Thoughts on My SDGE Utility Bill, My Old Gas Furnace, My New Central Heater, and My Not Yet Acquired Solar Thermal Air Heater

I just got my SDG&E utility bill. What an embarrasment. $106.03. I thought I was comfortably down to the $50 range. My parents were visiting for a week which I think made a big impact, and also we're into winter now.

I have to give a lot of credit to SDGE for the bill. I'm really going to have to scan and post it. They show you your usage last month and then compare it to this month last year with the % change. You get a break down between therms of gas used and kilowatt hours used...it's interesting...

So that's a picture of my house up there. It's 1128 sq. ft. According to the electric bill for the period 12/14/2006 - 1/16/2007, we used 1.6 therms of natural gas per day last month. The previous month we used only .7 therms/day, and 1.1 therms/day this period last year. So I'm thinking that yeah, my dad probably likes the house warmer, and there were two more people taking hot showers...

We used 7.8 kWh/day, which is the amount of electricity we needed to power our lights, computer, and television. It's a measurement like pounds, 7.8 kilowatt hours per day. We used 6.7 the previous month and 7.7 this month last year.

This house is about 60 years old. When we moved in there was this wall furnace that burns gas. You can see it over there just to the right of the tv and to the left of the door. (For a really big view, click the picture. By the way, the doors are not turquoise anymore.)

So I couldn't get the furnace to work, so I called SDGE. They sent a guy out the next day. He looked at the furnace for 2 minutes and said, "You sure you want me to turn this thing on? It hasn't been used for at least 10 years..."

"Lets do it!" I told him.

"The knob is rusted shut."

"Come on, you can do it! We can make this work!"

He really didn't want to, but I got him psyched up to give it a try. After the giant flame ball came roaring out we both agreed the furnace was dead. That was pretty funny actually.

So it was January when we moved in. I'm going to dispell a quick myth. San Diego gets cold in the winter. REALLY cold. That whole winter Pili and I would get into bed under the covers as early as possible... it was so cold my face felt frozenn even though I was inside the house... it sucked. The next fall we got central heating installed.

I wouldn't want anyone to go through winter without heat. You've got to wonder about the people in Chicago or Denver with fixed incomes... You've got to eat, pay rent, maybe pay for medications, so what happens if you can't afford heat? I wonder what percentage of people in cold climates live without heat in the winter...

So here's the exciting activity of the day. Deris of ClearDomeSolar is coming over to my house to take a look and give me some advice. Deris invented a very nifty product that can heat your home with the sun's energy. He takes a special piece of metal that is very good at absorbing sunlight and getting hot, and sticks it in a little plexiglass chamber. He runs a fan (that can be powered by a small solar panel) blowing air over the hot metal which send hot air into the room. The heater can sit in the window sill or be attached to the outside of the house. And viola - free heating!

And then you pause and think, "Wait a minute. It's cold at night. There's no sun out at night. How are you going to heat my house up when it's cold out?" Yeah, Deris, you snake-oil salesman!

According to Deris, the house heats up during the day, and a well insulated house will keep that heat right on through to the next morning. You might need to turn on the heat for 15 minutes around 10:00 PM if the day was cloudy. Or if you prefer warmer temperatures.

We shall see. I'm hoping to either borrow a solar heater from Deris to evaluate or actually purchase one. They cost around $250 per panel, and my house probably needs 3 panels. If I can displace $50 of gas cost a month for 5 months a year, that would be a 3 year payback, and then free heat for eternity. Not a bad idea for those folks up in Chicago or Denver...

Setting the Scene

It's an early Friday morning in San Diego. When I got up the thermostat was set to 63, and I popped it up to 68. I don't know how cold it got last night, but it was cloudy and felt cold at 6:45... now at 7:15 the sun is hitting me a bit from the window and the heat is kicking in and it feels good.

I need to get a few of my utility bills online and really analyze them. SDG&E is my power company. Typically my bill is between $30 and $50 a month. That's after some thought and effort not to 'over consume'. In case you care, the bill breaks out almost exactly 50/50 between 'therms of gas' (heat, oven, hot water) and/vs. 'kilowatt hours of electricity' (light, television, computer).

I've done a few really basic things to reduce consumption:

1) Install fluorescent lights. I was pretty surprised how many lights we actually have in the house. I went out and bought a six pack of fluorescent bulbs, came back, put them in, and saw that I had hardly made a dent. In the end, including all the lights in the closets and outside I think it was 30 bulbs.

2) Turn off lights. That bulb changing process definitely made me more conscious of the lights that are turned on too. I like having lights on around the house. It makes me happy. But I found that I actually don't need to have lights turned on in every room. It makes a big difference. Conservation, baby!

3) Energy Efficient Appliances. When Pili and I moved in to our house, built in 1947, there were basically no appliances. So we invested the few hundred bucks more and went with all energy efficient stuff. It turns out front-loading clothes washers are super efficient with energy and water. By the way, can you tell that the stove in the picture does not have a door to the oven!

4) Wearing socks/slippers at all times in the winter.


Right. So we haven't done a lot. Just some basic stuff - the lowest hanging fruit that was easy to do, or that I had to do. Now I have a few options on how to get better, i.e. drive that energy consumption towards zero. In no particular order, things that I need to investigate and do:

1) Install Photovoltaic System - a 'PV' system is what most people think of when they think of solar. That thing that sits on the roof. It's what Arnold is subsidizing to the tune of $3billion here in California.

2) Install Solar Hot Water - Simple concept, proven technology. Supposedly less expensive than PV. We shall see.

3) Install Solar Thermal Hot Air Heater - A friend from the San Diego Renewable Energy Society explained to me that air is a really good conductor of heat. And you can use the sun to heat the air in your house and stay warm. Simple but smart.

4) Insulation - Have a contractor and probably some other folks look at the house and tell me if I need insulation in the attic, walls, under the floorboards or what, and what that would mean for my heating and cooling bill.

5) Windows - I've been told by another SDRES friend who has zero'd out his energy bill, that my windows are 'Ok. Not great, not terrible.' It's kind of a pain to replace windows though, so I'd like to know very clearly what the benefit is.

6) Passive Solar - This just means I could plant trees to shade my house in the summer to keep it cool, and maybe install some awnings, or think about the size and position of the windows vs. where the sun is in the sky at what time of the year. Yeah, it actually gets pretty complicated, but once you break it down I assume it's straight forward. And if not, there are experts...

Lots of stuff to investigate!

The End is in the Beginning

A sensitive and well orchestrated blog by:
Joe Steinberger
Editor In Chief
"We're on a roll!"


I've come to believe we need to cut our fossil fuel consumption by 90%. And we need to do it soon.

That's the basic premise of this site.

Clearly the concept of Global Warming is entering its "The World is Round" phase. People are coming to accept that if 7 billion humans keep burning gas to stay warm, and burning coal to turn on the lights, and burning oil to get to work and the grocery store... we will likely do serious, irreversible damage to the environment.

So what do we do? Are we going to stop taking hot showers and driving? No. I doubt even 1% of the U.S. would be willing to trade in their car for a bike and bus ticket. I wouldn't, unless gas was $10/gallon, and even then it would be hard.

But that's ok... we understand the problem. And now we have to come up with realistic, effective ways of addressing it. And here's the GREAT thing - there are easy solutions all over the place. RENEWABLE ENERGY is everywhere. It's state of the shelf technololgy. And it's cheap! (No joke, wind is cheaper than coal!)

So I'm going to try to reduce my fossil fuel consumption by 90%. I really don't know if I can do it. I think I can. I suppose it will take years, but I figure if politicians are throwing around numbers like 2030 and 2050, if I can do something meaningful by 2011 or 2014, hey, that's HUGE.

I'm DRIVING TO ZERO fossil fuel consumption.

But here's something nifty - when you get solar panels or have a solar water heater installed, or plant trees to shade your house, you are supporting your local economy. You're giving your neighbor employment. Which is good.

And here's something else. Oil really is running out. Even Chevron is running ads about that. And if we don't kick our 'oil addiction', there will be really big problems (re: food shortages, resource wars, and a general 'fraying of the social framework'). Google 'Peak Oil' for more on that.

So I'm going green. I'm going to invest some money, use a little ingenuity, change some of my habits, and really try to get off of fossil fuels. It's good for the environment, good for national security, good for the economy. It should be good for my pocketbook and I'd like to have some fun too.

From here on out I'll document what I'm doing, how I'm slowly weening myself off of fossil fuels. Wish me luck! :)