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(k)Hour of Power

If I want to cut the amount of electricity I purchase from my neighborhood nuke plant (and I do), I should probably find out just how much I’m currently using, and when. That last part — when I use the electricity — is extremely important, for several reasons.

“On peak” electricity, when demand is greatest, is far more expensive than “off peak.” Here in Phoenix, we pay nearly 16¢ for each kWh used during the peak hours — weekdays between 9 AM and 9 PM. That makes sense. Air conditioners are running flat-out then and people are busy working (those who still have jobs) using computers, elevators, espresso machines.

Coffee? Hmmm. Be right back…. you can watch this way cool HD video in the meantime.

I’m back. Had to reheat a cup of coffee in the microwave. It took 40 watts to do it, too. (Remind me later to tell you about my new “Kill A Watt”™ device for measuring how much juice appliances use.)

Back to the second half of the equation: “off peak.” Instead of paying 16¢/kWh, we only pay 5¢/kWh at night and on weekends when demand is less. This difference becomes even more important when considering that solar energy is most abundant during the “on peak” hours. By installing solar panels, we’re hoping to eliminate our “on peak” nuke-power and only have to pay for the cheaper electricity at night.

Which brings us to … a chart. (Are you watching, Al Gore?)

Here’s our home energy use, showing off-peak, on-peak and total kWh for each billing cycle. The graph starts in the winter of 2008 and goes right through to the same period this year — March 2009.

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It won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s spent time in the Valley of the Sun that the total energy use is nearly three time higher in the summer compared to the winter. Sometime, I’ll have to put this chart up with an overlay showing temperatures. I suspect we’ll see a direct correlation.

Whew! That’ll have to do for now.

Oh, one last thing. See those gaps in the data, on the right side of the graph? That’s an artifact of APS’s billing cycles. The power usage for November 2008 got tossed into the December total. And the February 2009 got thrown into March. Which means that the actual usage was a lot lower in December and March than what shows up on the graph. Sorry about that.

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Green Phoenix

A couple of new items related to Mayor Phil Gordon’s solar plan, “Green Phoenix.”

The Plan

Hot off the press, here’s a copy of the Mayor’s plan. (With thanks to Gordon’s rep., Scott Phelps, who sent it ASAP, even though it’s not yet on the mayor’s official Website.)

You can get the file (PDF) here.

The plan covers these 17 areas:

  1. Greener neighborhoods
  2. Solar city
  3. Urban mobility
  4. Green your home & biz.
  5. Desert hydroscape
  6. Public Buildings LEED retrofit
  7. Central city green
  8. Discovery triangle smartscape (green projects in blighted neighborhoods)
  9. Renewable energy
  10. Efficient city lights
  11. Hometown agriculture
  12. Canalscape (Make areas by extensive canal system a focus for recreation)
  13. Beyond sustainable schools (education and practice)
  14. Phoenix region desalt (regional desalination facility)
  15. Transportation-ICT Synergy (use existing broadband network for “green” projects)
  16. Urban riparian waterways rehab
  17. Envision sustainable Phoenix (public involvement in the “greening” process)

The Speech

You can read the text of the mayor’s speech, which includes an introduction to the Green Phoenix plan, here.

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Mayor Phil Gordon vows to make Phoenix “Greenest City in US”

And his Hizzoner wasn’t talking about our over-irrigated lawns, either. (Don’t get me started on that scandal.) No, he means “green” as in “America’s first carbon-neutral city.”

The announcement came in today’s “State of the City” address, which I nearly missed altogether. I’ve been hyper-focused on making my own place the greenest lot on the block (and I don’t mean any danged lawns, either! But, don’t get me started!). I first read about the planned announcement an hour before Hizzoner was due to deliver it. I grabbed my new Flip MinoHD video camera, hustled down to the new light-rail station and made it to the meeting just as himself was being introduced.

I’m editing a Vlog blog report that should be up tomorrow, but I wanted to at least mention this possibly historic event. I know: it’s easy to be cynical about the mayor’s claim. But there are reasons for hope here, too. For starters, Phil Gordon seems like a decent fellow. He’s also pretty tight with the Obama administration — and not just with our former Guv, Janet Napolitano (now a member of the Obama cabinet). In fact, just a couple of hours before his speech, the mayor had returned from meetings in DC with, auspiciously, Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu. That would seem to bode well for the mayor’s solar initiative.

Or at least, as Mom would say, “It couldn’t hurt.”