Water Conservation:

I live in the desert landscape of the Wasatch front in northern Utah. I say desert because that is what it used to be when the Mormon pioneers settled here almost 164 years ago. When they arrived, the Prophet and leader Brigham Young proclaimed, “This is the place!” I wonder if this was actually a question and not a statement? Perhaps he really meant, “This is the place?”
Either way, those early Mormon pioneers took a dry piece of desert land and transform it into a fruitful, lush, green oasis. Today over 2 million people live here and it is a beautiful, green, mountainous landscape.
We all have to start being more conservative if we expect to sustain our American lifestyle on such a finite water resource. It is possible for all of us and our children to have luxuries and amenities. We just have to be smart with how we use our resources.

Use low-flow shower heads:
This is good practice but you can even take it a step further. Hop in the shower, get wet, rinse off, then turn off water. At this point, take your time lathering up and scrubbing yourself clean. When done, turn the water back on and rinse off. You will only use 3-8 gallons for your shower.  Without the water washing the soap away before it has had a chance to do its job, you will get cleaner and use less soap in the process.

Drain Water Heat Recovery:  
It takes a lot of energy to heat water. It's a shame that all that energy ends up going down the drain.
By using a Heat-recovery drain pipe, one can recover 80-90% of that wasted energy. When water runs down a vertical pipe, rather than falling down the center very quickly, it glides down the inside wall of the pipe. In a heat recovery drain, a section of vertical sewer pipe is replaced with a thermally conductive copper one, a smaller copper culinary water pipe is wrapped around the copper sewer pipe. In this manner, heat from warm waste water (and nothing else) is transferred to the cold water on its way to the water heater. A typical system costs about $500-$800 and the pay off ranges from 2-7 years depending on how much you use it.  Heat from shower water is easily reclaimed because there is a continual flow of warm waste water preheating the continual flow of cold water entering the water heater.  I want to install one of these someday.

Use an efficient washing machine:  
Spend a little extra up front and save a bunch throughout the life of the appliance.  Energy Efficient washing machines will save you thousands of gallons of water each year and reduce the energy consumed drying clothes because they spin clothes faster making them drier. 
I recently replaced my old washing machine and electric clothes drier with an energy efficient, front loading washing machine and a gas drier. My electric bill went down 120KWH/month by drying 8 loads/week with gas instead of electricity. But to my surprise, my gas bill also went down. Even though my clothes drier now runs on natural gas, the washing machine uses so little water now (2.2 gallons/load) that the water heater doesn't have to heat up nearly as much water to feed the washing machine.  The result is a net reduction in electricity and natural gas consumption. 

Fix drippy faucets and running toilets: 
A drippy faucet can annoy the crap out of you and also wastes 20-100 gallons of water in a day.  Leaky hot water wastes energy too because your water heater has to heat up all that water before it gets lost. 

Saving Water Around the Yard:
I am not very stringent in this area. I own a large ½ acre lot, that is mostly lawn. Kentucky Bluegrass is not native to arid Utah. It takes a lot of water to keep it green and happy. But that is what the cavalier American dream demands, right?  A lush, manicured, green lawn?  You have to admit though, it does look pretty good. 

It also feels good walking barefoot or laying down on a healthy green lawn. The kids love to play on it too. Even for an energy sipping tree-hugger like myself, I justified putting it in.  My wife may have twisted my arm a little bit. 
I read on the Internet that an acre of grass sequesters 3 tons of CO2 each year.  There is a lot of research ongoing regarding this topic.  The sequestration numbers vary from several tons of CO2 per acre per year to lawns actually being a net carbon source. 

Even with my property having a large irrigation water share, I still hate to see any of it going to waste. 
If you have a choice, buy a house that has secondary water for watering the yard.  Living in Utah, I am baffled why most homes here only have a culinary water supply.  It's expensive to water a large lawn with culinary water, not to mention a terrible waste of a limited resource. 

Regardless of the water source, water the lawn in the early morning to limit evaporation. Make sure sprinkler heads are in good repair and automatic sprinkler valves turn on and off correctly.  In my last house, I only had culinary water.  I had a sprinkler zone dedicated to watering several strawberry plants.  One day, the valve got stuck in the on position.  I didn't notice it until after returning from a vacation.  Needless to say, the strawberries were amazing, but not as amazing as my water bill. 

Only water the lawn from a couple times a week to every other day. When you do water, give the lawn a good soaking, then allow the ground to dry out for a few days. This promotes a healthier lawn by sending the roots deep in search of water. Deep roots enable the plant to go longer between watering intervals.

Collect rain water for use later in the year:  
Why pay for water when mother nature already gives you the water for free?  Acquire a large cistern that can collect snow melt and rain water from the roof. During the summer months when it is dry, this water can be conservatively issued to the plants in the yard.

Xeriscape yard:  
Only plant native plants in the yard that thrive solely off of the natural water cycle.  No irrigation is required.
Check out your local water conservation district. They have examples and ideas of yard landscapes that will work in your local geography.

Drink Water:  
Anyone else thirsty? Don't buy a Coke! Drink water!! Fill up a bottle from home and drink up. It's free!
Milk is for Graham Crackers. Juice is for special occasions. Water is great anytime.

Solar Panels 6 Months Later

It has been over 6 months since I installed solar panels and started making my own electricity.

To recap, December was not a good month for solar energy. My panels only made 160kwh all month and I used 310kwh more than I made. Just by looking at daily solar panel production for December, you can extrapolate when the winter solstice took place (TED started collecting data on December 4th). 

Even though solar panels are more efficient at making power when they are cold, having less hours of the day really hurts production.

January more than doubled December's production with 380kwh. February almost doubled it again and nearly zeroed out the net meter. March was the first month where production equaled consumption. Even with all the record rain fall and cloudy weather in Northern Utah, the months of April and May produced enough power to run my house for 3 months. I can't wait to see production on months where it doesn't rain every day. This unseasonably cold weather and cloudy skies hampered available solar energy but at the same time, I hardly had to turn on the air conditioner.

I am currently producing twice the energy of what I consume. On a sunny day, I make over 3X. 
My utility company allows me to build up a one-for-one credit with them so long as I use up that credit within 12 months of accruing it.  Under this system, the grid is effectively my battery. A non-volatile, unlimited capacity, low cost, maintenance free battery. All I pay is the $5/month fee, well worth the price in my opinion.  The electric company lets me do this because I am helping them reduce their peak demand.  Solar panels are the perfect solution to preventing rolling blackouts.

As of today, I have built up nearly 2 months worth of energy credit.

In hindsight, a 6.2Kilowatt solar system is a little too large for powering just my house. But when I first looked into getting solar panels, my energy consumption was much higher than it is now. An un-calculated side effect of having solar power (and a TED whole house monitoring system) is a lifestyle change.  Having a device that points out to you that you are being extremely wasteful will change the way you act and think forever. 

This increased awareness has indirectly reduced my energy consumption by 1/3^rd.  All the while, my standard of living has remained the same or even increased. 

Now that I am making more energy than I will use in a year, I need to put it to good use before I have to give it away for free, which isn't exactly the end of the world either -- actually I would be saving the world then wouldn't I.  Here are a few ideas. 

Make some hydrogen

Using electricity, one can split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.  Storing hydrogen is tricky because it takes a lot of space and doesn't have a very high energy density.  But once you have it stored in tanks, you could then use it to power a fuel cell and generate electricity during a power outage. Or you could burn it directly for cooking or heating. 

Heat the home in the winter months

A deca-therm of natural gas is equivalent to 293KWH.  Heating my home for the winter (using an electric furnace instead of natural gas) would require 16,500KWH.  I would need a solar system nearly twice as large as what I have now just to run the furnace for the winter.  This would be a stupidly inefficient way to heat a house.  Still, if I have energy to burn, why not?  Nah. 

Charge an electric car

Charging an electric Chevy S-10 pickup truck after driving it 40 miles will require somewhere in the neighborhood of 9KWH of electricity.  I drive my current commuter car about 8000 miles a year.  That works out to only needing 1800KWH/year.  That would be perfectly doable with my estimated surplus and save me about $820 in gas each year.  This would also knock the return on investment for the solar system down from 6 years to just over 3 years.  Hmmmm. 

Power a Time Machine
Too cliche.  By the way, a few years from now, I actually invented a time machine and went back in time to a few hours from now.  Apparently, it didn't go very well and an even older version of myself had to go back in time to a few minutes ago and stop the whole event from taking place.  Time travel is tricky like that, not to mention it takes a ton of power and the stupid machine kept blowing the main breaker. 
Time travel, Shmime travel, I just want a microwave oven clock that doesn't have to be reset each time the power goes out.