Green Technology

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I was at Home Depot and there was an 8 pack LED bulb for 55c each. I used to pay over $10 each per bulb and much more for focused bulbs.

You can lease an electric car for $45 per month + tax that equates to $55. Cheap to charge the car and stylish to drive.
http://www.fiatofsd.com/specials/new.htm

Solar is cheap now.

Smart/passive homes can save 3/4 of energy without inconvenience or loss of comfort.

As cities go renewable, carbon fuels will stay cheap but will become less and less necessary. No need for wars in the Middle East.

New technology will create new jobs.

Why didn’t we do that earlier?

[spdrun]

Green tech is good so long as it doesn’t forcibly shove telemetry up your butt. Give me smart things that are actually smart, rather than relying on the korepirate kloud for their brain-power.

[moneymaker]

We didn’t do it earlier because it was too expensive for most people. I do love that the LED’s are cheaper because I doubt they will be lasting 23 years like they say on the package.

[spdrun]

Why not? I have electronic equipment that’s 20-30 years old with LEDs that haven’t failed yet. Solid-state devices can last for decades.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=spdrun]Green tech is good so long as it doesn’t forcibly shove telemetry up your butt. Give me smart things that are actually smart, rather than relying on the korepirate kloud for their brain-power.[/quote]

BTW, I tested my Wink Hub without internet. Not it does not work without the cloud although locally everything is wifi and zwave.

But I love my smart home and being able to control everything. I just press a button by the door and everything is on/off.

I know people who still run at least 6 100w incandescent lights in their kitchen. Imagine all the heat that generates. I run my whole apartment on much less and I have all the lights on.

[ucodegen]

As cities go renewable, carbon fuels will stay cheap but will become less and less necessary. No need for wars in the Middle East.

That area is slowly running out of oil anyway. I think UAE is just about out. Saudi Arabia has gone through about 40% of their proven reserves. The US is currently imports most of its oil from Canada.

http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=727&t=6

Solar is cheap now.

Except the installers are still gouging. Current panel cost are around $1/watt of production capability, but what many installers are charging is about $3/watt and up.
https://www.solar-electric.com/kyocera-ku340-8bca-solar-panel.html?gclid=CN-Zyo_jhNICFYJpfgodinYDcg

First Solar panels are even cheaper (but produce less power per square foot – less efficient because they are Evap Deposit design) They Kyocera panels are poly-crystalline which are more efficient at conversion. Mono-crystalline panels are used on satellites and the space station – and have the highest conversion efficiency- and highest per watt cost.

[ucodegen]

[quote=spdrun]Why not? I have electronic equipment that’s 20-30 years old with LEDs that haven’t failed yet. Solid-state devices can last for decades.[/quote]
The problem with the larger LEDs for lighting is getting rid of the heat. Small LEDs that don’t produce much light, don’t produce much heat. LED lights are still not 100% efficient, and what amount of energy does not go into light – becomes heat. Unlike old fashioned tungsten lights which run on heat, heat kills LEDs. Tungsten lights generally run at around 3500K, LEDs are under 373K and actually start dying above that temp.

[ucodegen]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
I know people who still run at least 6 100w incandescent lights in their kitchen. Imagine all the heat that generates. I run my whole apartment on much less and I have all the lights on.[/quote]
Imagine the additional AC load due to those bulbs in the summer.. Using energy to get rid of the waste energy from inefficient bulbs that use more energy than needed to light the place. Take that a step further, using energy running the AC to get rid of energy that is falling on the roof and turning into heat, heating the house.

I have been doing the replacement ‘piecemeal’. As a bulb dies it gets replaced with a ‘new’ type. All but 1 reflector flood in the kitchen and 1 reflector flood in the high ceiling area near the stairs are Compact Florescent. Those were the only two tungsten floods (as of last year). I left those as tungsten for safety – so I would get a usable amount of light as soon as the light switch goes on, while waiting for the CFs to brighten. The last two have recently been replaced by LED reflector floods (the tungsten bulbs died), and as CFs die, the plan is to replace those as well with LED. My estimate on diffs of light efficiency comes in at about; CFs 5x more light efficient than tungsten/incandescent, LEDs are about 2x CFs or about 10x tungsten/incandescent. This is not including how long they last. The CFs are hard to estimate over tungsten because of the variance. Some of mine died surprisingly fast, others seem to have a life of about 3x the tungsten. Not enough data for the LEDs yet.

I figure the progressive ‘roll-in’ is probably the most cost effective and least wasteful way to do the change over. Each new bulb is the most ‘modern’ and most efficient available at that time, and I avoid new tech ‘glitches’ on designs. The energy consumption in the house has gone way down – not that the SDG&E total $ bill reflects that. The last bill kind of pissed me off.

The biggest difficulty has been in matching the color temperature between the incandescent, CF and LED bulbs.

[gzz]

I was at a party last year at a place full of incandescent bulbs. It drove me nuts to see them, I had to resist being Al Gore.

I have multiple LED bulbs that are five years old and none have failed. It was CFLs that often failed far sooner than they were listed. Often they’d last 6 months. LEDs look better than they used too as well, no more strange shapes, too blue light, or too focused light. Early LEDs sometimes failed out of the box, but not anymore.

I have a Simon toy from 1978 and the 39 year old incandescent bulbs inside all work fine.

[gzz]

Eco I got rid of my non LED overhead floods almost all at once. The light quality is better and they look nicer than CFL floods which take a few seconds to warm up and you can see the ugly spiral through the top. There is a small time savings in just getting the ladder out once and bulk discount on the LED floods, now which cost about $1.50 in multipacks.

[gzz]

My remaining non LED lights are long tube lights in the garage and workroom. For $30 I replaced one so far with a long tube style LED fixture, and the light is brighter, nicer, quieter, and makes the room look bigger because the ballast is much smaller and hangs down less.

SDGE was nice enough to pick up and properly dispose of the huge box of old unused flortubes my house came with. I look forward to replacing the remaining tube fixtures. I am just not decided on what type of LED fixture to use.

[gzz]

I am looking into a tankless hot water heater for the energy and space savings. It might require a bit of electrical upgrade. My oldest gas heater is 12 years old and works fine, but is an eyesore. Property costs $500+/sf here, so just the space savings of about 2sf is worth $1000. Reviews are pretty good on them, and small one shower models I used overseas worked perfectly.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=gzz]I was at a party last year at a place full of incandescent bulbs. It drove me nuts to see them, I had to resist being Al Gore.
[/quote]

haha.. that’s exactly how I feel. I have to resist ever telling people “you should do this.”

But I feel that parties should be well air-conditioned because each person is like a 100w heater. Add the heat from lights, appliances, cooking… and it gets humid and stuffy.

gzz, i second what should said about LED lights. The are so much crisper and nicer than CFL or incandescent. I was never a fan of CFL. When I go to go airports, freeway underpasses, new stores with LED, I feel like my eyes have been washed clean.

I’m on and HOA board of a complex that is like a Motel 6. At my prodding, we replaced all the lights with simple lampholders with cages and daylight LED bubs and the community is so much brighter and cleaner at night.

For my own home, I like the small GU10 focused bulbs inside rotabable gimbal that shine onto different spots. they look good.

[FlyerInHi]

Other green tech are the induction cooktop and programmable slow/pressure/rice cooker.

I’m a terrible cook so I don’t really see the need for gas cooking. It’s so messy and hard to clean. Some have humongous grille that you can’t even put in the dishwasher.

Induction cooking is safe and clean, as is microwaving.

When I think of all the poor people in the developing world cooking with coal and charcoal, breathing all the smoke, I feel like we could do a lot by electrifying with solar. We could teach them how to cook using programmable electric appliances. I have made many meals in my programmable cooker… so convenient and clean; if only people knew how to modify their traditional recipes for the modern world.

[spdrun]

I want a hydrogen stove that uses electricity to electrolyze water and make hydrogen for cooking 🙂

BTW – interesting documentary about the charcoal industry in Haiti, deforestation, and its effect on the border area of the Dominican Republic.

http://deathbyathousandcutsfilm.com/

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