So it says here: Report: Better mpg, switch in fuels means lower expense Much as we might wish to hold PRIUS as the cause of vehicle-fleet mpg increases, I suppose it had more to do with $5/gallon gasoline. To make this local, I invite anyone with long records to report their energy expenditures now compared with a decade or two ago. What caused the change? That car? solar panels? other?
My best records are for my house, not cars. Total energy use (all electric) is down significantly due to numerous conservation efforts. It started with converting incandescent lighting to CFL (and now LED), followed by newer Energy Star appliances, better building envelope sealing to reduce air infiltration, better solar heat gain management, minor insulation improvements, and conversion of electric space and water heating to heat pumps. On top of that, a grid-tied solar PV system now produces about two-thirds of my electric energy. Blue is from the house's billing meter -- total consumption at first, then net consumption after solar was installed. Red is gross consumption, what the house would still use if the solar was disconnected. My conservation efforts didn't end with the solar addition.
Outstanding, fuzzy. I have been perseverating for months now over the idea of finding a local architect and builder to design and build an off-grid PassivHaus. We'll see what comes of it in the next 12 months or so. I very much like the idea of whole house source energy consumption of ~ 20 kWh/m*m*year powered over 95% by passive solar and PV*. I still have to decide how to handle backup electricity and heating. I am tending towards EV and a smallish home battery bank for electricity, and propane for heat and perhaps cooking. The last couple of years have been very useful in getting my wife and I accustomed to living comfortably on ~ 3 kWh a day of electricity in the home. *That works out to a 99.8% reduction in fossil fuel use compared to US average.
what are these more efficient home heating fuels? that was a very short and poor article. oil is the same as ever, even with biofuel.
The article said cheaper, not more efficient. A therm of NG has ~ 30 kWh of energy and costs most homeowners around 75 cents, so 2.5 cents a kWh. If they burn it in a fairly standard crappy furnace that keeps 67% of the energy as home heating, the owner cost is 2.5*3/2 = 3.75 cents a net heating kWh. Compare that to electricity at 10 - 20 cents a net heating kWh in the US. You are right though, the article was crappy. Conservation is a smarter move most of the time, at least when choosing the first things to do. E.g,. a highly conserving passivHaus consumes about 1 kWh/m*m per month of source energy* in heating/cooling the airspace. A renovation is not going to be near that low, but it does show the effectiveness of air tightness and insulation. *The idea of source energy takes a little getting used to, and the calculations vary by the fuel. As an example, about 3 kWh of source fossil fuels are consumed to provide 1 kWh of electricity to the homeowner. So a 200 m*m home that uses 200 kWh of source energy to cool the home down in the summer is consuming ~ 67 kWh electricity for the task. Even at high rates in Boston of say 20 cents a kWh, that works out to about $13.5 a month for summer cooling. Heating costs in the winter are about $20 a month if the heating fuel is oil. At those costs no one is going to bother to switch heating fuels.
...don't have good records, but I remember what happened. In the 1970s, nuke power was popular and the bummer was, it turned out not to be free...we had very high electric costs. New houses were however, all-elec or elec + oil heat, due to ban on natural gas (USA had none). Oil was starting to increa$e but way cheaper than elec and there was no flex time: we all car-pooled to the office. Now elec is cheap, since not many new plants are being built. Nat Gas is cheap (we finally found some!). Gasoline is more expensive than elec now, and nobody car pools as much as we used to, but we got Prii. But gaso coming down in cost now...we'll see if there is another switch between oil and elec as the cheaper fuel.
i suppose thy are saying that ng is more efficient than electric or oil, but i think it's just a flood on the market to promote conversion. i see a very steep increase in ng pricing when they have us locked in.
i disagree, i think it's all about the prius revolution. toyota started a green tsunami that all other manufacturers have been trying to cash in on.
