Free electricity!

[acuteaero]

Led will work if the led's are 5w. for growing the ufo's have 2w and not the right color. But you got to get the 1000w out for flowering. 5x5 ft.
One other word ERON. Georgie bush, the maket will level out. No they wanted the Dem. governer out and we got anold. Then Eron stole all the retirement money. Ken lay is not dead be lives.

What? I'm solidly in favor of utility regulation- much of the opportunity for Enron to exploit and steal as they did was because of deregulation- It may be important and relevant but all I'm actually arguing here is that this particular event was probably not actually profitable, or not profitable enough to make it worth creating purposefully with a profit motive. I just don't see that adding up. If you're making money hand over fist day in and day out why risk any tiny hitch in it for an eight hour windfall. The money is made in the utility business by exploiting the laws long term, like Enron was doing, not in eight hours.

 

[deVries]

TXU Electric Delivery Service area includes these cities; Arlington, Dallas, Fort Worth, Irving, Midland, Odessa, Plano, Richardson, Round Rock, Tyler, Waco

 

[jtchoy]

Woah - some cheap electricity there in the states! Here in Aus we have TOU metering in a lot of places (time of usage) Peak (1pm to 8pm) at $0.35c per Kwh, shoulder (7am to 1pm and 8pm to 10pm) at $0.27c, off peak (10pm to 7am) at $0.13.

IIRC we have the most expensive energy prices in the world (or are at least in the top 3).

Yeah, electricity sure is cheap in the US.

Electricity here in Singapore is one of the highest in the world too, S$0.31 (~US$0.25) per KWh regardless of time of use. We have monthly meter readings and my meter is an old school analog meter, so we won't be seeing TOU metering any time soon.

TOU metering probably won't work here either, peak usage is at night for residential when we switch on the AC to sleep. Most are in the office in the day (peak usage for commercial with all that office AC).

We will be grinning every night if we had free electricity, blasting the AC every night and having to pay a small fraction for electricity every month!

 

[liveforphysics]

Did some more looking at the bills:

Jan 5620 kWh
Feb 8220
Mar 4290
Apr 3000
May 3440
Jun 5600
Jul 8600
Aug 6100
Sep 9900
Oct 4460
Nov 2850
Dec 2800
total: 65000 kWh
avg:5410 kwh (178 kWh/day)

That summer was the hottest on record. February was freaky cold. We had power blackouts in Feb and Sept due to totally incompetent/corrupt power generation cartel/regulators (hence my shiny new 20kw backup generator). The utility companies purposefully shut down several power plants so that they could cause shortages and gouge customers (wholesale price of electricity increased over 1000 times the normal rate at the peaks!)

You use more electrical energy in a month than my home uses in a year.

But... my old datacenter (17MW facility) used more electrical energy in 4hours than you used all year.

 

[amberwolf]

Copied this post of mine from another recent-ish thread:


As an example, I typically have a bill of $40-$50 from November thru May-ish. June goes up $10 or so. July can double June's, and August easily triple or quadruple June's, with September a close second, and October up to double June. Depends on the weather and what me and the dogs can handle.

That's 260-410KWh/month Nov-Jun, peaking at up to nearly 1500KWh/month in August. The "smart meter" was only installed this past July, so I don't have daily data before that, and only the last week of July, but even in August the daily usage isn't more than 60KWh and that's a big peak, with most days at only 30-40KWh max. During times like now [5 weeks ago], it's about 8KWh/day average usage, and peaks of 10-12KWh.

Personally, I could probably cut my power consumption another couple hundred watt-hours, but not much more without some serious rethinking of how I do stuff here.

 

[Xanda2260]

Holy crap you yanks use a lot of juice! No wonder your energy taxes are so low, you'd all be bankrupt in a month otherwise! My house uses less than 10kwh/day, even in the depths of winter with lighting on more often etc.
Granted, my heating is gas, not electric but bloody hell!

Reminds me of an article I read about Las Vegas. Apparantly, during the energy crisis, the powers that be decreed that Vegas' lights should be turned off at 2am to save electricity. It made less than 0.2% difference IIRC, because 99% of Vegas' power consumption is caused by the AC! This is what happens when you build a city in the middle of the desert!

Over here in the land-of-eternal-drizzle, AC isn't required so energy consumption is far lower.
Certainly puts the whole 'USA produces more CO2 per head than xxx countries' thing in perspective. Those other countries don't have summers hitting 40C+.

 

[amberwolf]

I try my best to use very little power, but living in the desert there is a pretty high requirement for cooling, just to keep it livable. I am sure I could actually survive in higher temperatures, and the dogs would probably survive it too, but unless I absolutely can't afford it I prefer to keep it under 90-95F in the house.


I seriously wish SRP would give us free electricity during those times--I would setup the main house A/C unit to freeze a bunch of water and then use that during the daytime to blow air across to cool the house some. Inefficient it might be, but it would certainly be better than what I have now. :lol: It would also greatly reduce my cooling costs, most likely, as well as my water bill for the swamp cooler.

I could also store some of the power in my SLA, TS, and other types of batteries, and use that to run a small car's A/C compressor unit via electric motor. Possibly I could use it to power a window A/C unit, if I had enough in series, and the units didn't require AC voltage but could run on DC, too.


I'm sure I can think of other ways to store the energy, too, but those I could do pretty much immediately.


So now I just need some poeple in Texas to setup those microwave transmission towers tall enough to reach over the horizon to Phoenix, and I'll stick up a big rectenna.... :lol:

 

[docnjoj]

"Goin' where the climate suits my clothes..."
- 'Goin' down the road feelin' bad', The Greatful Dead (1970s)

Wearin' black on a 78°F day, KF 8)

Well the "dead" performed it but Woody still wrote it.
Keepin' the faith!
otherDoc

 

[dogman dan]

Assuming you have electric heat Pryo, I get it. I have an all electric house too. It was a real mofo till I blew another R20 into the attic. If you have accessible attic space, it sounds to me like you REALLY need to insulate some more. And i bet it's more square feet than my puny 1300 feet. One room is used only for storage, so really just about 1100 feet heated.

Once I got insulated, a few well placed windows and two homemade solar thermal panels nearly heat the house with no electricity. We run the big furnace about as long as we run the coffemaker in the morning, then go solar or heat one room at a time. During a cold month, we can still run up a $200 buck bill. That freeze two winters ago was a mother. EPE also had 90% of the local gas fired plants freeze and shut down for about 10 days. I was so smart that week, only guy on the block with both a fireplace to heat with and a couple small generators. Summer blackouts after thunderstorms are routine, and it's nice to break out the 800w unit and still have TV and internet for a few hours.

You still seem to use a lot of power for the room temperature months though. I'm pretty dang bad myself, TV going in two rooms as I wander around the house etc. But we still stay under $125 a month with no heat or cooling involved.

Putting in into more comparable units of measure, my house uses about 1200 kwh per month average. We tried to get it down to 1000, but me and those damn tv's. Guess that's some trophy house you got there using 5000. Or you do have a grow going. 8) Or you do a shitload of kiln firing or welding.

 

[Lebowski]

or you could pump water... 333kWh / day means that every night with the free electricity
you need to pum 1000 m^3 of water (30ftx30ftx30ft) up 100 meters (333 ft). Then during the
day you convert it's potential energy back to electricity.

 

[dogman dan]

Free kiln firing at night, I'd definitely get back into ceramic production at a minimum. In summer, water the yard with ice melting over your AC.

 

[Punx0r]

My electricity is a third of normal price for 7 hours overnight. Due to this, electric storage heaters are quite common.

I'm sure the electric heating element could be replaced with a cooling coil to make it a "cold store".

A year or three ago I saw a feature on the local news where a company was exploiting this price differential to store power in a 40ft truck trailer of lithium batteries, and then selling it back during the day. For some reason it was fully mobile and charged up parked on the street. They claimed to be making money on it.

 

[texaspyro]

The Technoshack runs around 5000 square feet with another 1000 in the guest house/garage. It was originally built in 1918. 15 tons of AC equipment. Electric heat in the downstairs (can't vent a gas furnace), but the new AC unit is a heat pump. Pool and a couple of fountains. Three refrigerators/freezers. Five ice makers. Electronics lab with a lot of equipment that runs 24/7. Over 300 light bulbs (all led). No grow

Last year, the summertime here the temps range from 90 degrees min at night to 115 in the day. Humidity to match. Sissypants Brits have been known to die with just seconds of exposure Winter temps are usually rater mild, and I'm part Eskimo... I usually keep the thermostats around 58 degrees.

 

[SamTexas]

The Technoshack runs around 5000 square feet with another 1000 in the guest house/garage. It was originally built in 1918. 15 tons of AC equipment. Electric heat in the downstairs (can't vent a gas furnace), but the new AC unit is a heat pump. Pool and a couple of fountains. Three refrigerators/freezers. Five ice makers. Electronics lab with a lot of equipment that runs 24/7. Over 300 light bulbs (all led). No grow

Last year, the summertime here the temps range from 90 degrees min at night to 115 in the day. Humidity to match. Sissypants Brits have been known to die with just seconds of exposure Winter temps are usually rater mild, and I'm part Eskimo... I usually keep the thermostats around 58 degrees.

That explains it. If anyone deserves a big thank you note from a utility company, it has to be you.

 

[texaspyro]

If anyone deserves a big thank you note from a utility company, it has to be you.

The Technoshack is a modified porta-potty compared to some of the neighbors. One that I really like is 7500 sq feet, one bedroom, about half the outside walls are glass (what's that cost to cool?). It is buried in trees and vegetation... she call's it her treehouse. Roof and garage doors are copper.

Another guy is putting the finishing touches on his new pleasure palace. 15,000+ sq feet. He bought the house next doorto his and scraped both houses off the lots, spent over a year just building the basement/foundation. Had a 100+ crane in for a year. Pays the local cops for 24/7 security. They have been at it for over 3 years now. They just put in over a megabuck of landscaping (including a couple dozen full sized (>8" trunks) trees).

When my 90+ year old next door neighbor died, his house went on sale one morning, for sale sign went up that afternoon (3.25 mil and it's yours, act now!), sold sign that afternoon, survey stakes went up the next day. Turns out the guy on the other side of his lot bought it, tore it down, and built his pool house... which due to zoning laws is a full house with garage, driveway, etc.

 

[SamTexas]

OK, so the whole neighborhood deserves a thank you note from the utility company.

I'm just a normal guy, so I have a hard time imagining what it's like in your neighborhood. My 2,600 sqft shack was about the right size when my two kids were still living at home. Now that they are gone, I just don't know what to do with the empty space. I'm still looking for a smaller place, around 1,500sqft, but it's hard to find one in my town.

 

[texaspyro]

OK, so the whole neighborhood deserves a thank you note from the utility company.

Well, actually the guy down the road pretty much owns the utility company... and the oil company... and the gas company...

Then there's the guy up the road that owns the Dallas Cowboys... he's been on the news a few times for having the highest water usage in the state (millions and millions of gallons a month).

 

[texaspyro]

I have a hard time imagining what it's like in your neighborhood.

If you watched that TV show on ABC (?) called GCB... that's literally my town. They changed the name slightly...

 

[docnjoj]

OK, so the whole neighborhood deserves a thank you note from the utility company.

Well, actually the guy down the road pretty much owns the utility company... and the oil company... and the gas company...

Then there's the guy up the road that owns the Dallas Cowboys... he's been on the news a few times for having the highest water usage in the state (millions and millions of gallons a month).

Yep TP just plain folks!
otherDoc

 

[dogman dan]

I had a feeling you weren't living in the poor tiny house neighborhood with an E bill like that. Built in 1918 means it's very likely to be nearly uninsulated, regardless of any efforts to try to improve it. You'd need to strip the sheetrock and foam the walls or something really drastic to improve it much. Bet the new houses next door have lower bills for twice the space.

Now, if we could just convince your rich neighbor that his path to heaven includes buying me and Amberwolf some solar pv panels and tracking stands.

My climate is nearly identical, and the Brits I know leave for the summer. AW is a tough hombre, my AC shuts down in summer and I immediately break out that generator. But we do AC just the room I'm in.

Re the truck full of batteries, you don't need to make a profit, just look like it while you skim off your nut. Likely some govt money got skimmed too.

 

[amberwolf]

My climate is nearly identical, and the Brits I know leave for the summer. AW is a tough hombre, my AC shuts down in summer and I immediately break out that generator. But we do AC just the room I'm in.

If I could, I'd probably keep it at 65F all the time. :lol: Easier to bundle up than strip down, cuz once you get past skin it kinda hurts.

 

[dnmun]

solar panels are a poor investment if you actually do conserve. my marginal electric load i could shift to panels is only about 1-2kWh/day and i think i can do even more to eat into that, because it is still excessive at about 14kWh/day. there is no way to justify a capital cost for solar panels because there is no return on the investment. a plug in hybrid package would actually reduce overall energy consumption, maybe the most useful investment. or driving on natural gas instead, because $4/gallon is expensive. $4/125k btu versus about $.87/100k btu.

but the housing is driven by class and culture. they just built a kinda mcmansion on an old city lot up the street from me. it is a spectacular view out over the city from the top floor, that is while it was framed. but they put a bathroom in the corner of the upstairs where the view is most spectacular, and then used obscure glass, even though that section is above the roof of the adjacent one story house built back in 1912 or so. turns out the old house that had been there was foreclosed, the speculator bot it and cut down the two big trees at the curb and built a mcmansion that towers over the side walk. all these spectacular looking windows, eye candy for the realtor, but no windows on the sides of the house that look out over the city with a spectacular view because of its height above the other houses, and the fact that we are on the crest of the old natural levee for the city, from the old antidiluvian floods that created the scablands in eastern washington, and deposited it all down here at the mouth of the columbia. a lot of the floods were actually carried around the city and up the willamette.

long story, but the value of these properties is the view, the architect had no clue. stupid developers. and they blocked every body elses view east of them up the hill. $675, versus the $515k for the one built jan 2010 next to me. where i got the other load of wood we burned up through last winter. the more they build the longer i will have free heat.

there is no sense of solar in design, the house i built in the mountains in colorado is at 8k feet, cold as hell in the winter, but the house heats itself, all passive with paloma boiler for backup. $200/year total propane bill includes hot water back up boiler and dryer. the solar panels make about 200 gallons of hot water a day when it is totally clear, i built the entire system for about $1300 total in 1985. almost 30 years of savings. and she got the full tax credit.

 

[texaspyro]

Built in 1918 means it's very likely to be nearly uninsulated, regardless of any efforts to try to improve it. You'd need to strip the sheetrock and foam the walls or something really drastic to improve it much.

Studs up redo in 1999... still could use some insulation. I'm thinking about doing the attic thing where you seal up the attic and make it part of the conditioned space. I know a lot of people in 1500 sq foot houses in Dallas with $600+ electric bills, so I'm not doing too bad in that department.

This area once had a lot of small houses, but almost all have been torn down and lots merged. Cheapest price for dirt here is over $10 million a acre plus whatever it costs to knock a house down!!! I don't know of any older houses that have been sold and not torn down... including some recent builds... it's so gauche to live in a used house, you know. There is no such thing as a real estate/building recession in Hoity Toity Ville. I have been unable to drive directly to my house for over 5 years because of home tear downs and construction.

There was one house that sold for $1.2 mil (actually a real steal), the buyer ( a contractor) spent a year and another $1.5 mil redoing it, sold it, it got torn down a week later, two years later voila... new house (which is now for sale). There was a house around the corner from me that sold and before the ink was dry on the closing documents was torn down. The buyer had bulldozers staged and ready just waiting for the phone call.

When I bought mine, things/prices weren't nearly as crazy. I paid around $150,000 for my first house in Hoity Toity Ville and sold it 20 years later for almost 10 times that and bought the Technoshack. Amazingly, that little house is still standing! Bulldozers drool and wet themselves when they see it. The people that bought it have no intention of selling or changing it. They've been offered ungodly amounts for it.

 

[Kingfish]

"Goin' where the climate suits my clothes..."
- 'Goin' down the road feelin' bad', The Greatful Dead (1970s)

Wearin' black on a 78°F day, KF 8)

Well the "dead" performed it but Woody still wrote it.
Keepin' the faith!
otherDoc

I dunno, origin seems to be debatable. Seems like "The Dead" had their own interpretation on the lyrics. All I knows is that it was hell-fun interpreting it with dancing top-less women at those concerts!

- - -

On another subject...
I grew up in the Central Valley; wicked hot in the summer, damp foggy cold in the winter. Best place to be was pool- or lakeside in the former and around the fireplace in the latter. As a kid, we had swamp coolers, and I remember fighting for my tiny corner beneath the vent. We moved to the new house (tract home) that had central HVAC which worked fine in the summer, but I still hovered over or sat upon the vent in the kitchen (being the largest) during winters. Damp fog cuts to the marrow. I think we did all we could through the years with the new house to upgrade it, though it seems to me my folks still spend $300/month during summer. Central heat is LNG; also great for the BBQ and hot tub!

Recently I have been exploring ways to beat the heat in the Valley for a potential commercial pursuit, and one idea that we know works is to build underground caverns: In the summer, you are cool – and in the winter, you are insulated. This guy here had the right dope at the turn of the last century: Baldassare Forestiere

Only thing missing was the brewery. 8)
"Make mine a Pilsner please!" KF

 

[999zip999]

They did that here instad of a ocean view for a resturant it"s the packing lot they get. But they saved the view for the trash and the delivery trucks. ??