Needs of electrical power

[skravlinge]

When I see the electrical power needs on the boards. I do not think you are average users (Average users in your country and clima) . In Sweden a typical household can use up to 3000 KW a month, and thats include the heating.

The price of a KW/h is about  USD  0.15 including taxes and delivery.

I heat my house with an air to air  invertor, made for aircondition, but I run it other way. If it is very cold I use wood. Still it is not possible to come under  1200 KW/H a month. I have checked the usage over time and found if I could supply with my own power and if that is average about 1kw - more than half will be saved, as peak use from other things as vacumcleaner, washingmachines is not very  long time comparing to whats always on. So it is not so easy to go off grid, but with a system designed to not take the peak use will make a big difference.

[JeroenH]

In Sweden a typical household can use up to 3000 KW a month, and thats include the heating.

The price of a KW/h is about  USD  0.15 including taxes and delivery.

For comparison: When I extrapolate my measurements of my power consumption we should use about 1600-1700kWh per year. CF lighting all around, all appliances on power strips and shut off when not in use, moderately efficient fridge (300kWh/yr). 2-floor apartment, 2 occupants, natural gas-powered central heating & cooking.

I'm in the Netherlands and our kWh-price is € 0,179/kWh (about US$ 0,14/kWh).

Why do so many people still use electric heating? It's horribly inefficient and expensive.

[skravlinge]

Things changes slowly. Our electric power was  just 1/5 of it is today. In the last years prices have rised due to taxes and  the market not anymore are on a national basis. We had a big surplus of power. Her lives about 9 million and we had 12 nuclear plants, now its 11. Still this plants supply about 50% of the power. The rest comes mainly from hydro. On top of this we import power.

The only way to changes system is to use wood for heating, it is not so taxed.

Oil is  more expency than electric power. 1000 liters costs about  1150 USD.

Do not forget, we need a bit more enegy, in Holland the winter is seldom 20-35 centigrades below zero.  Just 30 years ago, a lot of new houses were built to use electric heating, and without inverter, electric power were cheap at that time. People try to leave oil as heating, its too pricy. Electric driven invertors and heat from ground comes more, and even if that is economical, it  will put for more demand on electric power, if you goes from oil. Many leaves oil for wood, with using a stoker it is easy to handle the pellets, and still it is not very expensy, half to oil. My heating is about  USD 2000 a year, should I use oil it should be USD  5000. For the moment the invertor is the best I can get, I could use more wood, with more work, but up to day  very much to save.

We are in a difficult situation as we want close the nuclear plants as soon we can, but they are here slow to fix the replacement energy, which can be to a part with wind  - see what Denmark have in wind and  what they planning.

Gas  is not very much used in Sweden, lack of infrastructure and taxed.

[bkrahmer]

> I'm in the Netherlands and our kWh-price is € 0,179/kWh (about US$ 0,14/kWh).

The euro now costs $1.33 USD.  That means almost $0,24, not .14!  Wow.  That would be very shocking to most americans.  I'm in the Pacific NW (WA/ID), and we pay about $0.055.  However, I don't use that as an excuse to waste electricity.  We have all CF lights, etc.  The only big waster is leaving my computer on all the time.

> Why do so many people still use electric heating? It's horribly inefficient and expensive.

Personally, I dislike electric heating, but...  I was under the impression that at the point of use that it's about 98% efficient.  The efficiency is reduced at the point of generation of course, but if you're using hydro or nuke power, who cares?

[nothing to lose]

I geuss it does not get as cold here as there by a long way, but my average electric useage was 510KW per month based on a 6 month average. So in 6 months I used about 3600kw hrs.

I use wood for heating. We did have an electric clothes dryer but now durring the summer we hang them out, durring the winter I use a gas dryer I modified into a wood dryer! Yes it runs on wood

Well sort of, the motor is still electric, but the hot air is sucked in from near the wood burner that heats my house. This dries the clothes very well when we need heat, so that's when we try to wash clothes also. As for the dryer exhaust, I have that running up into the air then turned to point at the wood burner. This humidifies the air so it's not so dry in the house and also blows hot air away from the wood burner and into the rest of the house. This removes the need for a fan I used to use for that, at least while drying clothes. I do have a nylon stocking over the exhaust pipe to catch lint as a filter.

We use mostly flouresent lights, only a few incadesents like in the bathroom. Seldom used areas, or where actualy needed for a reason.

At the time of the average we were not using the electric hot water at all, but temporatily I am using it now while I build a new system for heating water.

We mostly cook outside durring the summer if the weather is decent, this removes any need for power/fuel for cooking. It also does not heat the house, so the extra heat does not then need removed with an airconditionair. As far as air is concerned, we use one durring the hottest months, but normally we just have the windows open and let the air flow though the house. We use several fans when needed to move it along faster.

Durring winter we cook on the wood stove alot. We have a gas stove and we do use it all year also, but not as much as most people would.

We have a 220V well pump and use alot of water, that I haven't figured away to fix myself yet to reduce the bill. I have ideas, but haven't built any of them yet.

Our other main uses are 3 computers (and the extras) and refrigerator. Power tools add it up some too, but not alot. I think at that time I also was running a freezer.

Family of 3, and I stay up most nights working so often several lights are on all night long. And of course the daughter leaves all her stuff on all the time though I am starting to get her broke of that habit.

Starting Feb. 2005 when I should have these other projects working I expect to have my electric usage down to 400kw hrs or less per month, and hopefully will also be suppling that myself with several wind gennies.

Durring the winter here we have lots of strong winds, more than normal, in the last few days I could have met all my own power needs and been using electric heat for a dump load for the extra also if I had the gennies flying yet. But I don't

[JeroenH]

The euro now costs $1.33 USD.  That means almost $0,24, not .14!  Wow.  

Woops! Dit that calculation the wrong way around I guess.

That would be very shocking to most americans.

Wait till you hear our petrol prices:

€ 1,225 / liter (and rising!)

€ 1 = US$ 1.33

1 L = 0,264 gallons (according to Google)

If I do the math correctly that comes to about US$ 6,20 per gallon. About one third of which are taxes, by the way.

Prices like that make you conscious about your energy usage, though. Even small percentage savings add up to a lot of money saved.

[srnoth]

Hey guys,

How do you calculate monthly usage from watts? I am trying to calculate my monthly usage, and my answer is so huge it must be wrong. Example:

10 x 100W lightbulbs = 1000W/hour or 1Kk/hour.

There are 24 hours in a day and approx 30 days in a month. That means:

1Kw/h x 24 x 30 = 720kw/h per month for just 10 light bulbs!!

If that is correct, then no wonder skravlinge averages 3000Kw/h per month. How on earth do you guys get it down to 500kw/h??

That does not seem right to me. Is my mathematics correct?

Cheers,

Stephen.

[troy]

Dear Stephen,

Your math is correct,

watts x hours = watthours

kilowatts x hours = kilowatt hours.

When I moved into my house five years ago, it had:

electric water heater

electric stove

inefficient electric refrigerator

all incandescent lights (4-5% efficient, 95-96% heat, yes they are the invention of the devil as far as efficiency goes...)

and we used about 600 kwh/mo.

I chucked the fridge, water heater and stove. All the conventional light bulbs that are on more than 15 minutes at a time were replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs.  We now have a gas water heater, gas stove and fairly efficient electric refrigerator.  We also vigorously turn the lights out (or other appliances) if we're not using them.  Present usage hovers around 200 kwh/mo and that's about to go down since my lister based co-generator is online now.

I used a "kill-a-watt" meter to do a system wide survey to see where the electricity was going.  Did you know your tv keeps the picture tube gun electrically preheated to get that instant on feature?  Did you know that all those little wall transformers (wall warts) for your calculator or whatnot are inefficient and use electricity all the time, even if the appliance it feeds is "off"? Did you know that every digital display in every appliance in your house (unless it's battery powered) uses DC that is provided by an inefficient transformer somewhere inside the appliance (eg, microwave, VCR, DVD, stereo, etc).We put all our phantom loads on power bars so we can turn them truly off.  

Technology can help, but simple discipline goes a long way too.  If you leave ten incandescent light bulbs on 24/7, you're wasting a gob of electricity and heating your house too.  And if it's in the summer time, it typically takes 2-3 kwh to feed the central air to remove 1 kwh of heat generated by those incandescent light bulbs.

So that's a little smattering of where you can chase down stray and wasted electrons.

Good luck and have fun!!

troy

[richhagen]

I'm almost surprised that electric vehicles havn't taken off there with petrol prices like that.  At least for short term commutes it seems that batteries and electricity would be extremely competitive.  Rich Hagen

[skravlinge]

Gas is not an option for us in Sweden. To high prices comparing to electric.

By us wood is cheapest (and RE). After that comes electric (partly RE) . Oill and gas cost most. My inverter  takes depending on outside temperature 400 to 1200 watt/hour and gives between 2 and  a bit over 3 times back in heat.

Fridges if you live rural in Sweden, we use to have a couple, as we hunt and rise often some animals and have garden. We are two in our household (me and my wife) and we use fridge-space of  600 litres (shopping twice a month at most). We never need to use energy to cool the house in summer as  it seldom surpass 22 centigrades outside.

[JeroenH]

10 x 100W lightbulbs = 1000W/hour or 1Kk/hour.

There are 24 hours in a day and approx 30 days in a month. That means:

1Kw/h x 24 x 30 = 720kw/h per month for just 10 light bulbs!!

Your math is correct, but only if you are running those bulbs 24 hours a day. If those 10 bulbs are on for, say,  6 hours a day, calculate it like this:

"10 bulbs"

"0,1 kW (100 W)"

"6 hours / day"

"30 days / month"

(I added the " because the board would try to make a numbered list)

10 * 0.1 * 6 * 30 = 180 kWh / month

Mind you, a 20 W CF light puts out as much light as a 100 W lightbulb for 20 % of the electricity usage. Replacing those 10 lightbulbs with CF lights would bring your electricity consumption down to 36 kWh / month. And that is without the airconditioning savings (lightbulbs heat up your house which the AC needs to remove).

Even if your ARE running thos 10 bulbs 24/7 installing CF lights would still cut your electricity usage to 200 kWh / month.

[wooferhound]

 To get my monthly usage

I just look at my power Bill that comes once a month

The power company here has information on the internet

and has my monthly usage online, going back 15 months

I use that information to get my average monthly usage

[mlz]

Just for some comparison, my consumption for October was ~2500KW/hours.  Gas heat, gas H/W heater (Well, one of the diverter loads is electric hot water but...) Gas stove.  However, most of my loads can not be switched off.  We run our business on the system.  My total bill for October (due to seasonal winds) is -$1.45.  Wish I could have gotten it higher, as energy company here allows sell back to be applied towards gas bill ($76) so it would have brought my bills down.

Now for the bad part, that's 18 turbines, some solar (we don't produce much with solar after mid oct.) and 6 hours of generator time.  We have a battery room that is 200 sq ft, and 4 inverters.  Some of this I have no idea what kind of price tag to put on it.    However I do know that in a "normal" area, I would need at least 3 or 4 commercial turbines, partially for just in case.  (Good point is our Bergy that ate a bird and went down!)  

I decided about 6 years ago I didn't want to get off the grid, I wanted to supply it.  Right now I have to burn load due to sell back limits.   That's fine, I now have a second shower I can use.  I happen to live in what is considered to be one of the top 4 places for winds, however here they are hard to harvest, you have gusty winds that come at angles to the smooth winds (I live in the mountains) and other features that tend to  foil HAWT machines.  VAWT can be used, but they are less efficent.  I see posts regarding furling in a 25mph wind.  I don't EVER furl, I have to absorb (no tail on a VAWT) which on our big turbine means 2 overload generators that engage when windspeed is too high.

At this point I'm mostly interested in otherpower for PMG alternators.  Currently I use Ford and GM car alternators.  These have major problems including rapid bearing failure, due to being mounted vertically.  I can see some HUGE benifits from the PMG design.

If anyone says it's impossible, remember, sometimes it may seem impossible or impractical, just look for a different way to achieve what your trying for.  If I had a dollar for everytime someone told me I couldn't produce 2-3000Kw/hours of energy with an S-Rotor, I'd be able to buy me a new outback inverter.

Incidentally, there are 22 high power servers plus other systems in the business all burning ions, in case anyone is wondering why the power drain.  All the servers have hot swap power supplies, hence the large drain.  Some of those are on the yet to be fully completed 4th circuit, which does not have amp logging (and won't until I find a D/A board I can build myself)

Er, just realized I wrote a book.  Sorry.

[finnsawyer]

At this point you're probably getting confused.  Some clarification:  A 100 watt bulb uses .1 kilowatt (kw).  If it is on for one hour, it uses .1 kw times 1 hour for .1 kwh (kilowatt-hour).  You always get energy by multiplying power times time.  Your ten bulbs would use one kilowatt-hour of energy in one hour, which would cost me about $.085 U S.  Also 1 kwh equals 1000 watts times 3600 seconds or 3.6 million watt-seconds or 3.6 million joules.  We tend to use a lot of electrical energy, but it's actually pretty cheap.

If anybody is interested, I heat with a ground water heat pump that also helps heat my water.  My electric usage runs about 1400 kwh per month in the winter.  I live at 47 degrees north latitude near lake superior.  The coldest I've seen it here was 36 degrees below zero

Fahrenheit.  Twenty below is fairly common.  The average lowest high temperature hits about 20 degrees above zero during the third week of January.

[finnsawyer]

As I mentioned I use a heat pump.  After a monthly usage of 500 kwh I get a break in the rate which lowers it from the 8.5 cents I mentioned above.  Since your (European) rate is about twice mine, I'd like to know how much of that is due to taxes arising from your cradle to grave socialism?

[finnsawyer]

We,ve been discussing that lately.  It seems the aluminum battery might be the answer.  It appears you could make a one shot battery that would get enough range to make the switching job bearable, but the cost (mainly due to the aluminum) might be too high.  I predict that if a good rechargeable aluminum battery becomes available the electric car will take off.  Check out the proposed Partanen Battery.

[skravlinge]

It is very much tax in our prices, we  move tax from income to use of energy.

I do not count my country socialist just because I have free medical service (as all have).

[thunderhead]

Since your (European) rate is about twice mine, I'd like to know how much of that is due to taxes arising from your cradle to grave socialism?

Here in the UK it's about the same as in the Netherlands - 6.5p per kWh during the day for electricity, and 2.9p per kWh during the night.  Gas comes in at about 2.7p per kWh of heat.

Most UK electricity is generated from gas and oil.  There is some nuclear, and about 5% to 10% of renewable - mainly wind.  We have by and large abandoned coal generation in order to meet Kyoto Protocol commitments.  The price of electricity pretty well tracks the price of petrochemicals, especially natural gas.

We have a sales tax called VAT on energy bills, which for most people is 17.5%.  There is also a carbon tax, called the "Climate Change Levy" which is claimed to be intended to reduce greenhouse emissions.

I'd say it has nothing to do with "cradle to grave socialism", whatever that is, and everything to do with climate change and the Kyoto Protocol.  Since your divinely-inspired President doesn't believe in climate change or any other such non-Biblical nonsense - presumably relying on Genesis 8:21 rather than those ungodly scientists - he reneged on your country's Kyoto commitments.

[finnsawyer]

Sorry, free medical treatment is socialist.  Cradle to grave socialism is when you can live your whole life, and live it well (and be a healthy person, not handicapped) and not have to work or produce anything of value at any time.  If you can find anybody that fits that profile you have cradle to grave socialism.

I guess it's tough to actually compute how much of the energy cost goes to taxes, here or there.  The governments are just too clever at hiding it.  That 6.5p tax that Thunderhead pays isn't that much different than my total cost.  Of course, we do have our own taxes as part of the cost.

[skravlinge]

We have to be little carefully when we use th USD to compare the prices of energy. The USD have in my liftime been from   SEK 3.5 To SEK 11. For the moment the USD has dropt to SEK by 25% latley, it will not make my bill more expency  even if it looks so in USD.

[skravlinge]

I healthy person with no handicap would not see adoctor anyhow. A healthy person living good and not produce anything of value, have to get the money somwhere, The value  such a person should get here by the community is just for  basic food and  a place to sleep during night. This goes for adult.

We are leaving the topic a bit, you may start a thread on this matter.

[troy]

Dear Mike,

Hey, I love long posts if the quality is there.  Your's is right up there in quality.  Make more long posts...

Vert axis machines may look less efficient on paper, but efficiency is only one of many many factors.  And the efficiency difference isn't as big as many suppose if they are built properly.

How about some details of your system?  Pics would be even better.

Good luck, have fun, and thank you,

troy

[finnsawyer]

Naw, no new thread.  My definition of CTG socialism may be too severe, but I think you just proved my point.  Any government program that takes money from one person and gives it to another unrelated person for purposes that have nothing to do with the first person's well being is, in my opinion, socialist.  Your non-working adult getting his bed and meals does not advance your well being, even though you pay taxes for it.  A similar argument can be made in regard to the healthy person paying for another's medical care.  It's socialistic.  It also tends to distort the economic fabric of a nation, not to mention the creation of a large expensive government bureaucracy.  People have been brainwashed into accepting these things as non socialist and as being entitlements.

[TomW]

Guys;

We are leaving the topic a bit, you may start a thread on this matter.



Please, please, no new thread on political stuff. We get far enough off topic already without a "ism" thread. Next thing you know we will be discussing engine rebuilding and computer hacking.

Diaries might be an acceptable place for that kind of thing, however.

T

[JeroenH]

Now for the bad part, that's 18 turbines, some solar (we don't produce much with solar after mid oct.) and 6 hours of generator time.  We have a battery room that is 200 sq ft, and 4 inverters.

This sounds like an awesome setup!! Can you supply more details and/or pictures?

[elvin1949]

Stephen

I live in an all electric 4 bedroom house.

There is no insulation in the wall's.

My electric usage last month was 510 kwh.

That was a high bill,last june was 374 kwh.

You can keep your usage down.

later

elvin

[nothing to lose]

"Sorry, free medical treatment is socialist.  Cradle to grave socialism is when you can live your whole life, and live it well (and be a healthy person, not handicapped) and not have to work or produce anything of value at any time.  If you can find anybody that fits that profile you have cradle to grave socialism."

I didn't know the USA was "Cradle to grave socialism" but I geuss it is. I know of some bimbos here with 4-6 kids, never been married, never had a job, never will. Never produced anything of value.

 One is nothing but a burden on society including her 2 oldest kids that are in prison. The other one is in a home with a drug fried brain.

I know of some bums the same way including the fathers of those 4-6 kids the bimbos have.

[finnsawyer]

Actually, you should finish the book.  I think people here would be very interested in the economics of your experience.  Does it really pay to do what you did?

[finnsawyer]

Sad comment on our nation, isn't it?  And I was trying to get a point across to our European friends.  These dependencies are certainly the down side of socialism.

[mlz]

Define pay.  Price tag for everything we've spent (taking out for what has been sold has been about $65,000.  However, I made a LOT of mis-steps along the way.  For a DIYer, probably more like $25,000 that's for supplies, batts, the generator (don't buy from Home Depot or Lowes or what have you, go slow speed, you're ulcer won't act up as much!)

We're seriously thinking of staying down on the plains for a while.  I love living in the mountains, but at this point in my life, it's too hectic and I don't get to spend as much time doing the things I love while juggling my obsession (getting rid of everything grid related), work, and family.  Down here work is more simple, the property is easier to care for, and the kids like it better down here.  Besides, gives me an excuse to start from scratch.