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Dear Mark,

The Energy Miser #5, December 20, 2006

Christmas is fast approaching. I hope you've finished all your shopping. I haven't. I've been too busy writing newsletters ;-).

In January, I'll be heading to Nashville (Not Memphis). I was all excited and got my major Tennessee Cities mixed up. Fortunately, I caught the error before I bought my ticket. Instead of being near Graceland, I'lll be near the Country Music Hall of Fame. (Remove bad Elvis joke, Insert bad country music joke here)

A major omission from my last newsletter. I mentioned that I worked with Upstate Energy Solutions to install a 4 kW solar system but I inadvertently omitted mentioning Finger Lakes Renewable Energy Cooperative. That work would not have been possible without the efforts of FingerLakes Renewable Energy Cooperative, owned and operated by Rebekah Snow Carpenter (I met Rebekah in Denver at the Solar Dealers Conference). Finger Lakes was the prime contractor for the work. Upstate Energy was the sub. If you are in the Ithaca area and are considering a Solar PV system, contact Rebekah and tell her New England Breeze sent you.
What is the P3 International Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor? It is a cool toy for the geeky like me but normal people can use it too.

With the Kill-A-Watt device, I can measure electricity usage for any AC powered device. For example, I plugged my coffee maker into the Kill-A-Watt, pressed the "Watts" button and watched the meter. My Braun coffee maker uses 800 watts of electricity while brewing and 1 watt while warming. It takes about 10 minutes to brew a pot of coffee. Now here is where it gets interesting:

800 Watts x 10 minutes / 60 min/hr = 133 Watt-hours or 0.133 kiloWatt-Hours, 7.5 pots of coffee and I've used 1 kiloWatt-Hour of electricity. One year of coffee (I make a pot a day) uses 49 kiloWatt-hours of electricity. That's about $5.84 at my electricity rate ($0.12 per kwh).

While my coffee maker is a small user of electricity, it is still responsible for adding 70 pounds of Carbon Dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Saving the planet means we all have to reduce our "carbon footprint." The Kill-A-Watt can help.
As we head towards the peak of the holiday seaon, we expect lots of snow on the ground, but instead, we are having quite a mild December. Is this global warming in action?

It is hard to point to any one month and directly attribute it to global climate change. Instead, we need the trend data to see what is really happening. For example, 2005 was the United States' warmest year on record and 10 of the last fourteen years have been the warmest recorded. (Source, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore).
Percentage of Peer Reviewed Scientific Journal articles on global warming that question or cast into doubt the human effects on global climate: 0%

Percentage of newspaper articles in the same period that do so: 50%

Source: Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster by Ross Gelbspan

Interest in the Skystream 3.7 small wind turbine is quite high. I'm in the midst of five site assessments right now and I've asked Brian Bradley of Bradley Electric (Hudson, MA) to work with me on the installations. If you are ready for a site assessment, call or write. I start with a review of your zoning laws, then I look at the wind conditions for your location. Once I understand your wind, I calculate a rough payback. If you like the payback numbers, I'll visit your site and assess tower options. Once we've decided on a tower, I can finalize the payback numbers, then develop a detailed picing proposal and installation schedule.

Thanks for Reading the Energy Miser and have a low carbon holiday season.
Mark Durrenberger
New England Breeze, LLC

phone: 978-212-2665