Real-time Energy Conservation

snorkler · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 11:18 am Post subject: Real-time Energy Conservation

Sudden energy crunch forces Juneau to conserve electricity

By ANNE SUTTON, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago

JUNEAU, Alaska - First, there was a run on energy-efficient light bulbs. When those ran out, people began asking for lamp oil. But when they started demanding clothespins in this land of mist and rain, it was clear Alaska's capital city was caught in a serious energy crunch.
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"We sold all our clothespins the first day," said Doug White, general manager at Don Abel Building Supplies. "I don't think kids even knew what they were for, but they're learning now."

Avalanches earlier this month knocked down transmission lines and cut off Juneau's source of low-cost hydroelectric power. Threatened with a fivefold increase in utility bills, Juneau quickly powered down.

Stores, though open, went partially dark. Neon signs were switched off and vending machines unplugged. At home, residents of this former Gold Rush town began living a little bit like pioneers, dusting the snow off the grill, stringing clotheslines in the backyard and flicking off their TV sets. Within a week, electrical usage across town was down as much as 30 percent.

Energy conservation is a hard sell in much of the U.S., but Juneau has proved that people will change their ways if the financial incentives are big enough.

"Turn off, turn down, unplug," said Sarah Lewis, chairwoman of the Juneau Commission on Sustainability. "That's what everyone is doing and being vigilant about and commenting when others are not."

The April 16 snow slides that roared out of the mountains some 25 miles southeast of town uprooted transmission towers and plowed through 1.5 miles of high-voltage lines that link this largely isolated community of 30,000 to the Snettisham hydroelectric dam. (The Legislature had already ended its session, and most lawmakers had gone home.)

As back-up diesel generators shouldered the load, the electric company began warning customers that life in Juneau — already expensive — was about to get a lot more so.

With oil prices reaching a record $120 a barrel, Alaska Electric Light and Power said customers might have to pay for an extra $25 million in diesel over the three months it would take to repair the lines. The utility warned that rates would probably leap from an average of 11 cents per kilowatt-hour to more than 50 cents, or about five times the 10.3 cents that is the national average.

Conversations all over town turned from the governor's new baby and the legislative session to kilowatt hours, tariff rates and saving energy.

Heidi Graves said her 16-year-old son, Levi — the one who never would turn off his Nintendo — was the first to get on board. He was worried that the family of six would have to cancel its vacation next August.

Levi multiplied the electric bill by five and came up with $950. "It's more than our house payment," said his mother.

Now members of the Graves family eat dinner by candlelight, do dishes by hand, plan to dry their clothes on a rack by the wood stove, and limit their time on the computer.

"My husband has bruised himself and tripped over the dog just to keep the lights off," Graves said.

Graves also ordered a history of past electrical use so that the family could ferret out which appliances were the real power hogs, and they learned how to read their own electric meter, which they are now doing several times a day.

Though the Graves heat solely with wood, perhaps one in five houses in Juneau is wired for electric heat because hydroelectric power is relatively cheap and natural gas is unavailable.

In part because Juneau is so far removed from the Lower 48 and is inaccessible by road, its cost of living is 34.5 percent higher than that of the average U.S. city, and its housing costs are 50 percent higher, according to a survey of 300 American cities. Even an oil change is $60, twice what it costs in many places down south.

Residents will see the sobering new rates on paper — and the early results of their conservation efforts — when the first electric bills begin arriving in mailboxes Friday.

Energy expert Allen Meier of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is visiting Juneau this week to offer advice on the crisis. He said the closest comparison may be Brazil in 2001, when severe drought gripped the hydropower-dependent country. Brazilians were told to reduce their electricity usage by 20 percent or be disconnected.

"In two months, the whole country cut their demand by 20 percent and they never really returned to the same level of consumption after that," Meier said.

Eighth-grader Matthew Staley is hoping the people of Juneau will likewise develop new habits over the course of three months, and "realize that — wow — we have to keep this up. Like switching to fluorescent lights, they'll just keep on with them."
_________________
Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now
Bob Dylan

Mileage above accumulated over 5000 miles!
Best trip 163 miles @ 52.6 mpg = 219% of EPA est. mileage!

Wife's car, driven by me only on long trips

Erik · Posted: Tue Apr 29, 2008 1:33 pm Post subject:

Great article, Darrell. People in the lower 48 could learn a lot from Alaskans. Smile

_________________
-Erik Wilcox
Homebuilt 16" Truss Dob
SV 80mm ED Nighthawk NG on M1 ALT/AZ
Nikon Prostaff 65mm spotter on Trekpod
Konusvue 20x80 binos/Peterson pipemount
Orion 10x50 binos
Homebuilt 80mm f/5 refractor
Mirador 60mm f/12 1960's refractor

Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither. -Anonymous

Kate · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:22 am Post subject:

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/alaska/alaska-experiment/participants.html

We watched this last night, it was a great show about 4 families living off the land and being pretty much cut off from society except for the tv crew, lol.
_________________
Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humanity because a rib-woman was convinced to eat from a magical tree by an infinitely sadistic being disguised as a talking snake with legs. ~ George Carlin

snorkler · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:34 am Post subject:

There's an old saying up in Alaska that if you put a couple together in a 16'X16' cabin in October, you'll have two people who hate each other coming out of the cabin in April. That is, if two people come out of the cabin Cool

When I lived up there, cabin fever was always on our minds in the winter. We lived in the city, so we joined a Four Wheel Drive Club, a Japanese Heritage Club (even though we're Chinese), a bowling league, the local Community Council, bought season tickets to theater groups, etc. The views of the Northern Lights were fantastic, though!

I haven't seen that show, but I suspect it's pretty sanitized. The book I just read, Almost Too Late, by Elmo Wortman, tells it like it could be, and was.

We had some relatively rough experiences in Alaska - 5 ft. swells in an open canoe with 6" of freeboard, siwashing on the side of a mountain without sleeping bags in sub-freezing weather, and camping in the rain for days with wet sleeping bags. Alaskans are can-do people. They have to be. I met a 23 year old who'd been through his life or death experience the previous fall. Motoring out of a Fish and Game salmon counting camp, they lost their boat and all their gear. Their choice was to walk out 30 miles, or die. That young man was the most mature 23 year old I've ever met.
_________________
Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now
Bob Dylan

Mileage above accumulated over 5000 miles!
Best trip 163 miles @ 52.6 mpg = 219% of EPA est. mileage!

Wife's car, driven by me only on long trips

Kate · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 10:48 am Post subject:

Wow, that's amazing. Did you see the movie "Into the Wild"?
_________________
Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie who is his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humanity because a rib-woman was convinced to eat from a magical tree by an infinitely sadistic being disguised as a talking snake with legs. ~ George Carlin

snorkler · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 3:41 pm Post subject:

No, I didn't see that movie. I've read a synopsis of the movie/book. Tough story. That guy must have suffered terribly before he died weighing only 67 lbs.
_________________
Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now
Bob Dylan

Mileage above accumulated over 5000 miles!
Best trip 163 miles @ 52.6 mpg = 219% of EPA est. mileage!

Wife's car, driven by me only on long trips

Erik · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:34 pm Post subject:

I didn't know there was a book- I'll have to read that. The movie was good.

Have you ever been to Barrow, Darrell? I've always been fascinated with isolated places like that. Cool

_________________
-Erik Wilcox
Homebuilt 16" Truss Dob
SV 80mm ED Nighthawk NG on M1 ALT/AZ
Nikon Prostaff 65mm spotter on Trekpod
Konusvue 20x80 binos/Peterson pipemount
Orion 10x50 binos
Homebuilt 80mm f/5 refractor
Mirador 60mm f/12 1960's refractor

Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither. -Anonymous

snorkler · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject:

Yes, I've been to Barrow. I had to dip my fingers into the Arctic Ocean. I remember looking inside radio station KBRW. I think it was into religious programming. I was there to inspect the hospital blood bank, so your taxes paid for my trip. Cool

_________________
Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now
Bob Dylan

Mileage above accumulated over 5000 miles!
Best trip 163 miles @ 52.6 mpg = 219% of EPA est. mileage!

Wife's car, driven by me only on long trips

Erik · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:22 pm Post subject:

Cool! One of these days I'd like to go there. Svalbard looks like another fun, isolated destination near the North Pole. Smile

_________________
-Erik Wilcox
Homebuilt 16" Truss Dob
SV 80mm ED Nighthawk NG on M1 ALT/AZ
Nikon Prostaff 65mm spotter on Trekpod
Konusvue 20x80 binos/Peterson pipemount
Orion 10x50 binos
Homebuilt 80mm f/5 refractor
Mirador 60mm f/12 1960's refractor

Evolution is both fact and theory. Creationism is neither. -Anonymous

snorkler · Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:43 pm Post subject:

I like to visit cemeteries in small towns. Harshaw, AZ has two of them. The white people were buried on top of the hill, and the Mexicans were buried at the bottom of the hill near the river. It's pretty much a ghost town now, but 40 years ago, a couple of Mexican families were the last inhabitants.

In Egegik, AK, on the Alaska Peninsula, the Peninsula Airlines dispatcher was named Pariscovia. In the cemetery, I found four gravestones for women named Pariscovia. Apparently, it's a common Russian (and Aleutian) first name.

On St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs, there's a big Russian Orthodox cemetery for God's children, and there's another small cemetery for the unworthy - Monrovians, Protestants, Seventh Day Adventists, etc.
_________________
Ah, but I was so much older then.
I'm younger than that now
Bob Dylan

Mileage above accumulated over 5000 miles!
Best trip 163 miles @ 52.6 mpg = 219% of EPA est. mileage!

Wife's car, driven by me only on long trips

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