Yay for Nuclear Energy!
Dec. 22nd, 2007 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
liralenEspecially when the core is a good, safe 93 million miles away. Helps that it's a fusion reactor instead of a fission one, too, fewer waste products...
We got all 36 photo voltaic panels in now, and they're happily making electricity on the roof. With luck the electrician will get all the wiring, inverter, and stuff in in the next couple of weeks and then the power company should be setting up the meter to allow what they produce onto the grid as well as taking power off the grid. We've got about 6.12 KW max on the roof, now, and it should cover a good deal of what we now use.
With the audit, we managed to drop our usage by about a third of what we were using, without being any less comfortable. It's pretty amazing that by simply knowing what it was that we were using the power on, that we were able to figure out what we really aren't using or needing and just drop that. Whew.
We got all 36 photo voltaic panels in now, and they're happily making electricity on the roof. With luck the electrician will get all the wiring, inverter, and stuff in in the next couple of weeks and then the power company should be setting up the meter to allow what they produce onto the grid as well as taking power off the grid. We've got about 6.12 KW max on the roof, now, and it should cover a good deal of what we now use.
With the audit, we managed to drop our usage by about a third of what we were using, without being any less comfortable. It's pretty amazing that by simply knowing what it was that we were using the power on, that we were able to figure out what we really aren't using or needing and just drop that. Whew.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 03:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 02:12 pm (UTC)Pity that's not likely to be an option for us -- too many tall trees around. Ah, well.
EDIT: Voops, didn't mean to hang this off yours,
*hugs*
no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, even partial shade makes them rather inefficient. We were really lucky and have a south-east facing roof. The eastern exposure is actually useful in a way as here, in the summer, nearly every afternoon is filled with thunderstorm clouds. So better to take advantage of the sunrise...
no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 04:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 06:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:53 pm (UTC)There's an old fridge we'd gotten for free from a friend that actually uses more electricity than both our other fridge and our chest freezer combined. So we've mostly emptied it and unplugged it as we weren't using it that much anyway. We might get another, smaller, more efficient beer fridge for John for the summer, but for now the whole garage is, effectively a fridge (i.e. it's never over 40 degrees in there now).
We swapped all our incandescent lights upstairs for florescent lights, the new bulbs provide pretty much exactly the same light, they just take a little while to warm up, but use a lot less electricity. Also, Longmont power worked with the local retailers, and the power company rebated all the local retailers so that the compact florescent light bulbs were exactly the same cost as the incandescents of the same power. So that was huge. We did everything in one day because of that deal. We have an odd track-lighting scheme in the kitchen that we couldn't replace, but nearly every other room light we were able to replace, easily, and the light quality is such that, if anything, it's now brighter than it was.
That's about it. We did put the downstairs entertainment center all on one power strip so that we could turn the whole complex off with a single flick. We also put the satellite computers on a power strip as well, so that they couldn't get any energy if we wanted the whole system off anyway.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-23 10:55 pm (UTC)It *is* like we're living in the future! Hee!!