per month * 1kW/1 000 kWhr = 56 kWhr per month

Or, another way to look at the question:

21 000 kWhrs per Qrt / (3 mnth per Qrt * 30 days * 24 hrs) = 9.7 kW = 9,700 Watts average load 24 hours per day

While I am all for killing waste--If I understanding your billing/graph, saving the energy from microwave clocks and such is a very tiny part of your overall energy usage (less than 1% of your total load).

For my home (older "average sized" 3 bedroom American home)--If I was using 9 kWatts 24 hours per day--my house would be like a sauna.

Hmmm... I use, roughly, $40 of natural gas for heating and drying clothes (winter months) and $20 for cooking and hot water. A Therm (100,000 BTU) costs around $1.10 per Therm.

$60/$1.10 = 55 Therms of Natural Gas for a "typical" winter month

1 Therm = 29.307111111 kWhrs and I use around 220 kWhrs per month:

55 Therm * 29.31 kWhrs per Therm + 220 kWhrs = 1 820 kWhrs per Month

Now, I know that my winters (probably in the range of 5-15C / 40-60F) are nothing compared to your winters--but even in your "summers" you are still using (pick 18 000 kWhr per quarter for round numbers)

18 000 kWhr / (3 mnth * 30 days * 24 hours) = 8.333 kW = 8 000 Watts average load

I must be missing something about what "17 000" means?

Is there a confusion in billing units (kilo Watt Hours) or the "," vs "." between US and the rest of the world?

Or is this an "anuallized" rate of kWhr usage (i.e., a rate of 17 000 kWhrs per year)?

Overall, it sounds like the "average person" in Norway uses roughly:

Another way in which urban form affects energy use is through the heating and cooling of buildings (Steemers 2003). Heating a single-family, detached home in Oslo usually consumes 10000 KW hr per person per year, whereas heating an apartment in a larger building usually costs 7000 KW hr per person per year, (Holden and Norland 2005). Generally, heating and cooling a single-family, detached home is less efficient than for row houses or multi-unit buildings. The quality of building construction also has an important influence on per-capita energy use, based on numerous factors, including building orientation, insulation, and choice of heating/cooling system.

For example, new homes in Oslo consume 3000 fewer kW hr annually than older homes in Oslo, correcting for house size, presumably because of improvements in some of the design components (Holden and Norland 2005).

I guess I still don't quite understand... The "average home" uses ~10-12,000 kWhrs per year of electricity (many/most are using another fuel for heating)...

Guess that the Winter time usage might be roughly comparable with my usage--but summer time seems awfully high for your home...

-Bill

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Bill,

My graph above is annualized rate! Sorry for the confusion. At 17000 kWhrs per year my family is well below the average in Norway for a four person family.

Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Ole,

That makes much more sense... Ignore everything I typed in the previous post.

If I was to annualized my usage (and convert natural gas to all electric)--it would probably be closer to ~11,000 kWhrs per year (excluding my GT solar array which output ~4,800 kWhrs per year).

It does sound like you are substantially reducing your usage... I wonder how heat pumps (basically reversible A/C) and Heat Recovery Ventalators would do for your electrical bill. They don't work great very cold climates (below freezing?) -- but I guess you can have some pretty mild winters in portions of Norway (average lows in Oslo seem to be just below freezing)???

I don't know what a balanced air to air system is -- unless that is what a heat recovery system is called there (sounds like it might be).

If you could post your graph as actual kWhrs billed by quarter (or divided out to per month)--it would kind of help to see what your actual Heating Load is verses everthing else (cooking, hot water--guess they are about the same through the year; drying clothes may be less in summer if you line dry).

It might be worth getting a couple of the "less expensive" whole home monitoring devices (or even wire in a straight kWhr meter) to monitor your major loads (heating, hot water, cooking, clothes drier).

It does sound like you have really reduced your energy load vs the average there (~7 000 to 10 000 kWhrs per person per year).

What is the building style there? Lots of insulation (4"-20" of insulation), double pane windows (and, from seeing other European homes--much better job at sealing against wind/air leaks around windows, doors, etc.).

-Bill

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Bill,

You are right. We have a heat recovery system. A few of my neighbors are using air-to-air heat pumps and they work very well here even when it is cold. The reason I have not installed one is that we use a wood stove in the living room. I am considering installing a small solar water heating system.

Our house was built in 1998 and does not have as much isolation that is used today but we are close. I do not have the plans in front of me but I believe the walls are 20 cm thick (about 8 inches). We have double pane windows.

Below is a graph showing my quarterly usage.

Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Your usage looks very reasonable for an all-electric home in a cold climate.

-Bill

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

I managed to get my power meter on-line a few minutes ago! Below are two pictures of the transmitter. To the left is the utility meter that has a LED that blinks 600 times per kwh. Over the LED I have taped a photo transistor that interfaces a Nordic Semiconductor nRF9E5 evaluation board where I have mounted the photo transistor interface on top. This can be seen in the second picture. The unit to the left in the second picture is the wireless controller for our heater panels.

Connected to my computer (through RS232) in another room is an identical RF board. A program on the PC writes the data to a database that are read by my web server. I will put the server on-line for a few hours so you can check it out. Give me a few minutes...

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Web server on-line now. Below is the link. The start/end fields does not work very well. To get the latest data use the refresh button in your browser.

http://www.olesaether.net/energi/

niel

Re: My Energy Conservation project

nice job ole. i like it.

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Your AC power system for your home looks very nice--not as a necessary evil.

-Bill

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Thanks. Below is a picture of the whole breaker panel. Circuit breakers in the top row. Door bell transformer to the left in middle row and the ground fault breaker next to it. Main, 40A breaker in the bottom row. If you look closely you can see that the main breaker has four sections since the power line into our house is 400V three phase.

EDIT: When I took the picture below my system recorded very high bogus values that I had to delete from the sql database. Somehow the next values written where written in the same place as the ones I deleted so I had to delete everything and start over again.

dwh

Re: My Energy Conservation project

_OS_ wrote: »

Our house was built in 1998 and does not have as much isolation that is used today but we are close

Hi Ole,

Nice job!

I'm going to throw an English translation correction at you. Hope you don't mind.

InsUlation is what you meant.

InsOlation is how much sun is hitting on an area.

Nit picky I know...but this is a "solar" forum so...

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Thanks! I will call the company today that built the house to get the details on the insulation. Specifically I want to know what is the difference compared with today's standards.

Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

_OS_ wrote: »

EDIT: When I took the picture below my system recorded very high bogus values that I had to delete from the sql database. Somehow the next values written where written in the same place as the ones I deleted so I had to delete everything and start over again.

Electronic Flash can have a relatively high energy/frequency RF pulse. I would guess that you have some shielding/high impedance issues.

Make sure your signal connections are good (if you have a choice for biasing the sensor--use lower value resistors, possibly a mix of to or three low value/medium value bypass capacitors--if applicable).

The cable should be twisted pair (CAT 3 or CAT 5, or take your cable and twist it with an electric drill). Or better yet, get some cable with a nice braided copper jacket (if you can find only foil jacket, you can always give it a try). Ground the jacket/braid at the computer/digital board ground.

If that sensor/stamp/board is part of the system--put it in a metal box and ground the braid to the box and run shielded cable back to the PC/etc. (good shielding end to end).

A ferrite bead of some sort (around the cable, or if large bead/ring, a turn or two around the bead--close to the digitzier board/new metal box). Adding inductance (lossy inductance is even better--RF Suppression ferrites). There should be RFI suppression kits available (like this one) that engineers get to work on EMI issues during development and test.

You probably will want to fix this problem (and test with flash again--multiple times at multiple locations). Anything that makes sparks (small battery, some lengths of wire, piezoelectric source--spark ignitor, etc.) can be used to test too.

Many cold climates have issues with low humidity (because of dry cold air heated in buildings)--causes lots of static electricity problems. May cause you more issues as winter approaches.

-Bill

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the tips but I believe the problem this time is much simpler. My device records the lenght between pulsing of a LED on the utility meter. Longer interval is less watts used. When I took several pictures in a row with flash my sensor recorded that as a fast blinking LED and the power usage shown on the graph went up (to 90kw).

Ole

Regards,
Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

It sounds possible--Many cameras have multiple low power flashes that are used to reduce "red eye" (cause the person's iris to get smaller and reduce the red reflection from the back of the eye ball).

If your camera has only one flash "pop"--that would seem to only register as one extra LED flash---would not seem to be a major source of error (unless the hardware / software got into a timing issue of two pulses of light "too close together"...

But, in any case, it sounds like you know exactly what you are doing--so my back set driving is probably not necessary. :roll:

-Bill

PS: On US meters--the kWhr is counted by the number of IR Pulses--not their timing. I.e., 1 pulse = 0.01 kWhrs (just a guess--I am not going to go out and check my meter at 12:43 am ).

Certainly the software can differentiate the number of pulses over time to get the kWhr Rate... But you are not going for sub-second resolution here are you?

In your case, 1 flash is only 1kWH/600 -- which very small. Even if you took 6 pictures in 1 second, I would guess that the 1 second rate would be 3.6 kW high...

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Hi Bill,

Yes my LED blinks very slow. At 1KW it flashes every 6 seconds. But the software records the time between the blinks which gives an exact value (1kWh/600) of the power used since the previous blink. The software can record more than 100 pulses per second. If there was a blink and I took a picture with flash, say 0.1s after the blink it would have been calculated as 60kw (36000 pulses per hour).

Ole

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

I have modified the script that generates the plot for the web today and included the minimum power measured. This way I can check with the values I gave in the beginning. I have also updated the script such that it shows raw data for the last two hours by default and you can go back 8 hours.

For those of you that are interested you can see from the plot that the minium power drawn is 0.24kW: Web server at 63W and heat recovery ventilation at 130W in addition to some of the phantom loads described above.

Ole

Dave Angelini

Re: My Energy Conservation project

_OS_ wrote: »

Hi Dave,

Funny you should say that because I am working on such a project. Of course using a Nordic Semiconductor RF transceiver!

BTW: Do you live in Mariposa? I have stayed there a few times times on vacation. Very friendly place and nice people.

Ole

About 1/2 the people live in the town of Mariposa and the other 1/2 are scattered in the mountains from 2,000 feet to near 12,000 feet. Realy nice what you have done over there! Stop by next visit!

_OS_

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Due to holidays there where no on at the company that built our house that could answer my questions but there was a posting here yesterday by Jessica that triggered my concern about the insulation (posting seams to be deleted now).

In the basement we have a room with heating cables in the floor that we use for washing and drying clothes. Next to this room is another room that we store food and so on. This room has two concrete walls facing out with no insulation and two facing in with little insulation. We want to have the temperature differences between these two rooms as large as possible so maybe and could gain something there my insulating better.

Ole

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

I don't believe "Jessica" deleted any posts here...

However, I did have a "Jessica C" (new poster from India) that was spamming here late last night with sort of on-topic posts but commercial ad links (my time -7 hours GMT)--so it is possible that is one of the "deleted" posts you saw disappear.

Regarding the insulation value of concrete--I was surprised to see that it is this low:

Q: What is the R-value of a typical 8-inch-thick, cast-in-place, residential basement wall?
A: The R-value of an uninsulated, 8-inch-thick basement wall built using normal-weight concrete is 1.35, based on data from the 1993 American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers' Handbook. By doubling the thickness of the wall to 16 inches, the R-value only increases by +0.50 R-Value.

The R-value of a single pane window is roughly 1.0 -- so, if you can find some good insulation (maybe foil backed for radiation barrier too) placed against the concrete walls (and ceiling?) might be a good investment of time and money.

I also wonder if you can improve the drying efficiency of your current concrete floor with in-floor heating cables... From what I recall (decades ago)--concrete floors take a long time to heat and cool (many hours to a day for large temperature changes). I wonder if you left the room minimally heated (say > freezing as an example) with the floor heat and use a standard forced air electric furnace to only heat the room when you need the heat and air movement for drying...

Also, I wonder how much power you use to "passive dry" vs using an electric drier--given that you may also need to vent the humid air to complete drying in a reasonable time--hanging wet cloths in a hot/humid room will not dry that fast--although, you may have dry air, especially in winter anyway and want the humidity in the home (I may be all wet here--so the above are as much questions as they are possible answers).


-Bill

dwh

Re: My Energy Conservation project

The good stuff.

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2003/er_4.html

http://www.hytechsales.com/

icarus

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Dwh,

I see testimonials and some simple "tech answers" and even a "how much will I save stuff. What I would like to see is some detailed test results before I file or don't file this under the "hype" label.

Tony

dwh

Re: My Energy Conservation project

icarus wrote: »

Dwh,

I see testimonials and some simple "tech answers" and even a "how much will I save stuff. What I would like to see is some detailed test results before I file or don't file this under the "hype" label.

Tony

Oh, it's not hype, they've been around some years and I've seen one of the products with my own eyes.

I found about the stuff when I was putting in a new service on a house back in 2004 and the roof was covered in this white stuff about a half-inch thick. I asked the owner "WTH is that?" and he showed me a half-empty leftover 5 gallon container in his garage.

The owner told me that he used a half-inch of it because the R value was X per 1/4". I don't remember what the actual value was, hence the X. I seem to recall it was something like R-40 or so, but don't quote me on that...it could've been half that or it could've been double, I can't remember for sure.

There was no attic in that house - the ceilings were tongue and groove directly to the rafters - so I couldn't check the temp. But, according to the owner that was how he found the Hy-Tech stuff - he couldn't find any better/easier way to insulate the roof.

That guy was raving about it. He loved it. He'd also used some of his leftover stuff to paint the outside of a metal storage shed (not just the roof...the whole tin box) in his backyard, and I checked that thing out and it was surprisingly cool.

I'm planning on ordering a couple of gallons to paint the fiberglass bubble roof of my camper van.

There are numerous "real life" testimonials about these products. Here's a thread from a horse trailer forum where two people talk about using it:

http://horsetrailerworld.com/forum/thread-view.asp?threadid=8182&forumid=2&MessageID=70461

There is a bit of test data on their other site, which is data for ceramic paint in general, not for their products specifically:

http://www.hytechceramics.com/testdata.html

BB.

Re: My Energy Conservation project

I still don't quite buy the insulation claims:

http://www.hytechceramics.com/testdata.html

After one year of continuous monitoring, the elastomeric coated building had 21.9% lower energy consumption in the summer than the control building.

The white coating also reduced the energy demand by 3.99% in the winter.

It may work well as a radiant barrier--but as an insulation material for surfaces not directly exposed to radiant energy (i.e., the Sun)--a 4% reduction in energy usage in winter does not seem to be a very significant improvement.

But the testing was done somewhere around (?) "University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi Power Company" -- not an area known for very cold weather (lows around 40 in the winter?)...

But, that is a similar winter weather as my area--and I found that installing fiberglass wall insulation and double pane windows really improved the comfort of the home, eliminated drafts and cold walls, and kept our gas bills down (we did the insulation before we moved in--ripped of interior sheet rock to insulate, new 80% efficient central heat vs the old 1930's natural gas furnace, etc.), so I do not have a before and after comparison.

If used in the correct application--the stuff may be magic. Used in the wrong application--may not be much more than a coat of paint.

-Bill

icarus

Re: My Energy Conservation project

That was my feeling as well,, painting in on the flat roof of a trailer might have a significant effect on keeping the heat out,, (reflection issues as well) but I think I would like to see some testing from a heated side (non radiant) to a cold side to determine some R-value. On a basement wall if painting it on would yield r-2 for example would be pretty significant,, but I would like to see something other than "testimonials"

Tony

dwh

Re: My Energy Conservation project

Here's some information I found on a site of a competing but similar product:

http://www.icslinings.com/pdf/Thermal%20Coat%20Brochure.pdf

And:

http://www.icslinings.com/pdf/Skin%20Temperature%20Tests%20on%20TC%20Ceramic.pdf

Also, here's a site with some videos of this type of product (I haven't viewed the videos yet):

http://www.eaglecoatings.net/

icarus

Re: My Energy Conservation project

From the brochure,,

"ACCORDING TO TEST
RESULTS, Thermal-Coat™,
APPLIED ON ROOFS AT 15
MILS (15/1000 in.), PERFORMS
AS WELL AS 4" THICKNESS
OF FOAM WITH R-20
RATING "R" FACTOR
EQUIVALENCE. THIS IS IN
HIGH SOLAR HEAT RADIANT
HEAT) APPLICATIONS. (41%
reduction in Heat Flux between
uncoated and coated roofs.)
NOTE: Due to the absence of
air flow, an "R" factor cannot be
used and all tests are performed
comparing the usefulness of this
insulation with an "R" Factor
Equivalence. In a conductive heat
application, the results will be
different from a solar application"

R-20 as a radiant barrier is what I might expect. The fact that no one will state anything in a conductive environment tells me that it probably isn't very useful in that environment. The reality is a single sheet of tin foil has a huge net equivalent R value in it's ability to reflect radiant heat, while providing (almost) no conductive R-value.


It seems that it's usefulness (and not insignificant one) is as a radiant barrier on a roof top application. If I could paint the inside of my house with R-20 for the price quoted I would do it in a heart beat. The reality I suspect is that it wouldn't give me much value.

Tony