Thursday, December 9, 2010

Please Join Us in the Celebration of Lopez Energy Challenge Results



Islands Energy Coalition in collaboration with OPALCO and Lopez Island Library would like to invite community members to come hear inspiring energy stories and meet winners of prizes in different contest categories.
  • Special highlight: There will be a BICYCLE GENERATOR for you to try out your muscle power! Burn calories and generate electricity. Compare power usage of different lighting technologies and appliances.
  • Don't miss the fun educational opportunity for the entire family!
  • Come and be part of the community conversation on energy!
5PM Thursday December 16, 2010 at Lopez Island Library
Refreshments will be served and free gifts from OPALCO given away 

How Many Lance Armstrongs would it take to power your home?

At Lopez Elementary School, students gained some good biking muscles trying to keep the lights on!

How? Thanks to a bicycle generator put together by Kent Schaefer, kids in Alex Nelli's science class and Dale Shreve's homeroom learned that they could power lights, a boombox, pencil sharpeners, fans, motors, an electric piano, or a combination of the above, with their own little legs.

Elementary students lined up in Lorri Swanson's garden class to power the fan used in the winnowing process to separate wheat berries from the chaff, which they helped grow and harvest.

Apart from having fun and getting a good workout, the kids also learned first hand the value of precious energy. Can you imagine how hard it would be to have to generate your own electricity? For these students, it's no longer a theoretical concept. They know how much work it is to light a bulb, and hopefully how important it is to use energy wisely and consciously.

One child pedaling as hard as possible generates enough to power one 60 Watt incandescent bulb. At that rate, most children last about five minutes. It would take 300 such hard-working children on generators for 10 minutes each to dry a load of laundry.

They also understand the huge difference in power consumption between efficient (LED or fluorescent bulbs) and inefficient incandescent lights, despite their equivalent brightness. Keeping only one incandescent lamp on is more difficult than powering 5 compact fluorescent and LED lights combined.

A fabulous educational tool, the bicycle generator has a fan (powered by the rider and positioned to cool the rider), a panel of three different types of lights, and ability to connect to DC (direct current) and AC (alternating current) appliances, with or without a battery.

A resident of Center Island, Kent Schaefer said it took two full days to put this ingenious set together, using mostly “stuff that was lying around” his house, plus a free exercise bike courtesy of Neil's Mall. One of his main inspirations is Ryan, his 10-year-old son, genius inventor-in-training, and forth grader at Lopez School.

Lopez school students are very lucky to have such a resource! The potential for education is unlimited. Some high school students are toying with the idea of using the bicycle generator to power the sound system for an energy-efficient dance party, or to make treats for an energy-efficient bake sale fund-raiser.

Fortunately the bike can be powered not only by volunteer child labor. Adult labor is welcome and encouraged. Community members, young or old, can come and try out the bike at the celebration of Lopez Energy Challenge results at the Lopez Island Library Thursday, 16 December, at 5PM. We will hear inspiring energy stories and engage in a community conversation on energy. And of course, you will get to find out how many Tour de France champions it will take to power your home!

Hope to see you there. Bring your own enthusiastic legs.

(Written by Chom Greacen, the article first appears in the Islands Weekly in Dec 2010.)

Home Performance

Home.  It’s a word heavy with connotation, a word containing a world of personal significance.  A home should be a place of comfort and a source of strength, rejuvenation and health.  While most of us have a strong emotional connection to our homes, we usually don’t consider the scientific system designed for our comfort. When a Home Performance evaluation is used for your home, the rigors of science optimize your home’s performance.

A high-performance sports car holds the road so well  because the weight to power ratio of the car, coupled with precision engineering, gives it stability. The secret lies in the system.  Home Performance focusses on your house as a “system” with the goal of supporting a more comfortable, healthy, durable and energy-efficient home.  Working with the laws of physics and the dynamics of heat, air and moisture movement, the system is balanced and finely tuned, like a sports-car, and the structure performs optimally.

While many homes are pleasing to the eye, they often neglect a whole world of comfort potential. Pack away the visual insistence of your eyes and consider your home from the reach of your other senses, the often neglected realm of smell, touch and feel.  Take a deep breath.  Does your house smell musty or stale?  Do you battle to keep your home warm in the winter?  Do you suffer the insult of cold feet from frigid floors?  A home should be free of drafts, easy on the heat and contain fresh air to breathe.  This will maximize your home’s potential.

The Home Performance process begins with an Energy Audit and utilizes diagnostic tools such as a blower door, infrared camera, gas sniffers and pressure gauges to test the home’s performance.  There is no guesswork. Home Performance makes sick houses healthy by ensuring an optimal flow of air.

After Home Performance testing the auditor will build a list of concerns to be addressed and prescribe the solutions.  Some of the common problems found in older homes are inadequate insulation values, far too many air leaks, single pane windows and propane appliances with flue gas concerns.  Newer housing stock may be without proper ventilation and suffer from poor indoor air quality; mold and mildew are concerns along with broken thermal boundaries.

Energy remodel measures offer exceptional returns on investment. The savings are quantifiable and paybacks arrive within a few years.  You will immediately notice a difference in your home following performance measures.  Your home shouldn’t be a place of cold feet.  It shouldn’t be a battle ground against the elements.  It should be a place for you to be comfortable and healthy.

After more than 20 years in the building industry, I have found Home Performance to offer the most bang for the buck in reducing heating and energy costs.  Full energy remodels generally range from $2,000-$9,000, depending on the depth of the measures.  There are several rebates and incentives offered by OPALCO and the federal government to assist in the weatherization costs.  Some of these expire at the new year, so now is a good time to sign on for for an energy remodel and start living in a more comfortable, healthy and energy-efficient home.

Email Energy Matters at islandenergymatters@googlegroups.com, call me at 468-4047, or call OPALCO at 376-3586 to sign-up for a Home Energy Snapshot that includes an in-depth home energy assessment for $25.  The Snapshot does not offer diagnostic testing, but it does include high efficiency specialty light bulbs and shower heads.


(Written by Doug Poole, this article was first published in the Islands Weekly in November 2010.)