Could the U.S. Cut Household Electricity Use by Two-Thirds?

Take a nice long drink of that iced tea and chill a bit bro.

It's obvious that my comment wasn't very clear. Maybe the term "survived just fine" didn't come accross as intended.

My argument was only that AC (and other modern tech. gadgets) has migrated to the "must have" instead of the "nice to have" even when not really necessary. Nothing more, nothing less!

I've worked in the tropics and I understand very well the impact high heat and high humidity have and I really appreciated AC when it was available.

I've also worked and lived in other areas where AC wasn't needed but it was still used because that's "how things are done".

No-one "told" you to do anything nor "expected" you to do anything.

I share your dislike of nanny state inspectors so there's something else we agree on. I'm glad you like your windows, I'm sure they're very nice and I hope they continue to give you many years of pleasure.

Thank you for the permission to do what I like in my own home (which is what I generally do anyway). Actually, I much prefer my technique, which is to spend hundreds to save thousands. Even better, not to spend thousands on tech. when I don't really need it.

And people "survived" before running water and sewer systems too.

So, your argument is that we should cut energy usage to "survival" level. Why? Because it's "Good" and fits your World View of what’s "Right"?

You spend a summer in south Louisiana with no AC and 105F at 90% humidity. If you don't die of heat stroke, as most elderly would, you will come away with a better understanding. AC is what has made places like Florida, Arizona, etc habitable.

You want to do without, fine. Just don't expect the rest of us to do without in order to satisfy your sense of "Good".

Yes, improved insulation is something that continues to happen. It's justification is in cost savings. And building codes should continue to drive improvements.

But I don't want a nanny state inspector coming into my house with a ruler and saying "You've got 5.5" in the attic and you need 6" or "Your 1967 house has single pane windows, rip them all out and install double pane." I like the windows my house has, and the small decrease in my electric bill would not pay for having the very well made, if single pane, aluminum windows ripped out of my house.

What you do in your home is your business, and if you want to spend thousands to save hundreds a year, you will decide if the savings AND satisfaction this gives you is worth it. I will decide about my own house.

Dang, pass the Iced Tea....

True that we have had AC for a very small period of time, but lets say the cat is out of the bag and once one has AC it has now become a "standard" of society and that is the way it seems to be. Almost all cars come with AC now and I would say most houses come with standard AC as well even in places that AC is really not needed at all.

So AC is not going to go "away". The key to reduce AC costs, as I have mentioned before, is INSULATION. If you insulate a building well enough then the need to cool the building is so much less very little AC is needed compared to the "typical" poorly insulated building.

It seems like once things such as AC get a hold on society all other methods of cooling like natural cooling methods get pushed into the background and are not considered mainstream. However the HCAC guys could care less as to how much energy it takes to cool a building. They love AC because as usual anything mechanical and complicated has to be serviced on a regular basis thus assuring the HCAC guys a very handsome steady income.

Once again easy and the status quo wins.

People survived just fine before AC was invented. Very few things "require" the use of AC. AC just makes those hot humid places more comfortable.

Comparing Germany to US leaves out areas like, oh the Gulf Coast. Without AC, the hot humid time of year (5 months, 1 May to 30 September) requires us of AC.

Hi: Dennis, I would agree VFD's and other motor maximizing techs like PWM etc. all stretch the eff.. To Martin, Europe is very different. Part of this is the physical size.... and yes I know you have heard this before, BUT!! I do not think you realize how distance can effect all aspects of ones life, not the least of which is energy. We were two, (DINKS) and then had two kids. We had to upscale our fridge. The old one was just too small. A fridge or freezer is nothing more than a form of storage. Storage, from an engineering perspective be it fridge, capacitor, water tank, etc.. is a way to reduce the 'frequency' of 'traffic' between generation and use point. In the case of a fridge, it allows fewer trips to a grocery store, 15 miles round trip for me here in PA. Europe, on average much less distance. I am sure you can connect the rest of the dots... There is no one magic bullet to energy reduction. Things like how many switched outlets are in a home, along with outlet location can mean switching off is easy or a P.I.T.A.. Certain things are best left on, like cable boxes and sat boxes due to programming load time. To me, the biggest area for reduction is insulation. House standards for insulation here in the USA are still two fold to low as is the insulation in fridges. The whole foam use for insulation in fridges is crazy. Put in 1" of VIP and be done with it. Everybodys elect usage for freezer/fridge gets reduced by three at least. But, its not really about energy usage. Its about business and profit, MONEY etc., a horse older than prostitution. .....Bill

William Fitch could you contact gary at orion solartech for an opinion on a new solar panel

Over the past decade millions of industrial and commercial pump, fan and compressor motors have been refitted with a VFD, Variable Frequency Drive. In the right application a VFD can save up to 50% of previous electrical consumption with no degradation of system performance. The cost of a VFD has fallen to the point where major HVAC manufacturers are integrating them into new residential heat pumps. The energy savings will require little user interaction after setup to achieve or maintain. As a rule of thumb, a pump or fan or compressor with regular on-demand use and is over 3 HP will last longer and cost less to operate with a VFD. Most homes do not have equipment this size but some do. Well and pool pumps and irrigation systems are good examples

Bill, in order for people to be more like you, for most, there must be some sacrifices. Not everyone can afford to install systems to make themselves energy independent. But making sacrifices today will save you money which in turn can give you the means to purchase independent systems in the future. And once you learn how to minimize your electrical use, smaller systems can be purchased to cover your new needs at a much lower cost rather than trying to be king of the off grid hill.
And learning and remembering the way things used to be in the prairie home days can only make things better and simpler and less destructive when purchases of unnecessary products that affect material harvesting and product manufacturing are considered.

There's a great recent report about English domestic electricity use, see http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Publications2/Corporate/Research-and-insights/Powering-the-nation-household-electricity-using-habits-revealed. Devices on standby use 9 - 16% of domestic electricity, single-occupant households use more electricity than those with two or three occupants, lots of interesting stuff. And Thomas is right, but it goes further - we think we need a big fridge but we just fill it full of stuff so we can't find anything, and then it goes off. And my guess is that, if you take out a/c, the difference between US and European electrical consumption is to do with house size (bigger house, more lights, more heating, etc.) and, judging by what is sold here as a US - style fridge, enormous fridges.

Hi: You don't need a hand can opener to save elect. You do not mainstream energy efficiency/onsite production by saying to the USA people, 'look how the poor and impoverished' do it!! The USA wastes allot of elect in many ways. But you can significantly reduce it without going back to, 'Little House On the Prairie'. YOU WILL NOT accomplish this by making people think energy eff/production equals sacrifice. Actually, its quite the opposite. My house is more comfortable and better living with energy eff/production. BUT, people will not believe that or come to realize that by talking about third world countries... BAD salesmanship... BAD marketing... .....Bill

A good portion of the world's population exists without electricity, how do they do it? Even when power goes out, we still survive. Being aware of the power you use is the first step. Determining what power you don't need is the next.
Do you really need that light on in the middle of the day? How about that night light while you're sleeping. Does every appliance you own need to stay plugged in even though you're not using it? Does a hand cranked can opener work just as well as an electric one? Is it cheaper it to buy a drawful of underwear or do laundry every 5 days? Should you put that laundry in the dryer or use a clothesline? Should you fire up the big oven to heat up a snack or use a smaller appliance? Should you crank up the AC or learn to close and shade windows and naturally vent out hot air?
So many options to save electricity if people only took the time to realize exactly what they don't need and other alternatives to power hungry appliances. But having everything on at the same time is something that has become the standard because it takes to much human energy to turn something off and on.

I didn't take the time to dig through and compare the details provided in the links. But offhand they seem rather questionable to me. First of all, if you've ever lived the US southeast or southwest, you'd agree that there is no way A/C accounts for an average of 20% of power usage. For 6 months of the year, the A/C is running for at least 12 hours per day.

And secondly, if you exclude A/C power use, just what accounts for the 200% difference between US households and German households? German refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, lights and computers are basically the same as those in the US.

These numbers sound fishy to me.

Hi: Guys... chill.. I own KWH meters etc.. everything is fine, really.. but you do not buy a fridge for its usage first. You buy the size you need then within that ft3 you find the most efficient. Your estimates on CF's are low as well as the solar thermal usage. I am not going to go through this with you "tooth and nail". I will just say that it is very easy to use 6 or 7 KWH a day even when not present. Martin is not all electric and is not a family of 4. We were DINK's before kids, and believe me when I tell you, the effect of kids on energy can not be overstated. I also have two UPS's on 24/7 for computers and a small cat5e Ethernet network. Those however were turned off when away, as were the heat pumps. When going through the process of the elect usage, I actually found my utility meter was bad through my analysis. I had the power company test it and they gave me a refund and put in a new digital meter, which I needed anyway for the forthcoming PV...

.....Bill

I agree with Martin.

The point here is you have to measure before you can manage:

- For electricity this means installing a whole house meter and searching for every user that you're possibly not aware of. It's totally possible that Bill's two fridges use 4 or more kwh/day and the solar thermal and the ground heat pump use together 150 Watts in standby. Like I already mentioned, one of our aircons was using 220 Watts in standby, the other 20 Watts. 240 Watts equals 5.76 kWh/day for - no service at all!!

- For heating/cooling you need a energy audit done. The Blower Door test together with the infrared camera image show you even the smallest air leaks in your house in a short time, even the ones that you couldn't find otherwise, and you also detect hidden insulation defects or missing insulation. That's absolutely worth the money spent. The house will feel much more comfortable after that. And the auditor will guide you which investments make most sense.

- to find efficient appliances go to toptenusa.com or energystar.gov

This is quite interesting. We use about 3kWh/ day of electricity - this excludes space heating, cooking or DHW (all gas), but there are two of us working from home all day. So, how can you possibly use 7kWh/ day when you're not even in the house? Your couple of CF's is about 20W, solar thermal maybe 100W max, but daytime only, so say lights and solar thermal come to 1.5 kWh/ day. That leaves 5.5 kWh per day for fridge/ freezers. So they must take about 250W on average, compared with our tiny, but very old and inefficient, fridge, using an average of about 70W. The morals of the story - first, look at the things that are on 24/7. And second, the biggest, most efficient fridge will use a lot more energy than the smallest, least efficient one.

Hi: I live in PA. My what will probably be a 27K$ PV system when done, will use up my fed tax credits for 5 years out most likely. I don't think PA gives any EV incentive. I can not afford any new car, period. I am just "wishful thinking" that PA, like NJ will increase the renewable energy portfolio requirements for utilities so the pathetic $16 a MWH SREC price can be brought up and stabilized around $100 a MWH. That alone would set the stage for an EV down the road unless some EV manufacturer is willing to put an EV in my hands for detailed customer eval....HA,Ha...

.....Bill

Bill,

If you live in the USA get an EV as soon as possible, before the Federal tax credits expire $7500)and before any of your state incentives expire In state of COlorado it is up to $6000)

I bought a Mishibishi MiEV this year and effectively paid about $18,000 for it. I now have to set aside about $100 a month to replace the battery pack after the 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty runs out. I cannot imagine what gasoline will cost in 5 year, but I know EACTLY what my electricity to fuel my EV will cost in five years' $0. Zero. The same as it is costing me today.

After one looks at the "economics" of owning an EV charged of a PV array you would be foolish not to get an EV as soon as one could afford to do so.

Hi: As I mentioned above, all elect is hard under 8MWH/year. Basically, I have some exterior wall renovations to finish and three more evac tube collectors to add for the Solar assist part to be added to the geo thermal heat pumps. When the extra solar thermal is added and the exterior walls complete, the goal is a rolling 8MWH/year. This is the baseline I will be using against my elect generation from PV and then a bit of wind added for an expected goal of 16MWH/year on the generation side. In short, generating twice what I use. About 14MWH will come from the PV, about 2MHW from the wind, mostly in Winter. The over production is needed for a hopeful elect car or two down the road, probably at least 5 years...

.....Bill

As we've built our 230qm house in the mid-90ies, our gas consumption of some 14000kWh and electricity of 3500kWh for 4 persons means quite in the right range here in Germany. With a small, but sufficient for the living room, air conditioning. Of cause it run not more than 20-40h a year.
The difference starts with hot water supply, which for economic reason in the western part is often elect-based, while the renewed housing in the eastern part uses gas or distinct heating.
At our CHP-based (natural gas or biogas) distinct heating systems the net effect on climate is even lower. Unfortunately, the low energy need for the Passivhauses nowaday doesn't make distinct heating connection economic anymore, same applies to gas connection.

2000 sqft home in Australia, gas heating and solar hot water with gas assist no air-con. Four adults, (including two 20 year olds), three computers (including two high performance/high power gaming machine for, guess who - and no, it's not me!) plus laptop, one entertaintment system including projector and CRT TV and fourth computer, All CFL's or strip flouro's except for three halogens in kitchen as task lights. One large fridge freezer plus one (older) large fridge freezer used for parties, beer, overflow etc. and on about 50%-75% of the time. assorted workshop tools, occassional water pumps etc. At least one person home every day. Washing machine, microwave, breadmaker....you get the idea!

Our usage is usually between 10kWh and 12kWh per day. Whenever it hits 12kWh/day I start going nuts.

We're pretty anal about switching lights and other things off when not in use with a couple of minor exceptions.

The fridges account for more than 4kWh per day.

If we go away the second fridge is off and the usage drops to below 3kWh per day. Almost all of this is for the main fridge. Everything else is switched off at the wall with one or two minor exception that are hard wired.

We have just installed controlled power boards for two of the PC's (the other is turned off at the wall) and entertainment system so it will be interesting to see how much lower the usage will be.

As I slowly upgrade the lights to LED's and the TV (eventually) to an LCD, the usage will drop a bit more.

To be fair, I get two nasty gas heating bills in winter but they are also going down as I reinforce the insulation and slowly convert the windows to DIY double glazing.

Hi: It was 7KWH not 11, probably did not catch in time my correction. I am in the RE business, solar thermal and finishing my PV up.. Believe me, the house is very scrutinized. I eat and sleep BTU's and watts... nothing overlooked... The number is really not doable in any practical sense for an individual house. We usually go away in sept-Oct time frame where neither heating or cooling is in play from the geo thermal heat pumps. Just solar thermal running at those times... I agree that the USA can make huge cuts in elect usage, but getting under 8MWH/year for a family of four is very difficult at 2000 sqft or higher... single home... again using no 'fuels' at all... elect only... .....Bill

If you use 7kWh a day even when everything is off exept for the necessary like the fridge etc., then I can guarantee you that you have BIG electricity vampires and/or inefficient appliances. The only way to find out is to install a whole house energy meter like the TED and to use a Kill a Watt energy meter. See energcircle.com for more information. The killawatt is only measuring one appliance at a time and does not allow you to find hard wired energy hogs. As an example: we had an aircon, hard wired into the braker box, that used even when turned off 220 Watts all the time. That is 220W X 24 hours times 365 days = 1927.2kWh/year or AU$450. Now we turn it off directly at the breaker box when it isn't used. Our standby wattage used to be a total of 607Watts, equivalent to 5196kWh/year, now it's only 14Watts or 122kWh/year! You say you have a couple of CFLs on during vacation. If 4 are on and use 10Watts each that is 0.96kWh/day out of 7. How efficient are the freezer and the fridge/freezer? If they aren't efficient then they could use 4kWh+/day. So we're at 6kWh/day. 1kW could be the solar thermal booster. Diego

The key to heating AND cooling energy efficiency is INSULATION.
The Key to Appliance energy efficiency is buying appliances that use the least amount of energy i.e.. usually means energy star appliances, front loading washing machine, etc. Those YELLOW tags on all your appliances give you the kWH usage of each appliance. I have found them to be very accurate when I use my Kill a Watt meter to measure the electrical consumption of the device.
The key to energy efficient lighten is not CFL any more but LED's
The key to getting rid of "phantom loads" are power strips.

Our electrical usage continues to drop. For example, I just replaced my desk lamp that had a LED build using 8 watts to a replacement lamp using 1.5 watts that gives me about as much light as the 8 watt LED build gave me. ANother is going form a CRT TV to an LED TV.

As I See it there is NO reason a household has to use such high kWh usage a month. But one has little incentive to get their energy usage as low as possible. I think most people simply do not care and just live with the energy bill that a utility hands them each month.

Historically electric bills rise 10% a year yet no one really seems to complain. As long as one can afford the monthly electric bill, really nothing to complain about. It is the more "enlightened" person that pursues a really low electric bill and those are also the people most likely to embrace a PV system that will cost far less that the person who does not practice or care about how low their electric bill gets.

An energy auditor is one of the best people one can contact because they tell you where you are at as far as your energy "foot print".

Diego, I comment your country for recently passing a carbon tax. The USA does not have the balls i.e political will) to do such a thing, but it should.

Hi: That is one very difficult number to reach for a family of four. When we go away on vacation for a week, I 'shutdown' our whole house. All that is left is temp min's, freezer, freezer/fridge, a couple of CF lights, solar thermal running and a few parasitics. That is 7KWH a day, times 365 days a year = 2555KWH. The only way to reach numbers like that is 'row' housing sub 1000 sqft with no electric heating (including heat pumps) or cooling and maybe two people... The freezer/fridge alone will kill you. SO called energy eff units still only use foam for insulation. If they really were serious about fridge/freezers, they would use a 1' VIP in between foam for physical protection. This would cut elect usage by four fold, particularly in freezers which might only be accessed a few times a week. Other than that, forget it, if using elect for those functions... Bill PS: I had to go back and check for sure on the vacation number, 7 not 11.. but really does not change the conclusion...

I forgot the new efficient shower head and that we also bought a kill a watt energy meter to measure if there are any energy hogs, mainly in standby mode - you will be surprised. The kill a watt showed us that we should buy a new fridge. We live now in Australia. First year electricity usage in our fully electric house with pool was extrapolated 6935kWh. With the same energy efficiency strategy as in the U.S. our electricity usage droped to 3340kWh/year. In the future we will replace the pool pump and install a heat pump water heater. Our usage will then drop to 1898kWh/year. This rest will be provided by a 3kWp solar system. The surplus will be used for a future Electric Vehicle. So I think, no I know, that 3500kWh/year in Germany is still 50% to high compared to what is possible... My advise is, start today and don't think to much, just do it. Don't try only small steps. March the whole path as quickly as financially possible. The investment will pay for itself anyway! More Info www.bpi.org http://www.energycircle.com/learn www.aceee.org/consumer energystar.gov www.energysavers.gov www.builditsolar.com The web has also some amzing user stories: www.infrareddiagnostic.com/newsandevents/articles/tharrisonarticle.php www.builditsolar.com/Projects/Conservation/conservation.htm

"Could the U.S. Cut Household Electricity Use by Two-Thirds?"

Absolutely, and even with electric heating! Here is our energy use over three years:

8908kWh for January – December 2008, equivalent to 24.41kWh/day
6742kWh for January – December 2009, equivalent to 18.47kWh/day
3388kWh for January - December 2010, equivalent to 9.28kWh/day

The changes we made for 2008/2009 were a new efficient refridgerator, insulation where needed, caulking and weather sealing to stop air infiltration (very important and good for heating and cooling), lowered the hot water temp and installed a hot water heater blanket, insulated all hot water pipes on their full length, installed CFLs throughout the house, stopped standby power completely. Everything together saved us 2200kWh/year. Investment was $950.

In 2010 we got serious about energy efficiency because our first attempts were so successful. So in 2010 we installed a heat pump water heater, 2 efficient split aircon systems for heating (much better than basboard heater) and cooling and a horizontal washing maschine. Electricity use for 2010 droped to a low 3388kWh per year (I remind you that this is including electric heating, no gas/oil heating).

The total cost for all energy efficiency measures came in at $5100 and had a payback time of only 5y. Everthing was was DIY.

So my empiric answer to the articles title is yes, the U.S. could cut the household electricity use by two-thirds.

The problem is, that it took us a lot of time gathering all the information for an action plan.

Therefore it is very adviseable to get the help of an Energy Auditor. You can find adresses of auditors on www.BPI.org or google for "Home Energy Assessment" or "Energy Auditor". These are trained professionals who can assess your house in a short period of time and guide you where investment is necessary and adviseable.

More Info
www.aceee.org/consumer, energystar.gov, www.energysavers.gov

The Germans have the Passivhaus standard, the 3,100kWh/yr figure may be based on this for a 200m2 house. The Passivhaus standard is 15kWh/m2/yr and includes household heat gains from appliances and summer cooling if needed for your climate, it includes all energy to run the house. You will note the stnadard is independent of house area.

Have a look at: www.passivhaus.org.uk. It is a quite different way of constructing building with very careful attention to detailing needed.

Divide 3100 kWh by 12 months and you get 258.34. That is about what I use in my grid tied house until I bought an electric vehicle. Assuming most Germans, as Americans do not own any type of EV then that 3100 is easy to achieve with the RIGHT Energy Star appliances, daylighting, LED's etc. and being as efficient wit h the use of electricity you need to live a comfortable lifestyle. You can take almost any building today and do a "energy make over" and get your monthly below 300 kWh per month. There are two in our household.

However, in order to do that one most likely will have to buy new appliances, new lighting and even switching heating delivery and fuel. Most people are not willing to do this mainly because there is no "reward" other than a smaller electro chill, but one e you get used to paying the "piper" say $100 a month you get used to it and it becomes part of your normal finical routine.

What can change all of that is a PV array designed to give you more power than you basic electrical needs so that you can easily have enough energy to fuel an EV. Before we purchased an EV our 5 kWh PV array was giving our local utility WAY to much excess energy. They give us a lousy $.0267 cents a kWh and turn around and sell it to us for $.16 should we need then for any reason and sell it to our neighbors for $.12/kWh. Highway Robbery! So now that we have that EV we should "break even" as far as energy in and energy out to the utility. Our surplus has been "soaked up".

Practicing energy efficiency is the key to making a PV array really shine for you and also can make trips to a gas station virtually non existent. Free energy is good! Imagine a world in which most of us refuel their transportation needs with electrons from the sun and only use renewable fuels from a car company like Zip car or some other car sharing company. Forward, not Backward!

Interesting. Lets add the relative size and design of houses, refrigerators, other home appliances, as well as more frequent laundry, efficiency of appliances, etc. And I bet it won't take too much effort to get to the German level. The same comparison should also be run for water consumotion.