Credit Planet Green
Living with Ed follows Ed Begley, Jr., and his wife, Rachelle, as they green their home, family, and celebrity friends. But if you've ever wondered what kind of advice they'd give the rest of us, then the Ask Ed forum is your chance to find out. Readers submit questions and comments about the show, green living, etc., and Ed chimes in with his green answers; here, we've rounded up some highlights of the past week.
Q. When my present car is paid off I'm going to purchase either a Toyota Prius or a Nissan Leaf. I want to choose the car which will emit the lesser amount of CO2.
My question is not about hydrogen fuel cells but about battery electric cars. Anyone who knows anything about energy knows that electric cars are not zero emission vehicles. Some people claim that even when you consider the emissions of the power plant, electric cars still emit less CO2 than ICE cars because of the high conversion efficiency. I've heard a lot of people say that if electric cars charge at night they will not add to CO2 emissions because coal fired power plants must operate at some minimum power output and that any additional electric power load between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. will not cause the power plant to operate above that minimum amount. That's all fine and dandy but I need to see the numbers in order to know for sure. What if electric cars become extremely popular? Will there be a certain threshold where charging all these cars at night will cause the power plants to burn more coal?
A. Depends on your source for electricity. With my electric car, the source is solar -- so it emits less CO2 than my wife's Prius. If the source is a coal burning power plant, you'll need someone with more engineering skill than me to figure out the exact data.
Ed
Q. Why haven't you transitioned over to solar thermal for your domestic water heating and possibly even your household heating? We have a solar water heater panel that can provide enough hot water for whatever you need. Our panels do not have to be mounted on the roof.
A. I have had solar thermal water heating in my house since I moved in, over 20 years now. All the water is heated via solar thermal, then it moves to an AO Smith Vertex 100 gas unit to do any additional heating if demand is high or if the solar thermal is not doing a lot due to weather. In the winter, the house is heated completed by the hot water from the solar thermal / Vertex combo through a First Co AquaTherm forced air water-based furnace. It's a great system, and solar thermal is the core component.
Ed
Q. I plan to put all my hardly used electrical devices -- such as TV's in spare rooms, VCR's, DVD players -- on switched power. An audit using my P3 Kill-a-watt showed that three rarely used TV's, three VCR's, and two DVD's audio amps in spare areas of the home are using well over $20.00/month in electric just sitting waiting to be used. Many go weeks at a time without use, and some are used only a few times a year.
At around the cost of one months saving -- and some diligence to be sure to turn the power switch off on the power strips -- this mode of conservation's costs are a fraction of the annual savings, which easily trumps trying to offset your use through production where the payback tends to be years.
Thanks for all your ideas and the inspiration... so glad to see the new season kick off.
A. That's a good plan -- and if you want to go the full monty, check out the system at www.greenswitch.tv -- you can remote such down things throughout the house and garage with one switch, so you don't have to isolate all your phantom power devices in one place. It's slick!
Ed
