Archive for the ‘Energy efficiency’ Category
Are you a fan of smarter energy use?
Now that summer is well and truly upon us it is time to talk about how to stay cool without blowing the energy budget.
Keeping the heat out in the first place is smarter than trying to cool your living spaces after the fact:
- Make sure your home is as draughtproof as you can make it – this will help keep you warmer in winter as well!
- On hot days keep the curtains closed – lighting a space takes less energy than cooling especially if you are using leading edge LED lights – if you have external blinds or awnings, use them
- Set your ceiling fan to summer mode and use it in preference to air conditioning – you’ll be surprised by how much difference it makes
…and, finally, homeward bound. The end…or maybe not??
I was again introduced by the mayor, at my Kingston talk, and the audience was well engaged. My host, John, and I headed home afterwards and the next morning I left bound for my next stop 4km from Oyster Cove and my talk at the Kettering Community Hall.
The directions given by Mark [the Spark] were explicit and accurate and I arrived at their place just after noon. Mark and Narelle live a low impact life in the hills west of the highway. I was to be in the cottage they have and the afternoon was spent assisting Mark and a friend Dan replace some rotten stumps under the workshop – grunt work but satisfying nonetheless. The talk went well to a great audience and I returned home with Mark and went straight to bed. The next day was a ‘biggy’ from there to Oatlands – a distance of some 120kms!
Coal fired power & base-load
Currently, most of our power generation in Australia comes from coal.
One of the problems with coal (and why off-peak power is cheaper than peak power) is that they require a long period of time to heat up to operating temperature and so they cannot be started and stopped quickly.
From the Climate Spectator (Giles Parkinson) comes: “The biggest challenge is how to manage the growth in peak demand, which is growing at a phenomenally faster rate than baseload power. It will come as something of a shock to most consumers that their soaring power bills are not the fault of green energy subsidies, but mostly because of the neighbour’s newly installed air conditioning unit. Or their own.”
