let take some simple steps to energy conservation

Can we turn off the lights?

most efficient carbon dioxide storage device on earth, locking up centuries of carbon dioxide only to be perishing presently in California redwood forests due to climate change= hypocrisy at its finest courtesy of man 

     Recently I read a report about the U.S.  effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from various sources on an overall basis according to government EPA guidelines. The article praises President Obama’s efforts while at the same time it mentions that the effort will further paralyze the state of Kentucky’s economy while slowing coal use on an overall basis throughout the nation, as we leave the dirty technology of yesteryear, with its belching smokestacks behind. We are no entering an era of hybrid technology where we employ wind, solar, and other technologies to produce electricity in a more renewable green way.

      My discussion today will center on conservation of any electricity delivered to our home, and how we can more efficiently use it and other technologies to improve our security in our homes. At the top of the list of home improvement and electricity waste reducers would be motion sensitive sensors hooked up in a circuit with your household lights. Those same motion sensitive lights that come one when you approach a house at night could also be used inside your house to turn off the lights in a room when it is not being used. When walking from room to room lights would light up and turn off after a few minutes of your passing through to save electricity and will ease your effort at conservation of electricity.

      Employed outside at the perimeter of your property or in locations where you feel  you may vulnerable to a trespasser a solar security light with battery backup could be available for as cheap as 25 dollars , and would serve you well to inform you of an unwanted visitor at night. Lights flashing or possibly an audible alarm could sound alerting you to the presence of an intruder.  These could be motion sensitive or infra-red sensitive and alerting after a warm blooded animal is in the proximity of the detector.

     How about the new battery pack from tesla available for home use that can be recharged with power from your local utility on off peak hours , or from a variety of sources , including hydropower , solar, and wind , or whatever power generation source you want to use as a primary source of recharging? For power generation companies this would seem to me to be a no brainer. As you could generate power in off peak hours to charge these batteries to be used by the homeowner when the power generation needs are the greatest. This would help to eliminate power plants from adding on another dirty coal unit to meet high demand of power generation, and in the end this will result in a reduction of CO2 levels across the nation.

     Now if on your own  you had solar cells or say a wind generator to supplement the charging capacity of the battery pack you would further save , and by being conservative with our use of electricity, by turning off anything we don’t use that is plugged into electrical outlet when not in use.  For you see we have ourselves hooked up to a multitude of things in any electrical outlets we are using and are draining electricity off when we are not using them. The charger for your I-pad, the coffee pot, the alarm clock , your computer , all and more contribute to a loss of electricity at any given time during the day.

    Have you ever been sleeping and had the power go off and when it comes back on listen to all the stuff rebooting and coming back on. Well this is all the stuff you have on at a given time. I refer to it as the refrigerator light syndrome. You don’t know if the light is on or off when you close the door. You assume it is off, but do you know for sure, and really does it affect your worry capacity in the long run. Not hardly, in the end you still go about your day whether the light is on and off. If you knew it was on inside your refrigerator it would kind of  bug you because you know anytime you have a hold of a light bulb that is  being used it is hot and impossible to hold. Now really, when you are trying to cool down your refrigerator, do you really want a heat source? It would bug you if you knew it, but since you don’t, you ignore it. It is the same with all the stuff you have hooked up.

    It would be nice to have a central switch you could turn on and off as needed, and again you may be able to use a motion switch for this purpose to kill all power outlets in a room when not in use for more than a minute. Your computer if shut down requires you to log in again. As well some other things like a coffee pot would shut off if you are not in the room for any period of time. Maybe a touch sensor you could tap somewhat like the clapper that would allow certain individual appliances to remain on for a specified time. a simple touch to a pad would indicate ten minutes two touches would equal 20 minutes of time. Specific outlets could be wired for continuous use like those needed for an alarm clock.

      Still you would think they could come up with a reliable alarm clock that would charge all day and at night switch over to a battery backup assuring that even with a loss of power you will still receive your alarm to arise and not be alarmed in the AM when you wake up from oversleeping. An alarm clock is plugged in 24 hrs. day and doesn’t use much electric , still when you multiply the amount they do use times millions and billions you see something that by itself is responsible for a major portion of trees since the 1800’s and along with it loss of habitat for several species , and is directly responsible an increase in co 2 levels in our environment. How about a hybrid alarm with a combination of solar and electric where the electric is only used to finish charging batteries, at which point it completely shuts off and runs on battery.

      I believe in the future as energy costs rise, we see more technologies put to use in our household requiring little or no energy or in fact renewable type energies. Even air conditioning during this summer weather will also see a re-thinking of how we can achieve a level of comfort we need or desire without using costly electric from a power supplier. Again the Tesla home energy battery could help here, as cooling during the daytime contributes to causing peak energy usage at our power generating facilities. If we could store electric at off peak hours and use it during peak hours, we would be able to soften the impact for power generation. Solar and wind would help offset those cooling costs more.

     We could still have the entire feature of electricity usage today with more reliability and at a greener rate than we have had previously. I am sorry for the coal industry, but they have not kept pace with technology, and have contributed to the global warming and change of weather patterns we observe today. This will only get worse if we do nothing, and unfortunately it has taken years for humans to get to this point of global warming. And now the sad part is, if we never created anymore carbon dioxide, it will take just as long to go back to pre-1800 levels of carbon dioxide, and longer if we keep burning fuels we know are causing it. So we are talking 100 – 150 years or more of global warming changes we have no clue how to reverse except try to change Earth back to the way it was. All the while our population is increasing, trees are being destroyed daily at rates higher than what they are being planted. I think coal has had its day much like the steamboats on the Mississippi river, as well other businesses that have had to change with the rising tide of technology. There are cleaner sources of fuel, and we as a people need to start utilizing them.

Now who left the light's on again? 

     We need to start with turning the lights off, not just in our home but also in the cities, streetlights in particular.  If we just look at a NASA photo showing the east coast of the United States and you could clearly pick out all the urban areas of major metropolitan centers as they glowed white as seen from space photos. Do we need all those lights out there? When you go to sleep at night how many lights do you see? How many street lights existed before the 1800’s?

       Very few if any existed and if they did it was only in large cities. And if you are asleep you have this phenomenon known as refrigerator light syndrome, you don’t know if the lights are on or off, as the door to reality is closed. So why is it necessary to have security lights and the countryside lit up like it is daytime. Because we feel more secure that way? We really don’t know the difference if we are asleep. A light doesn’t guarantee security. Oh yeah, it may help keep the monsters under the bed but not out of your mailbox as monthly your power company will send you a bill and with this  you get a notice to pay for that lights electrical usage lights or they will unleash terror on you by turning off your electric.  Guess what you would be going green and that isn’t all bad.  A little inconvenient, I am sure, still not the end of the world. The end of the world will come when it is too hot outside and no one cares about anything, including having the power on, or wanting to eat, or living for that matter.

     We believe electricity to be a necessity for life and so we allow nuclear power plants, that we have no idea where we are going to safely store waste, or coal plants that produce enormous amounts of greenhouse gas that is building up in our atmosphere and ash ponds with millions of gallons of waste that are just sitting close to power plants, looking for a purpose, when there is none due to the high accumulation of toxic metals. Or natural gas electrical generating plants touted as new technology plants that depend on enormous amounts of fracing fluid to efficiently produce the gas that is used and that still is contributing to the greenhouse gas problem while depleting our fresh water reserves. Still even solar has its drawbacks as it depends on metals mined in huge open pit mines generating their own special mix of dangerous chemicals to purify and manufacture the elements needed to create solar panels.  Solar does have a reuse cycle that is more repetitive and less costly to the environment than other one time limited use methods of generating electricity.

     Power companies and our safety services would like you to believe that lighting is necessary element in reducing crime, but for the power companies who are always willing to let you leave the light on their motive is purely profit.  Actually I think crime would go down if the criminals couldn’t see what they are getting into. Tripping over a tricycle in an unlit backyard and breaking a leg, or if they were suddenly surprised by a motion detector streaming a white light into their light deprived eyes virtually blinding them in pitch dark scenarios. Also when a light would come on you would know someone was out snooping around. Now if a light comes on at night no one pays attention because we have so many lights on. One more would not make a difference.

     Our safety services like police and fire could have technology that would turn on and off a local array of streetlights as necessary to provide services to those affected by their need. We could use the same technology we use to turn lights green and red when fire trucks or ambulances are travelling on roads now. A radio frequency would light up one area after another to pursue criminals or to help with fire protection. We have a multitude of lighting devices that are portable and could be used in emergencies. Perhaps a drone equipped with light would flood an area where concentration, teamed up with a camera would be far more efficient than present technology in hot pursuit chases. As well most emergency vehicles have lights. Street lights after 10 pm would be turned off. Allowing people time to return home for a restful night of relaxing in the comfort of their home without light pollution from outside streaming through their windows affecting their chances to get to sleep. We have no need to make this world a 24 hr. business center without affecting our climate problems. We have to generate power to make this happen and most of night time power is wasted by streetlights that are not used or never seen by anyone. Even motion technology could be used on city streetlights turning lights on and off as needed as we drive up a street. Still we have headlights on a car that are more than sufficient in the country but suddenly upon entering a city have to be subsidized with street lighting. It makes no sense. And I think studies need to be done to justify all these lights we have out there at night and if they are necessary.

     Again we if we are talking security and fear of third world countries launching an attack. If they can’t tell the difference of the White House from Joe’s Bar , then what effect will that have on terror when it comes to raids on public facilities at night. During World War 2 it was against the law to let light be seen for fear someone could distinguish from the air where certain landmarks were.

      And another national treasure we have is the flag we proudly wave at night on many of our municipal and governmental offices. A requirement that says if a flag is flown at night it has to be lit with a light sufficient to display the flag in its revelry. But what does that cost us? Maybe a requirement to lower the flag or just leave it flying at night regardless may be better. There are a multitude of things we can do at home and in our everyday life that would go a long way to conserving energy. As a leader of nations we need to also be a leader in conservation and not a major contributor to our global warming problems. 

     Agreeably I have used four electrical devices to bring this article to you. Two were energy efficient light bulbs utilizing 25 watts of electric, along with my lap top plus the screen would add another 400 watts of electric usage. Still what I am coming to is that despite you may be reading this on a computer, I hope I have planted some thought as to how we can change our personal life and still save a few dollars on an electric bill in the future. A savings of electric usage relates to conservation and also to reduced carbon dioxide levels or at least raise our awareness and allow us to come up with solutions that will reduce our dependence on electricity as well all carbon producing instruments of earth terror we may utilize in the name of a rational society we claim to exist in.  Even if you walked round the house unplugging appliances you are not using, this will all help. And of course if you are the last one out of a room turn off that light till you get that motion sensor hooked up.