Sunday, April 18, 2010

Why save electricity?

Why save electricity is a very fundamental question that is oftentimes neglected. The whole Internet world has been filled up with "How To's" on saving electricity and only a handful of them deals on the "Why's" of the issue. Perhaps the answer to the why's has already been attributed to common sense that only very few would like to ask this question. In this efficiency-conscious age, I understand that the title of this post exposes myself to being dubbed as someone lacking common sense.

However, I believe that in everything we do, the why is what gives us direction, purpose, or reason to pursue or accomplish things. Focus on how to's alone and one might end up in the wrong direction.

Here are my few cents on why we should save electricity:


1. To save money

The most obvious reason, and probably the strongest motivator, to save electricity is the desire to save money. The less electricity we use, the less money we spend.


2. To save the environment

When we save electricity, we also save the environment. At home, when we turnoff our TV, lights, and other electrical appliances,  the effect on the environment may not be very obvious since everything is as clean as when they are ON. What we do not see is that power plants burn less fuels when there is less demand for electricity. Latest achievements on clean renewable energy sources are good news indeed, but it is never a reason to be lavish on our electricity usage. DOE Statistics shows 66% of our electricity is still provided by power plants running on fossil fuels.


3. To help the country's economy

The Philippines still imports majority of its energy sources. This is mainly evidenced by how our daily lives are affected by the fluctuations in world oil prices. The less electricity we use, the less fuel our country needs to import.


4. To help spread awareness

Your impact as a single individual in saving electricity will only save a single drop in all our oceans and a few cents in the billions of pesos that the country pays for imported fuels. However, you can multiply that impact by inspiring others to do their part. There is no better way of spreading energy efficiency awareness than starting it in your own home; making it visible to your neighbors, your visiting relatives and friends and hope that they, too, will understand energy efficiency through your paradigm.


The next time you switch off a light, think that you are not only saving a few small coins in your purse, you are also helping save something bigger.

Monday, April 12, 2010

The most effective way of saving electricity

The most effective way of saving electricity is, without doubt, not to use it at all. Just last week, news around the globe including Yahoo News, BusinessWeek, and even Arab Times had this headlines: Philippines to shut down malls to save power. I have never been a good engineer in power plant operations so I could not comment on what happens in the power plants when a big chunk of its consumers is going to shut down. Do power plants have batteries to store electric energy? Or do power plants automatically slow down fuel oil consumption? Or do they automatically slow down the flow of water from their dams? Either ways, my high schools physics tells me that energy is going to be preserved if we stop consuming them, either in the form of stored electric energy in batteries (by the way, if ever power plants have batteries that can store Megawatt-hours of electricity, they must be very huge! shame on me if power plant engineers would ever see this :)), or in the form of chemical energy in fuel oils, or probably, in the form of stored potential energy in dams.

Anyway, saving electricity by not using it is obviously a joke! Who could imagine living in your household without electric lamps or working in the office without computers and air conditioners? By the way, I am not saying that shutting down malls is a joke. The Philippine Government probably have good reasons to do so. In fact, I believe they have a very serious reason to do so. Actually, it got me curious when the headline used the term "power". Since power is the "rate" of energy consumption or generation, I think what the government meant is to reduce the rate of electricity consumption so that power plants would not need to operate at it's full capacity which may prone them to power failures. Or, the reduced demand for electricity may allow them to shut down few power plants and use them as backup in case the main operating power plants would fail. Do I get it this time? I am just hoping I am getting close to it.

Anyway, back to our homes and offices, there is no need to shut down electric equipments just to save electricity, unless those equipments are not needed at all. We can still use air conditioners, refrigerators, lighting, and computers and still save electricity. The key thing here is efficiency, being able to use only what is actually needed and minimize wastes as much as possible. In my next posts, I would like to make them a journal of energy conservation measures that I have done or am planning to do at home and in the office.

Friday, April 9, 2010

It's getting hot in here

As the seasons become hotter each year, you may find your living and working spaces less comfortable despite having air conditioners in place. This is because cooling equipments like air conditioners and refrigerators become less efficient as the outside air temperature increases. The reduction in efficiency could mean 2 things:

  1. Your cooling equipments consume more electricity at the same amount of cooling it produces.
  2. Your cooling equipments may no longer be able to maintain a desired indoor temperature.

Number 1 is most common that is why many of us would notice significantly higher electric bills during summer seasons. In fact, my previous post about electricity consumption chart featured a chart showing highest electricity consumption during the summer month of April and lowest around June, January, and December, which are the relatively cooler months.

Number 2 is relatively uncommon because air conditioning engineers, designers, or technicians always choose a unit that has higher cooling capacity than what you actually need. The unit they would install may have cooling capacities that is 20 or 50%, and sometimes even 100% more than your actual cooling requirement. This is common practice accepted in engineering just so the equipment could still provide the necessary cooling in case they mess up with their calculations, or in case changes will be made to your room or office later on. Besides, some factors are simply unpredictable and including them in the calculation details may prove impractical.

So here are some things you can do in order to counter the effects of the increasingly hot season on your electric bills and comfort. Some of them maybe tricky depending on  your background in this field. Others may be understood through common sense. However, I just read in the obituary today that Common Sense has just passed away so I would rather include them anyway.

  1. Dig the well. Have your air conditioning units checked and cleaned by qualified technicians before the start of the hot season. The sayings "dig the well before your are thirsty" and "prevention is better than cure" apply here. Never wait for your air conditioner to break down before you have them checked. Preventive maintenance should be done at least once a year. In our case, we have our air conditioner checked and maintained as early as February, a still relatively cooler month. Besides, by the hotter months of March, April, and May, technicians will then be busy and may not be able to come to your place right away when you need them. It would also be possible that they will charge you higher fee because of the demand for their services during these months. If you encounter difficulty finding good service technicians, you may visit HVACR Philippines. You may message any of their members or post a topic of your need in their forums. I am pretty sure you will be able to get a lot of help from the members of that site.
  2. Block the air. Keeping doors and windows closed to prevent air exchange between indoor and outside air is common sense. However, based on experience, some leaks to the outside environment are not very obvious. One time I noticed a door to our bathroom that was not properly closed. And then in the bathroom there was an air ventilation window that opens up directly to outside air. If you are not very conscious at this, you may not notice those hot air sneaking into your room.
  3. Block the sun. Closing doors and windows is not enough.  In many designs, one of the major factors that heat up building interiors is sun's radiation through glass windows. Keep the blinds closed in all exposed windows as much as possible. I mean all windows and that includes exposed windows of unused rooms. By the way, exposed windows mean windows that are exposed to the outside whether or not they are directly hit by the sun. Glass walls that serve as office dividers are exemptions.
  4. Close rooms that are not used. This one I would not like to consider as common sense since many people tend to neglect it. Unused rooms will add  up to the amount of space that your air conditioner would need to cool. And since they are not used, the energy used to cool down that room is wasted. In your office, you may have a conference room that is used only few hours per week. Keeping them closed when not used will certainly help.

Hope this would be helpful and relevant.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Brownout, Brownout, Brownout!!!

I could not judge who is responsible for or what the reasons of the brownouts are in Manila lately. All I know is that I have felt the damage first-hand. To some degree, I could somehow understand the necessity of these brownouts - something related to El NiƱo. On the other hand, I could also feel the frustrations, especially in the business community, on how these brownouts are being managed. If under the current circumstances, there is nothing humanly doable to prevent these brownouts, there could at least be some measures to manage the damage that it could cause and has already caused especially to the business communities. So far, the 2 brownouts that occurred this week have already caused us the following:

1. Decreased productivity. Of course, lost operating hours means lost production time.

2. Increased operating cost. Due to lost time during regular office hours, many of our employees opted to work overtime so they can finish works on schedule, with overtime pay rate, of course. Nevertheless, I still consider ourselves lucky that we have employees who have the initiative to make up for the lost work hours.

3. Lost communications with clients. For a BPO company catering to clients as far as half-way around the globe, communication is a factor that could make or break your entire operations and could even determine your company's survivability in this highly competitive industry. Lost communications could mean lost opportunities, or worse, lost reputation. I hope the reactive explanation we sent to our clients would help, still we could not provide enough explanation on why the interruptions were so unpredictable.

4. Lost data. The first brownout occurred so suddenly that some of my works got lost. Though Excel automatically recovers the file that one is working on prior to the power outage, it would still lost about 5 minutes of your latest works. If you are not lucky enough, you might end up reworking entire workbooks.

Of course, there are also some shortcomings on our end. The owner of our condo unit did not connect our office to the building's emergency power circuit. We don't have UPS's that allows our computer to go on live for some time even after the brownout. If these brownouts continue, we certainly have to work on these areas.

On the other hand, I am still wondering why Meralco and/or the power generation companies could not create a predictable advance schedules of these brownouts. I have been calling Meralco hot line 16211 many times already. I learned they can only confirm schedule on the day of the brownout itself. This would mean we can only have few hours to prepare for the necessary adjustments on our operation schedule. For our kind of business, a week advance notice is ideal. For now, I just have to call Meralco every morning of each workday just to see if there is a scheduled brownout for the day. I just hope and pray that this crisis will soon be over or at least Meralco and those power generating companies could get those advance schedules working the soonest possible time.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Understanding your electricity consumption chart

For many, it would be hard to ignore this chart in their electric bills as it would easily give them an idea on whether they have increasing or decreasing electricity consumption.

One of the common mistakes people do in interpreting this graph is comparing current energy consumption with the immediately preceding month. That is, when they see a column representing current consumption that is higher than the previous month, the immediate conclusion is that they have increased electricity consumption, and then vice versa.

This is right in a way but only partly, especially if you have air conditioners, electric fans, electric water heater, or any cooling or heating devices in your house. Your aircons or electric fans would be used more during hot seasons and less during cooler months. Ambient temperature could vary from month to month and thus, your electricity consumption too.
So how do you know whether you have saved or increased on your electricity consumption this recent month?

The chart above represents 13 months of monthly electricity consumption, not 12 as many would think. The above example starts from March 2009 to March 2010. In order to determine your comparative electricity consumption for the most recently billed month which is March 2010, you would be more technically correct if you compare it with March 2009. The underlying logic behind this is that the same months theoretically would have the same climatic conditions that affect your electricity consumption.

You would notice on the chart that March 2010 is slightly higher than February and significantly higher than December and January. However, look further backwards and you would see that March 2010 is about the same with that of March 2009. So in this example, I would say that the electricity consumption for the recently billed month is just about normal.

There... so I hope that after reading this, you will no longer get sad when getting high electric bills during summer and don't get too excited either when you see low electricity bills during the cooler months. On the other hand, it is possible that I only confused some of you since I myself got confused when I was writing this piece. You may post questions on the comments section below and I hope we can find the answer together.