Meet the Lopez Energy Challenge Winners

The First ever Lopez Energy Challenge concluded last December with clear winners. The couple of “Take-it-or-Leave-It” fame, Neil Hanson and Ona Blue swept awards in all the three main categories: “Biggest usage reduction”, “Smallest energy footprint” as well as “Best energy conservation story”.

How did Neil and Ona manage to be the “Biggest”, “Smallest” and “Best” all at once?

Firstly, they were not big energy users to start with. The month before the challenge, they used only 298 kilowatt-hours (kWh), compared to the average 1,000 kWh/month for San Juan County residents.

Then, their “experimentation” with low energy living resulted in a drastic 99.7% reduction in power usage! Their OPALCO meter reading barely changed (showing usage of only 1 kWh) during the entire month of the contest (October – November). That's less than eight cents worth of electricity at current rates.

Neil and Ona accomplished this jaw-dropping feat, not by taking a holiday elsewhere, not by any sort of technological trickery. Rather, they took on the Energy Challenge as “the perfect opportunity for a practical experiment that would spare [them] from another frantic reaction to a no-electricity event”.

The single kWh of electricity consumed came from the pilot light of their propane oven used only during bread baking sessions weekly. But other than that, they did not use electricity or propane. They essentially turned off the mains breaker!

To meet energy needs for cooking, heating, cooling and lighting, they relied instead on “really low-tech existing and readily available tools”.

They cooked on a wood stove, a biomass cook stove (using scrap wood scavenged from a disposal burn pile and hauled by bicycle) or a blanket box (to finish off cooking). They also used techniques such as grain soaking to minimize cooking time.

For refrigeration, they tried many techniques (including using rocks left outside at night!) but what “really worked” and was “fun” to make and use was a Nigerian “Zeer pot” (two nested earthen pots with moist sand between them that provides an evaporative cooling effect). Lighting was challenging but they managed with the help of solar lights and kerosene lanterns.

There were of course some mishaps, like Neil “pouring a jar of Ona's salad dressing into the nutritional yeast jar (ruining both) in a very low-light situation” or scalding himself twice when he washed himself and misjudged the temperature of the hot water heated by their woodstove.

Non-electric living also brought wonderful surprises to Neil and Ona's lives. They enjoyed the absence of background droning sound of electrical appliances and having more time to read and learn to play the clarinet and accordion.

In fact, they found the experience to be “very positive” and their lives improved in most regards that they saw “no reason to suspend the experiment” after the challenge ended and decided to completely disconnect their OPALCO service!

To me, Neil and Ona's “experimentation” was nothing short of a courageous experiment in truth. And truth it did reveal. That we do not need to wait for a technological breakthrough to lead a gentle, low-carbon life. That solutions are already here. That it can be done and with such joy. I am very grateful for Neil and Ona for alighting hope and inspiration for us.

You can read Neil and Ona's full story below, for inspiration or useful technical details.

(Written by Chom Greacen, this article first appeared in the Islands Weekly in March.)

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.) 

A Time of Crisis and Opportunity

It wasn't long ago that the business model that made sense for our cooperative power utility, OPALCO, was to sell as much electricity as possible. The wires and transformers that deliver the electricity cost about the same regardless of whether you're consuming 5 or 500 units (kWh) a month. Utilities like OPALCO have high fixed costs (wires, transformers, etc.) and the more electricity they sold, the more these fixed costs could be spread out, leading to lower rates.

Inexpensive electricity was made possible by an abundance of federally-funded hydropower dams, built mostly by the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) starting in the 1930s. Fortunately, (if you're a rate payer) or not (if you're a salmon), these dams aren't going away soon. But nobody is building any more big dams here either. The Columbia River is now a staircase of 14 dams. There just aren't any more big untapped rivers.

Over the years, electricity consumption has been growing and electricity surpluses the region once had are now gone. BPA's response has been to tell utilities like OPALCO something like, "Listen -- we've got a problem of limited supply here. Starting in 2011, if your power consumption grows, that additional power will have to be purchased on the open market." This new power is called "Tier 2". "Tier 1" is the inexpensive legacy hydropower.

There are few certainties in the electricity sector these days, but here's one: Tier 2 power is going to be more expensive. OPALCO currently buys Tier 1 BPA power for around 3 cents per kWh. No one knows for sure, but folks in the industry are saying that Tier 2 is likely to be at least twice as much.

Ouch. That turns the old business model on its head. More sales no longer means lower rates. On the contrary, the way to keep rates down now is to try to keep our power growth to zero so OPALCO won't have to buy any of that expensive Tier 2 stuff.

Crisis and Opportunity

It might seem like there's a crisis on the horizon. But there's a popular saying that the Chinese character for 'crisis' is composed of characters for 'danger' and 'opportunity'. Investing in energy efficiency (getting the same warm houses, cold beer for less energy input) is a lot cheaper than building new power plants and fueling them for 30 years. Here in the San Juans we use the bulk of our electricity for heat -- water and space heating, cooking, drying clothes. Heating takes a surprising amount of electricity -- an electric water heater takes over 100 times more electricity than a laptop. Heating a building takes even more. We can slash our electric bills by weatherizing our homes, using clothes lines, and investing in efficient appliances.

The good news is that saving energy saves money in two ways. If you implement energy conservation in your own home or business, your bills will be lower -- because you purchase less power. You also help keep the rates low for all OPALCO members.

Energy conservation is clearly a win-win for all -- AND there is money available through OPALCO and federal tax credits to help. To get started, contact OPALCO about an energy audit at 376-3571, or explore OPALCO's webpage: http://www.opalco.com/energy-efficiency. We'll investigate these and other ways we can shape our collective energy futures in upcoming Energy Matters articles. See you again next month!

(Written by Chris Greacen and Lopez Island Energy Taskforce, this article first appeared in Island Weekly in June.)