Rich's Random Thoughts » Sustainability

Conserving Energy One Cubicle At A Time…

Rich McCue — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 21:41:15 +0000

What are the top 4 Things you can do to save electricity in your office?

Turn your computer off at night if you aren’t already.
Even better, change the power settings on your computer so it goes to sleep after 15 minutes or 20 minutes.
Turn your lights off when ever you leave your office.
Next time you buy a computer, seriously consider purchasing a laptop (they use about 1/4 the power of a desktop computer).

Do you know how much electricity you use in your personal office or cubicle? Do you know how much energy your desktop computer or laptop uses? If you are like me, you probably don’t know. Over the past year I’ve measured how much electricity the different electric and electronic devices use so that I can make better decisions as I try to reduced my personal energy foot print (I use a device call the Kill-A-Watt to measure the electrical draw of each item).

Below are the power draws of all the electrical devices in my office (here is spreadsheet with a longer list of home and work electronics & their power draws):

Lights On: 64 watts
27″ iMac Computer in Use w/ 2nd 24″ monitor (both screens at 50% brightness): 142 watts
27″ iMac Computer idle (both screens asleep): 60 watts
Computer speakers on: 6 watts
MacBook Air (screen 50% brightness): 14 watts
iPad charging: 10 watts

Now here are some different options I have when I leave my office for lunch or for a meeting:

Office occupied and in use: 236 watts
Rich just walks away: 132 watts
Rich turns off lights & walk away: 66 watts
Rich auto sleeps computer, laptop, and turns off lights: 8 watts
Rich sleeps computer, laptop, and turns off lights and power bar for computer speakers: 2 watts

Notice the dramatically different levels of electrical usage between me just walking out of my office (#2) and me changing the settings in my computer to hibernate and turning my lights off (#4). Instead of just walking away from my office, I’ve now programmed my monitors to turn off after 2 minutes of inactivity, and my computers to sleep after 15 minutes on inactivity, and trying very had to remember to turn my lights off. There are motion sensor switches you can purchase to turn lights off for you, but I just need to get into the habit of turning my lights off when I’m leaving my office. Changing my habits slightly translates into an 94% reduction in energy consumption.

Why is it important to know how much electricity each device uses? Here’s a quick example from my home. It’s been ten years now since we converted all our lighting in our house to compact florescent bulbs (CFL’s). We made the change believing that we’d reduce our electrical consumption… which it did. Last year I started measuring the electrical usage of other appliances in our home and was shocked to discover that our electric hot water tank uses the majority of the electricity in our house. I was worrying about turning lights off, when it was shower length that I should have been worried about first. For example, reducing my personal daily shower from 20 minutes to 10 minutes is the same as turning off all the lights in our kitchen, living room and front entry way for 10 hours.

Should we have switched to CFL bulbs? Of course, but we should also have been encouraging everyone in the house to limit their time in the shower. By doing both we would have reduced or energy consumption significantly more.

P.S. Here are some facts about other electronics in your office that might be interesting to you:

Digital Projector: 150-300 watts (depending on the model)
Kyocera 2020D printer printing: 820 watts
Kyocera 2020D printer idle: 25 watts
Kyocera 2020D printer off: 13 watts

P.P.S. I use the kill-a-watt device to measure the electrical draw of plugin electronics and appliances. At home I use The Energy Detective to monitor in real time energy usage in my home.

Tagged: education, environment, research, Sustainability, Work

The Greening of Law School IT

Rich McCue — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 23:11:26 +0000

What follows are my notes from my Presentation at the 2010 CALI conference at Rutgers Law School at Camden. If you’d like to see a video of the presentation you can find it here.

Today we are going to learn how you can save your organization money, and reduce it’s burden on the environment, all starting in the computer lab, by reducing energy consumption.

The keys that I’ve found for reducing electricity as an individual or in an organization are to:

Measure every electrical device possible
Implement changes where ever you have the power to do so
Educate everyone in your organization

Measure:

Do you know how much it costs to run a lab computer? Before making changes to our lab, it cost $7 per day to run our 42 computers, which quickly adds up to $2500 in a year!
Terminology: kWh = Kilowatt hour. If you turn on a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours you will have used 1000 watts, or 1 Kilowatt.
Price of kWh varies widely across the country. Do you know what the price of electricity is in your area? Washington state has the lowest price at $0.06 / KWh, and Hawaii the highest at $0.28 / KWh. The average in the US is about $0.11 / KWh. In Pennsylvania, running a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours will cost about $0.12.
Measure every piece of equipment you can using a Kill A Watt (Only $20 on Amazon.com).
- Measure full power (watching video), Normal (word processing), Sleep & Hibernate modes (power draw can vary quite a bit).
- It can measure the power consumption of all types of equipment: printers, lamps, monitors, TV’s, etc.
- The chart below show the total cost of running each device 24 x 7 for a year. The cost per KWh used is $0.12.
Electrical usage across devices varies greatly. The iPad uses very little electricity… Laptops also use electricity sparingly, but desktop computers without power saving settings enabled use quite a bit of electricity. Most people don’t know this.
When my kids are playing on our XBox360 and the 46” TV, they use a lot of electricity: A combined 325 watts, as opposed to my 4 watts as I surf on my iPad
To measure the total electrical usage in a building, or if possible parts of the building (most buildings have several electrical panels). The Energy Detective does a great job measuring the total usage in my home, and they are coming out with a commercial 3-phase version soon.
The Energy Detective, as well as other similar devices, come with real time dashboard that displays current usage as well as tracks historical usage.

Implement:

Implement everywhere that you have control! The number one thing that we did was to turn computers off every night. Because of a patch management tool that we previously used, we asked our faculty and staff to leave their computers on. For the same reason we left our Lab computers turned on 24 x 7. By doing just this alone we can reduce electrical consumption by computer by 60-70%
Make Power saving the default on new computers. Encourage Faculty and Staff to make changes, by showing them how. In the past I’ve disabled power saving settings on new XP computers because of the instability introduced, but the tools seem much better in Windows 7. OSX power management features are excellent and reliable.
If you use Ghost or other similar product, you can schedule shutdown and start up times globally. If you don’t use ghost like us, we use the “Scheduled Task Wizard” and a simple command line: Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Task Scheduler … create a new task that runs the following windows Utility: c:\windows\system32\shutdown.exe -s We have the task run at 10:20PM every night (the library closes at 10pm) except Friday nights, so that Windows update can do it’s magic.
Buy Energy Star equipment… make power consumption a consideration along with price. Also factor energy cost into total cost of the hardware purchase.
Virtualize servers whenever possible. Server use a lot of electricity. If you can reduce the number of “boxes” you are running, you can typically reduce your electrical consumption significantly. We’re in the process of virtualizing our servers as they come up for retirement.

Educate:

People can’t make good decisions unless they have information. Example from home: Electric Hot water tank uses the majority of the electricity in our home… I was worrying about turning lights off, when it was shower length that I should have been worried about. Most people are the same when it comes to office equipment.
Visibility is Very important. Once people are able to monitor their usage, consumption typically drops by 20%. Using a web based display, or adding power usage to your faculty website would be an easy way to let everyone know how things are going.

Let People Know: When you make changes in the computer labs, let everyone know. I did this via an email to faculty, staff and students, so that they’d know why the computers in the lab would not be turned on for them in the morning. I also included in that email Tips for how Faculty and Staff could reduce their energy usage at their work station.
Tips for Faculty: Do not give your faculty and staff a long list of things to do… just 2 or 3 key things that they can easily do… don’t overwhelm them.. Let them know relatively speaking how much energy they’ll save by doing each thing.
1. Shut down every night
2. Enable Power Management
3. Use a Laptop when possible
Competition: Once people know what they are using, then you can pit them against each other in a competition. Business School vs. the Law School… Just don’t let the Business School set the rules. Good natured competition can get people to focus in a manner that it is difficult to do in any other way.
While there is not a direct link between electricity usage and the problems in the Gulf; if we used less energy of all forms, including electricity, we wouldn’t need to import as much oil, or drill for oil in such difficult locations like the gulf…

Tagged: education, environment, libraries, Sustainability

A great article on how to slow down spen

Rich McCue — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 20:12:55 +0000

A great article on how to slow down spending habits. One idea I’ve already implemented: a 30 day wait list for toys. http://bit.ly/cbs2df

Tagged: education, shopping, Sustainability

Solar Hot Water at Our House!

Rich McCue — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 17:48:44 +0000

I’m very excited that we’re getting Solar Hot Water installed at the house tomorrow. $3375 in Federal and Provincial grants defiantly helps! http://bit.ly/claYyR

Island Energy is doing the install of an Enerworks system. Photos and more information to follow!

Tagged: environment, Family, Sustainability

Saving Money and the Environment in Your Home

Rich McCue — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:06:50 +0000

What is probably the quickest and least expensive way to reduce your home heating (or cooling) bill, and reduce your home’s carbon foot print? If you have a home older than 10 years old, the plugging common air leaks with calking and foam filler is probably the way to go. The good folks at Re-Nest have a great article on how to go about finding the air leaks, and then how to effectively plug them up.

Not rocket science, but a much less expensive way to save electricity or natural gas than buying expensive new appliances.

Tagged: education, environment, Family, Sustainability

How Do You know If You Are Really Building “Green”?

Rich McCue — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:06:23 +0000

One thing I have learned since we installed an electricity monitor in our home, is that I really had now idea which appliances were using the most electricity. Several years ago we installed compact florescent bulbs in the house to reduce our electricity usage. That did help, but I’ve discovered that we would have saved a lot more energy if everyone had simply shortened their daily showers by a couple of minutes. Taking a shorter shower would not have cost us any money (those compact florsent bulbs were very expensive 8 years ago), but as a family we would have used significantly less energy.

The same principle holds true when building or renovating a home. I never would have guesses that carpeting is several orders of magnitude more energy intensive to manufacture and install than ceramic tiles or hard wood floors. The 8 Minute TED Talk video below by Catherine Mohr provides some great non-intuitive examples from her home building project:

Tagged: education, environment, shopping, Sustainability

Greening the Law Library Computer Lab

Rich McCue — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:47:54 +0000

I just wanted to let everyone in the library know two things we have done recently to reduce the carbon foot print of our new Law Library Computer Lab:

When we ordered the new computers for the lab we ordered energy efficient computers. Despite being more capable, our new Dell Optiplex 760 computers use only 64 watts of electricity, compared to 92 watts for the old computers. So despite increasing the number of lab computers from 25 to 33, we are using less electricity than before!
This week we have implemented a new system that shuts down all the lab and quick station computers every night at 10:20PM (except Friday nights). Shutting down the computers at night will reduce the amount of carbon emitted to power our lab from 22 tons to 13 tons per year! Our actual carbon emissions will probably be closer to 8 tons per year because the computers will be turned on in the morning only when they are needed by students (lab computer usage is quite light during the summer months). This also translates into reduction in our power bill by just over $1000 per year.

To put the computer lab numbers into context, my home which uses a heat pump to keep it warm, an electric hot water tank to warm water, an electric dryer to dry our cloths and an electric stove to do our cooking, uses about 35 Kilowatt hours per day in the month of February (this will go down quite a bit in the summer months). The computer lab was using 65 Kilowatt hours per day before these changes, and going forward will use about 23 Kilowatt hours per day! A win for the environment and a win for the budget.

If you have any questions or concerns please let me know. For more details, you can look at the following details to see how the carbon calculations were made: http://is.gd/8K6hX A big thanks to Serena for reminding me that this was something I needed to do (after being on my todo list for over 2 years).

Tagged: education, Sustainability

Energy Efficient Buildings

Rich McCue — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:57:26 +0000

I was really inspired by these two lectures given by Amory Lovins at Stanford this past March. Amroy talks about how we can build and renovate buildings to be more energy efficient, and environmentally friendly buy looking beyond a simple cost benefit analysis on a single part of a renovation. For example you might spend more on insulation and energy saving windows and in a building, but be able to more than offset the cost of the insulation and more expensive windows by needing a smaller furnace because the building looses less heat now. That is just one small example of many from the podcasts.

Rather than entailing higher construction costs, smartly designed and renovated buildings can often actually cost less, a phenomenon Lovins refers to as “tunneling through the cost barrier”. Amory talks about potential gains through air conditioning, lighting and heating, and through innovative design of lamps, windows, and ducts. “Imaginative design is not rocket science, and requires most of all that we decide to do things in ways that we are not used to.”

http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/siconversations-3265.mp3

http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/audio/download/siconversations-3266.mp3

Bike To Work Week – Down the Loading Dock…

Rich McCue — Wed, 30 May 2007 22:05:57 +0000

In Honor of Bike To Work Week at the University of Victoria, I created this little video with the help of Elizabeth (thanks for your wonderful video work Elizabeth!).

It has been a running joke here at the Law Library that I’m so anxious to go home after work I just ride down the loading dock stairs so I can make a faster get-a-way. Have a great Bike To Work Week Everyone! Enjoy!

Would you be Happier if you had More Money?

Rich McCue — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 23:17:36 +0000

I read an interesting article a few weeks ago. The title caught my attention. It was called, “Would You Be Happier If You Were Richer?” I know that sometimes I think I’d be happier if I had a bit more money in my pocket. So what did the researchers find out? The article said that people who are struggling to put a roof over their head and food on their table typically saw an increase in happiness as their income increased. Their happiness continued to increase until the per-capita house hold income reached $12,000 (This is for the United States, in US dollars). After that point there was virtually no increase in reported happiness as income rose above that level. On a graph, happiness increased steadily with income, until the $12,000 per person mark, and then it went almost completely flat.

A different research group also took a look at lottery winners in Great Britain. Interestingly he found that in the case of people who won large lotteries (over $200,000); they reported a significant increase in happiness immediately after winning, but within a year, most were back to the same level of happiness that they were at before winning.

Both of these studies confirm what I saw a number of years ago while I was living in Brazil. Most of the people I worked with would be considered “poor” if they lived in Canada, but most were quite happy in spite of their relative lack of material possessions.

What this tells me is that if someone is unhappy with a little bit of money (once their basic needs are met), then there is a very good chance that they will be unhappy with a lot of money. It turns out that money doesn’t buy happiness in the long run. I better get back to work so I can afford my gym membership …

The Dilbert House….

Rich McCue — Wed, 08 Sep 2004 03:30:32 +0000

Here are some things that Scott Adams is considering including in his “Dilbert House”, I’m editing and adding things that I would like to see in our renovated dream house…

Interesting But Probably Impractical Ideas

• Solar Closet: It’s a small, well-insulated room with lots of thermal mass (water is best), and a large triple glazed south facing window of about 30sq ft. Hook it into your heating system, and you can do away with the furnace (There’s a guy up in Calgary with one, and so long as he gets 15 hours of sunshine every 2 weeks over winter; he can keep his house at 70F all the time, with no furnace or other heating.)

• Put in a Stonehenge feature, ie, some quirky thing where one day a year the sun hits a photocell and lights up a scale model of the Eiffel tower or something.

• Definitely need one wall setup to be used as the junk drawer.

• Appliances that are Internet enabled.

• Exercise equipment connected to generators, for selling energy back to the grid.

• Use the central computer/electronics room to warm water pipes.

• Totally stainless steel kitchen counters that all drain to a sink. When you’re done cooking (making a mess) cleanup consists of hosing it down, and then pushing all the debris to the sink-disposal with a simple squeegy-like device. Cleanup of nearly any mess takes all of 15 seconds.

• A system to get materials from the kitchen to the outside compost heap without going outside.

• Toddler dining area that’s easy to hose down.

• It’s crazy to warm your house to 70 degrees while cooling your refrigerator to the temperature outdoors, at least on cold days. Is there some way to bring the outside cooling to the rear of the fridge without making the house cold?

• Windows should be argon filled low-e filtered glass and plasticized frames color-matched to whatever Dilbert wants (low maintenance).

• The exhaust from the clothes dryer, should be filtered to clean out the lint, and the heat generated used to heat the house in winter.

• Flexible LCDs for walls.

• The yard should have ground cover (pachysandra, vinca, etc.) instead of grass to eliminate mowing. The plantings should be the most trouble-free evergreens which would be azaleas (which are beautiful but need no pruning, etc.). The trees should be only evergreens as they don’t have leaves to drop and be raked up. One exception for a shade tree….the honey locust, whose leaves are so tiny they dry up and disappear when they fall. (Much as we all loves oaks and maples their leaves would give Dilbert work).

• Bulk buying storage: In the kitchen the cabinets should be on an outside wall so they can be restocked by Costco from the outside. Items bought in bulk will include paper plates and plastic utensils, paper towels, and ketchup.

• Dilbert will need a dedicated games room, full surround sound etc All set up for LAN parties X-box type parties (it has never been used by anyone outside the house – but Bob is often found there playing dinosaur games, or prehistoric games such as the original pong and space invaders!

• He should have a rainwater collector and purifier, to conserve water and not have to get city water. And definitely solar power collectors, and maybe even wind power collectors too.

• Staging area at bottom/top of stairs, for items that are continuously on the wrong floor.

• You have to be able to see a window or a good TV from the main kitchen sink or people won’t spend any time there!

• Lots of wall sockets a desktop height for plugging in computers.

• A sound proof office where one can work while the kids destroy the rest of the house.

• It would be fantastic if Dilbert could show brilliance and forethought by including principles of Universal Design (UD) in the Dilbert House. By making his house usable by all people (with features like zero-step entrances and wider hallways), he could enlighten an entire generation, and perhaps even save them from institutionalization later in life!

• Put the laundry room upstairs. Most families store their clean clothes upstairs, along with the dirty laundry basket(s).

• A Sunroom / greenhouse. Can be used for solar gain, natural air freshening (with proper ducting) and growing fresh herbs etc.

• Walls that resist kids writing on them.

• Hidden room for danger or storing valuables

• Whole house protected power circuits

• No air ducts in the ceiling (or in the floor) for air conditioning. It creates too much dust all over the place.

• Without doubt, Dilbert’s house should Not have baseboards that protrude, however little, from the walls. Rather, they should be somewhat RECESSED, so that they never need dusting.

• Dilbert must have those light guides from 3M that pipe solar photons into his interior rooms, thus saving electricity in the daytime.

• Cluster services together, especially hot water so that the pipes don’t have far to go to deliver the water. This cuts down on heat loss, original installation costs, and repair and maintenance costs. (Put all bathrooms at core of house?)

• It should definitely have a completely enclosed cat deck so your cats can enjoy the essence of the outside world without being exposed to the dangers.

• Use the heat of the hot water line to warm your bath towel!

• Several outlets in front and back.

• Office-only doorbell in addition to whole-house doorbell.

• TV antenna on roof

• Make your garage double deep and double high so that you don’t need to build a shed as soon as you’re done building your house.

• One of those “forever hot water” things that gives hot water on demand but doesn’t waste money on heating it when not in use. Ideal for single people who don’t like replacing those leaky tanks… or who own fuel cells. http://www.foreverhotwater.com/index.shtml

• Water source near your bed for when you wake up thirsty.

• Brick exterior, no maintenance required. (fake brick facade?)

• It seems to me that he should be able to run his computer through his TV and theater system