Increase Your Gas Mileage by 41%.

I drive a '92 Honda Accord with manual transmission. It has driven over 221,000 miles and it is extremely reliable. I recently broke my gas mileage record by averaging 36 mpg for a tank of gas. Not bad for a car that originally only got 26 mpg highway 19 mpg city.  Assuming a starting economy of 25.5 mpg, that is more than a 41% fuel economy increase.  Still, I think I can do better. 

Someday I will commute to work in an all electric car that will get 100% of its propulsion energy from the sun via my solar panels. Until that time, I at least want to make my gas vehicle cheaper to drive. 

My 19.3 mile commute consists of 2½ miles of residential and city streets, 13 miles of 55mph highway and 4 miles of interstate.
I have gotten so familiar with the traffic lights and flow that I can almost drive the whole route without using my brakes.

Secrets to Increased Gas Mileage the oil companies don't want you to know about. OK, so maybe these are not secrets but they really will help you save a ton of money on your gasoline bill. You won't have to buy my book for $29.95 either.

Over-sized Exhaust: A few years ago I had to replace the entire exhaust system on my Honda from the manifold to the tail pipe. I have always wondered what would happen to the gas mileage if my car had a larger exhaust system. Trying to breath through a straw is difficult. I figured a tiny tail pipe is no different. Installing a bigger catalytic converter and muffler and going from a 1¼” diameter to a 2¼ ” diameter tubing increased my gas mileage 4 mpg.  Well, that was easy!  Why don't the car manufactures design cars with larger exhaust pipes?  It's a relatively easy thing to do with a quick return on investment. 

Fill oil to the low side of the hash marks on the dipstick.  A motor-head buddy of mine told me he fills his oil up to the low side of the dipstick to get more performance out of his race cars. The theory is there will still be sufficient oil for cooling and lubrication but the crankshaft won't be sloshing through the oil in the pan as much. He even went as far as sharpening the edges of the crankshaft so it would knife edge through the oil. Hmmm, interesting.

Slightly higher tire pressure (40psi instead of 36)  Increasing the tire pressure will decrease the rolling resistance of a vehicle's tires.  Quantifying a measurement like this is difficult without driving the exact same way for an entire tank first then increase the pressure and drive the same way for another whole tank. Outside temperature and weather will also effect the measurement.

Keep the engine RPM under 2500  If the engine RPM is low, the engine will not work as hard, nor burn as much gas. Lower RPM → less fuel intake strokes → Higher gas economy. You will use a lot less gas by accelerating slowly.  But be courteous and aware of others around you though. Accelerating too slowly might make the 42 drivers stacking up behind you angry. Keep out of the passing lane so others who have not read this blog can pass you.

Minimize Air Resistance. Drive slower  Who do you think you are?  Marty McFly?  Not driving 88 miles per hour will ensure you don't accidentally go back in time and also save you a lot of gas (and potential speeding tickets). The faster you drive, the more wind pressure will push against your vehicle. Around 40 mph this force becomes significant. Above 55mph, it becomes the dominant force and your engine has to work harder and burn more fuel to overcome it. You might as well be dragging a boat anchor behind you everywhere you drive.

The fuel economy approaches zero the faster you drive. 

Lighten up  A 3200 lb vehicle carrying a 180 lb driver is only using 5% of its gasoline to move just the occupant from point A to point B. The other 95% is being burnt to move the weight of the vehicle. When a vehicle is lighter, the efficiency of a vehicle will inherently be higher. Only carry in your vehicle what is absolutely necessary for your commute and for your safety.  It was for another reason but I removed all the upholstery and trim from my trunk. It's ugly but who rides in the trunk anyway?

Anticipate traffic lights and coast as much as possible  The less you brake, the less gas you just wasted getting you up to speed.  Every time you have to use the brakes, you are essentially wasting fuel.  Look farther ahead while driving so you can anticipate earlier when to let off the gas. 

Plan Ahead  Driving slower will add a few minutes to your commute time. Plan for the extra time and arrive to work/home refreshed and happy. I used to get caught up in the passing lane traffic. It really is a rat race. There will always be a bonehead going too slow or a psychopath going too fast. And there is never a cop when you need one.
One day I realized an important fact of driving. This is really important!!!  Once you read this, it will change who you are and how you think forever.  
The dirty, unshaven guy with the nasty mullet, sporting a wife beater tee-shirt, driving a spray painted 1987 rusted out Ford pickup with the 2' lift kit, swerving through traffic and tailgating me with his high-beams on isn't a jerk!
Nope! He is not a bad person. He just has really, really bad diarrhea. Poor guy, here I am taking my sweet time changing lanes and he's just trying to get to where he is going so he can take care of his really, really bad diarrhea.
This is more urgent than a firetruck with its lights on speeding to a puppy fire. This is a top priority emergency situation and this guy really needs me to move over so he can take care of the pain and anguish and embarrassment that he is going through.  It's probably running down his pant leg. Ew! 
Or maybe he doesn't have diarrhea. He could be just trying to get to the barber shop so they can work on that mullet of his. Diarrhea or Emergency Mullet-ectomy.  Either way, I'll just move over and let him pass. I will save gasoline no matter what, and that's what this article is about.

Sleep your PC

Back in the day when the screen-saver was king, it was common to leave your PC running 24-7. You had to because hey, E.T. wasn't going to find himself. As the desktop computer became more and more powerful, its energy usage grew into a significant percentage of a household's total electrical usage.

Back then, Sleep mode was risky. Besides drawing nearly as much power as when awake, when the computer did wake up, it often had corrupt memory and needed a total reboot anyway.

For me, cold-booting my workstation PC each morning is equivalent to not doing anything productive for 20 minutes. Every time I boot up my work computer, I have to wait for all the IT bloatware my company has installed to do its scans and checks and to wait for programs to load into memory. In the past, it was so much easier and productive to just keep the computer running 24-7.

Even with both monitors turned off, my workstation still draws nearly 100 watts all the time. That works out to 16.8KWH/week or 876KWH/year. Multiply that by the 3200+ PCs running at my place of employment and you have a serious energy bill. Imagine paying nearly $225,000 each year for all those PCs to run idle most of the time. At the cost of increased productivity, my company happily pays its exorbitant electric bill each month. Meanwhile, thousands of tons of CO2 are being released into the air just to generate enough electricity to keep these computers burning all night long when nobody is using them.

There has to be a better solution that is both energy saving and productive. A Win-Win for business and the environment.

ENTER SLEEP MODE:

FYI: Sleep mode retains all your running applications in memory but powers off everything else.

Thanks to a few green innovations over the past couple years, Modern PCs (newer than 2009) in sleep mode draw less than a few watts. My high-end, dual monitor workstation consumes 134 watts when I'm actively working but draws only 3 watts when in sleep mode.

The next morning, a quick nudge brings my PC from its green slumber back to full power productivity in under 12 seconds. No 20 minute morning scans, no periods of endless IT bloat. All my windows are just how I left them the night before. The only thing different is the electric bill.

Sleep mode is by far the the most productive and energy saving choice. A true Win-Win.

HORRAY for Sleep mode!!

Myths About Solar Panels

Myth#1:

Solar panels take more energy to produce than they will ever give back in their lifetime.

Let's look at this logically on a cost perspective:

My Phono-Solar panels alone cost ~$16,000. Assuming the wholesaler and manufactures both made a razor thin profit margin of only 1%, the manufacturer's costs to produce my solar panels is $15,682. Over their 25 year warrantied lifespan, my panels will produce 285,000 KWH or $28,500 worth of 10 cents/KWH electricity. If my panels required more energy to produce than what I would get out of them, the manufacturer would have to pay over $28,500 in energy costs just to produce my solar panels. Their energy bill alone would put them out of business before they sold their first panel.  The costs of raw materials, labor, chemicals, tooling and equipment would be higher still. 

In truth, it takes 1-3 years for a solar panel to pay back the energy used to make it. Over the life span of a solar panel, it produces 9-19 times the energy it took to make the panel in the first place.

Myth#2:

The manufacturing process of a solar panel produces more pollution than what the solar panel will offset in its entire useful lifetime.

If I may take an excerpt from: http://www.renewablepowernews.com/archives/1281

"When we study the impact on the environment from renewable energy production, we need to assess not just the manufacturing procedures but also the end results to the environment over the long term life of any particular source of energy. Put side by side with traditional energy supplies, like coal and nuclear, the impact to the environment of photovoltaic equipment is rather nominal to nearly nonexistent. PV technologies come out triumphant in the end."

~~~~~~

Both coal power plants and solar panel manufacturing plants produce toxic chemicals as a byproduct. Coal power dumps it directly into the air whereas solar panel manufacturing reclaims or disposes its waste.

Manufacturing semiconductors is a hazardous process involving dozens of toxic chemicals. Manufacturing a solar cell (which is also a semiconductor) is no different.

Most of these toxic chemicals are very useful in other related industries as well. Not to say that all businesses are smart but dumping the chemicals out back (instead of recycling or re-selling them) does not make good financial sense.

Here are some statistics I found from the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act for a company called Evergreen Solar. I added the last column to correlate to my own home solar installation.

Evergreen Solar after producing 312,000 panels in a year 

Chemical	Total 2008	per panel	John’s 26 panels
Nitric Acid	50450 lbs	0.16 lbs	4.20 lbs
Sulfuric Acid	785782 lbs	2.52 lbs	65.48 lbs
Hydrogen Fluoride	45586 lbs	0.15 lbs	3.80 lbs
Sodium Hydroxide	25294 lbs	0.81 lbs	21.08 lbs

Most of these chemicals are reclaimed since they are still valuable and useful. Very little (except in a few unregulated operations) actually gets out into the environment.

I found a cool pollution calculator at

http://www.cleanerandgreener.org/resources/pollutioncalculator.html

According to its calculations (for Utah, not US average), before I got my solar panels, the pollution caused by my home's electricity (12,960KWH/year) consumption alone for 1 year was:

28862 lbs of CO2

27 lbs of Sulfur Dioxide

51 lbs of Nitrogen Oxide

47mg of Mercury

Even if all the waste created by solar panel production wasn't reclaimed (most of it is), the pollution trade-off still happens in less than 3 years.  Not to mention a tremendous reduction in CO2 emissions.

No matter how you look at it, photovoltaics always come out on top.

CFL myths exposed

I recently saw a laughably ridiculous anti-CFL video on the Internet the other day.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/75548.html

This is a video clip of Republican Ted Pope of Texas speaking to the US house of representatives.
I am embarrassed that the good people of Texas actually voted this guy into office. Maybe Texas was just having a bad day on election day. 

Mr. Pope begins by saying that "Congress passed an energy bill that should have been called the Anti-American Non-energy bill because it punishes Americans for using energy rather than finding new sources of affordable energy". It goes down hill from there. I listed all his "points" and the actual facts about them below.

Congress is baning incandescent light-bulbs. Actually, this bill only applies to the (energy wasting, expensive to operate) plain old 100 watt incandescent bulbs in 2012, 75 watt bulbs in 2013, and 60 watt ones in 2014. All other types of incandescent bulbs will remain as they were. Halogens, 3-ways, appliance bulbs, candle bulbs, night lights and every other type of incandescent bulb will still be available.

Nowhere in the constitution does it mention light-bulb regulation. Well, duh! The light-bulb was invented years after the constitution was signed by our founding fathers.

CFLs must be disposed of properly. That's a good idea but it isn't a law. It's just common sense. After 5-8 years of use, if you forget to take your old bulbs to your local Home Depot or Ikea for recycling and throw them away instead, they could break and maybe leak mercury into landfill. Not to worry though, since you used a CFL instead of an incandescent bulb all this time, you prevented less electricity from being used and 6 times less mercury from being vented directly into the air by not burning as much coal to make the electricity. Good job.

EPA is making Americans follow clean up rules lest the light-bulb police haul us off to jail? You're an idiot.

CFLs are expensive Wrong again. Over the life of the bulb, each CFL bulb will save the consumer way more in electricity than if they kept using old incandescent bulbs. Also CFLs last up to 8 years so you will save even more money by not buying as many bulbs and not having to change them out as often.

CFLs will fade photographs on the wall. They'll fade an undeveloped photographic negative but a picture? Where does this guy come up with this stuff? I'm assuming he is referring to the potential for UV light to somehow leak out of a bulb. As with every light source, there could be long-term photographic fading. The sun is the biggest offender of photographic fading but Mr. Pope never mentioned anything about banning sunlight.

Congress is forcing all Americans to use CFLs.  CFLs are recommended based on their hands down good economics and energy savings.  But nobody is putting a gun to your head forcing you to buy CFLs.  You the consumer have every right to continue using any of the vast number of incandescent bulbs. Halogens are still going to be around too.  If you don't want CFLs but still want to save money and energy, LED bulbs are also a good alternative. 

CFLs will cause electronic interference. Any device that has electronics (or runs on electricity for that matter) has the potential to cause interference. My incandescent lights also cause interference every time I turn them on or off.  Try it for yourself.  Tune an AM radio to an empty channel. Turn on an incandescent bulb. Did you hear the pop noise over the radio when you turn on the light-switch? 
Any device with a switching power supply also has this potential for interference. Your computer, your alarm clock, cell phone charger, the clock on your oven or your garage door opener.  They all fall under part 15 of the FCC rules just like CFLs.  A properly operating CFL will never posses the ability to interfere with the Super Bowl game on TV, ever!  Especially with a digital television signal. 

CFLs are only made in China. We import every one. Yeah? So? What's your point? Almost every consumer good bought in the US is made in China or elsewhere overseas. Why would you expect CFLs to be any different.

All Chinese products are dangerous. OK, now that just offensive. What kind of type-casting racist are you? 

Congress has no energy plan except to turn on CFL lights. Do you live under a rock? Every year we break the past year's record for the amount of solar power being installed. There is more wind power going in every day. Even off-shore wind power is beginning to find its place just off the US shores. Closed loop hydro-electricity, Nuclear, (sorry Japan, bad timing to bring that one up), Bio fuels. Congress has more types of alternate energy development being put into action now than ever before.

I do have to give Mr. Ted Pope credit for getting his last statement right. “The days of Americans developing new natural energy resources like coal and natural gas are gone”. And with our non-renewable energy resources dwindling fast, it's about time too.

Tune Up Your Energy Star Refrigerator

I'm more than happy to consume a little power for a useful purpose and for more convenience and luxury. I do however abhor inefficiency.  I don't like being lied to and kept in the dark about an appliance's excessive power consumption.

The tag on my fancy Energy Star Refrigerator boasts that it uses less energy than a 60 watt light-bulb. But when I actually measured the power consumption with a Kill-A-Watt meter, it uses 103 watts on average. That's almost double. Kitchen Aid? What gives?

Come to find out, their <60 watt bragging right is with the ice-maker in the off position. Who spends over $1000 on a high end fridge so they can have the convenience of a built-in-the door ice dispenser and never turn on the ice maker? 
Energy Star ratings need to tell the whole truth and report the power consumption in all cases. 
Stand-by power, compressor running power, defrosting, with ice-maker on/off, power factor, average energy usage.  Don't just hand pick the best ones. 

Still, you would think that a modern ice-maker would be smart enough to power itself down when the bin is full of ice. Not so! Even with a full bin of ice, my Energy Star fridge still puts the freezer into overtime, freezing ice that is already frozen.

Turning off the ice-maker brought the 5 day average power draw down to 80.6 watts. That's better but still not <60 watts. Adjusting the slider in the veggie crisper drawer, brought the average power down to 73 watts w/o the ice-maker and 102 with the ice-maker running.

I bought a fridge/freezer thermometer and took some direct measurements. Turns out, my freezer was way too cold. The temperature slider was not accurate at all. It was already on the 2^nd to warmest setting but still too cold.  That explains the rock-hard ice-cream.  After adjusting the slider all the way warm, the freezer finally came up into the 0°-5° F range.

Finally I have a properly tuned, high efficiency refrigerator.

It takes my family about 2 weeks to deplete a full ice bin but only 1 day for the overzealous ice-maker to replenish the bin. By simply turning the ice-maker off on the 2^nd day and leaving it off until empty, the fridge average power draw is only 60 watts. That's more like it.

Vampire Power!!

To my shock and surprise, there was a lot of energy being wasted in my house. They say that vampire, phantom, or parasitic power, accounts for 10% of a typical American house electrical energy usage. It turns out my house's 154 watt vampire power was closer to 15% of my energy use or over $121 each year. What was using all that power?

Clocks, cordless phones, appliances in standby all use a little bit of power. Each one is almost negligible but add them all up and you get a pretty big energy wasting monster.

Most of these serve a useful function. The futuristic touch buttons and glowing clock on the microwave oven, or the ability to turn on a TV or open a garage door via remote control all add convenience and luxury to our lives. At the cost of a few watts we leave these devices running all the time.

I'm more than happy to consume a little power for a useful purpose and for more convenience and luxury.

After going around my whole house and measuring the energy that every light and appliance uses. I made a spreadsheet.

My largest consumer of stand-by power is my home theater receiver/amp. On stand-by, it draws over 64 watts. This wasn't included in my stand-by power calculation because I already had it on a power strip that I turn off when it is not in use.

My next largest consumer of stand-by power was my data-center equipment coming in at 44 watts. Cable modem, wireless router, Vonage box, 8-port Gigabit switch, 1TB NAS drive, TV antenna amp, and UPS backing it all up. Although technically not stand-by power, it is stuff I leave on 24-7 so I count it as such.

My biggest surprise was the central AC unit. Even when not in use, it still draws 33 watts. That may not seem like much but for something that is left on 24/7, that's huge! In one year's time, 33 watts will cost $26.00 (assuming 0.09/KWh).

Most TVs made after 2009 are awesome at having low stand-by power. With the 1-watt initiative program in place, most manufactures are now on board at reducing this tiny draw that wastes a whole lot.

The furnace stand-by power is almost 10 watts. But what do you do about it? The fans are used nearly year around. Winter heating and summer cooling, I'll just have to eat that one. There is some control circuitry that receives its power from a loud buzzing transformer. Maybe I can swap it out with a more quiet and efficient one.

My house has a 3-car garage with 10' and 16' garage doors.  The ultra quiet Martin Garage door openers use 7 and 8 watts respectively in stand-by. That seems kind of high to me but what can you do?

4 ½ watt stand-by power consumption for a network attached laser printer is actually pretty good. I can print to it from any PC in the house without any other PCs having to remain on to handle print jobs. For a house with multiple PCs, 4.5 watts is a steal for this service and convenience. But will it kill me to turn off the power switch on the printer until I need to print out something? Probably. So at the cost of $3.55/year, I'll leave it on.

After I knew what everything was consuming, I was able to make some decisions as to what was going to stay on and what was going off. My vampire power draw has gone down from 154 watts to only 99 watts. That's a 55 watt reduction or about $50/year.  That is equivelant to 17 days/year of my solar panels making power. 

Pretty good but I can do better. Up next, swap out that silly door-bell light. 

Being environmentally conscious makes financial sense.

I'm a moderate environmentally conscious guy. I'm all for saving the environment but those actions must also makes sense. It is my goal to reduce my carbon footprint without sacrificing convenience and luxury. My environmental actions/improvements must also save money and even make money over time.  

Example #1: Solar Panels

My solar panels will pay for themselves in 10-12 years yet they will last over 25 years. At the end of their life, they will have earned me over $54,000 in electrical savings. Not bad for an initial $22,000 investment. That works out to $3.50/day in increased income. Wow, that's like receiving a free box of Graham Crackers every day for the next 25 years.

Example #2: New Electric Car vs. Used Combustion Engine Car

I am currently driving a '92 Honda Accord that I bought eight years ago for $2800.  During that time, I've spent about $5000 and 100's of hours in maintenance and repairs and $5200 in gas. Conservatively estimating my intermediate skilled mechanic labor costs at $25/hr adds another $3000. All together, that car cost me $16,000. I want to buy the new electric Nissan Leaf but they cost $32,000 up front. After the federal tax credit, Leafs run about $25,000. If I bought a $5,000 used gas car instead of the Leaf, I could buy over 4 years worth of $3.50/gal gas with the money I save from not buying the Nissan Leaf.

But maintenance costs will also be lower with the Leaf (newer car, no combustion engine maintenance).

Factor in the increasing costs of gas for combustion engines and the free electricity from my solar panels for the Leaf, the cost goes down even more. Driving a 2011 Leaf, vs a 92' Honda Accord will most likely never save money over the life of the car, (or rather the life of the battery as it costs $17,000 to replace if needed after the 8 year/100,000 mile warranty runs out).

Increased safety features, luxury and convenience is also worth something in itself. Perhaps I have been depriving myself these features all these years and now it's time to withdraw those savings too.

The pros and cons are nearly tied. That is until you factor in one final parameter. The awesomeness factor! Driving an electric car is cool. It tips the scales and makes the environmentally superior choice worth it.

Update: 
A few people have commented that the Nissan Leaf in the above picture is smiling.  Yes.  That is true.  Know why?  Because it never has to pay for or use gasoline, ever.  Imagine how happy you would be if you didn't have to buy gas.