Policy, Subjectivity and Intelligence

Cosine writes about "Policy Hell" and the sticky nature of policies, the difficulty in pruning an ever growing tree of policy process.  I can't help but recognize the applicability of the "What isn't easily measurable, doesn't exist Rule" here.  It's not always that people cannot quantify costs, but that their simply unwilling to ever live with a subjective estimation, even if it's clearly right.

Objectivity is great, but sometimes it's just too expensive to obtain.  Of course the ironic element here is that much of what makes policies sticky is the unrecognized subjectivity of fear.  Maybe the real problem isn't in peoples ability to reason, but a simple emotional imbalance?

I've wondered how much of perceived intelligence is really a reflection of emotional balance or imbalance.  Is the poor investor, who sells low and buys high stupid, or are they simply driven by fear and unable to apply what might otherwise be creative and thoughtful analysis if operating in a fear free environment?

Googling around shows there are some thoughts on this topic, "Emotional Intelligence", seems to be a close topic, though more broad then my thought, and apparently a field that has fallen prey, quite ironically to the need to measure everything.  The end of the Wikipedia article linked shows echoes of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, namely that in many cases it may not be possible to take measurements without affecting the condition you are measuring.

But regardless of the missteps, someone is thinking about the topic, which is interesting in itself.

Green Power Premiums vs. Green Power Purchasing

It's taken some time, but many electric markets now have a "green" option.  These are important programs that are contributing to the building of a renewable electric power generation capacity.  But there are two different types of programs you should know about.

In one type of program, which I'll call "Green Power Premiums", where participants pay a normal electric bill, and then pay an extra premium.  The additional money in theory insures the money is used to build or operate green power generation facilities.  An example is the City of Naperville, Renewable Energy Option.

The other type of program, which I'll call "Green Power Purchasing", participants pay for green power at the rate determined by production costs.

There is a significant long-term difference between the two programs, and if you're a participant in a premium program I would urge you to lobby your electric provider to restructure the program.

The big difference, is in a purchasing program when costs are lower, prices are lower.  These programs offer a first come, first serve lock-in which insures if you're paying more today, and in the future wind becomes cheaper than coal, you'll be paying less.  One example is XCel Energy WindSource in Colorado where participants pay 0.67 cents less per kilowatt hour than other XCel's customers.  Of course they all want to switch, but WindSource only signs up participants equal to their generation capacity, the rest are on a waiting list, until the WindSource program can build more capacity.

That's great for a number of reasons.  For you, it's better.  You're paying more now, why shouldn't you reap whatever rewards it produces?

Also, it's an attractive motivator to other consumers.  You wouldn't mind a few more people contributing to the cause, whatever their reasons?

Lastly, it should give you extra piece of mind that your money isn't being shifted around by the power company to offset expenses they would have spent on green sources anyhow.  For example if a utility was already planning to spend $10 million on wind power, and receives $5 million from premiums, they may only spend $5 million of their money, and the $5 million in premiums, rather than $15 million total.  They can then use that extra $5 million to lower conventional rates, rather than green rates.  In theory, this shouldn't happen, but I'd feel more secure it wasn't if the green program is clearly separated.

There is a third type of program, Renewable Energy Credits, which are essentially contributions directly to green power generating companies.  Personally, I'd rather buy their stock, and help fund generation that way then to contribute directly.

For more information, the U.S. Department of Energy has information on Green Power Markets.

Disclaimer: I'm not a participant in either type of program, because (a) neither is offered in my area, and (b) I live in an apartment building in which the rent includes electricity.  If (a) wasn't true I'd lobby my rental office to do something however.

Investing in the environment

We know if we do nothing in the next 50 years, the world will be in a miserable state.  Climate change and oil depletion would have direct and indirect effect that are hard to imagine.

But what if we assume that we aren’t stupid enough to wait 50 years, but wait only 10 years? A turn around would still be possible, but the individual cost will be higher. If today, we committed to producing an electric vehicle fleet, and conserving oil then jet flight may remain practical. If not, in 10 years we may find it necessary to make jet flight a rare, restricted or at least very expensive service.

It’s kind of like investing for retirement. Let’s say you need a million dollars to retire at 65. If you invested $39,143 at age 30 with an annual return of 10%, you’d meet that goal. If you waited another 10 years till you were 40 you would need to invest $101,526, all other things being equal.

The short of it is, if we wait another 10 years to start, it’s going to be twice as painful. You could have an electric car for the next 50 years, or a guzzler for the next 10 and no air flight for the other 40. Or CFL bulbs for the next 10, and LEDs for the other 40, or incandescent bulbs for the next 10, and a ban on air-conditioning for the other 40. An extra 4 cent per kilowatt from 2020-2030 to build wind/solar power now, or energy rations for 2020-2030 due to decommissioning of coal power plants before the wind/solar replacements are built.

So, what's it going to be?  A little work now, or a lot later?

Ruby, Perl and Security

My friend (who shall remain pseudonymous) has started a blog on Ruby and Security at http://www.cosine.org/.  Check it out.

Idea - Tankless Water Heater.. with a tank

Tankless Water Heaters for most uses are more efficient than tanked water heaters because they don't heat water until it's used. It occurred to me that a tank could help boost the efficiency of an electric tankless water heater further. Sounds strange, but this contraption would be different from a normal water heater.

For the most part the on-demand water heater would work like a tankless water heater. Water would be heated directly in the pipes as it runs through. The difference is a side-tank would be installed to buffer power usage. The most obvious use of this capability would be to warm up the tank water overnight when excess electricity goes unused. That way, during shower time when electricity usage is higher the heating elements wouldn't need to do as much work.

Another theory which I'm unfortunately unable to test is it would require less energy to gradually keep the tank water lukewarm and then raise it up to shower temperature on demand than to on-demand increase cold water to shower temperature.

The idea works far better with electric than gas for some obvious reasons.

CFL Recycling

If you're just starting to purchase CFL bulbs, then it's likely years off before they'll need to be disposed of.  4 hours per day usage would give the average bulb a 5 year life.  24 hour a day usage will give you 1 year.

The amount of mercury in each CFL is very small and not dangerous individually.  It's also less than the amount of mercury released by power plants that would have supplied the excess electricity to power a set of equivalent incandescent bulbs.  But since recycling is not difficult it is a shame to pass up the opportunity to reduce the mercury impact further.

Many cities, like Chicago, offer "Household Hazardous Waste" collection centers, where any non-commercial, non-industrial waste can be dropped off for free.

Another solution is to order a bulk recycling container  LampTracker sells containers for 106 bulbs for $69.95, or EASYPAK for up to 90 bulbs for $74.95.  That includes the container, the shipping charges and the recycling fees.  That's less than $1 per bulb.

In some states, another option is Wal-Mart occasionally takes bulbs back for free.  There are no promises there, but considering the lifetime of the bulbs a few months wait for disposal isn't a great hassle.

If you're still worried about whether you'll be able to recycle your bulbs, you can buy low CFL bulbs.  Neolite bulbs have only 1mg of mercury per bulb, rather than 5mg.  That is less than the amount of mercury a CFL bulb will produce through electricity consumption (2.4mg), and a tenth of what incandescents will produce (10mg).  Normal, unrecycled CFL bulbs reduce mercury production by 33% compared to incandescent bulbs.  An unrecycled Neolite reduces production by 66%.  A recycled CFL, of any type, reduces production by 75%.

Neolite is a bit ahead of the other manufacturers, but most, if not all, plan to follow suit next year by reducing average mercury per CFL by 3.6mg per bulb.

Personally, the mercury content in my bulbs isn't a concern as I plan to recycle them no matter how much is present, and it's years before I'll even be doing that, but it shows honest pragmatism about consumer activity for manufacturers to insure no matter what happens less mercury will be released, adding further to the environmental benefit of CFLs over the incandescent.

Letter to CFL doubter

Sean, from Is It Getting Warmer recently let me know of his doubts about CFLs., through a comment here.

Sean, I appreciate your concern, but many of your sources are wrong.  Wikipedia is unfortunately not a good source of facts on controversial topics.  You can learn something there if you double check everything you read, but otherwise you're in trouble.

Truth is yes, mercury is a toxic substance, but the amount of mercury in a CFL is actually quite small.  Multiplied by millions it does have a negative impact, but for the near future that is balanced by the amount of mercury produced by power plants that power incandescents.  Maybe five or ten years in the future these plants will be cleaner, but by then we're likely to be using LED light bulbs.  In the meantime a CFL will contribute less mercury to our environment than the alternative.  If you looked through my site you would have found that the EPA authoritatively states this fact.

As far as the idea of a CFLs manufacture consuming more power, I have no data, but unless the laws of economics have inverted themselves it is impossible.  Over the course of a 100 watt CFLs lifetime it will save $80 in electricity.  If the CFL costs $3, then it is unlikely $80 of electricity was invested in it's production.  The U.S. has some of the cheapest electricity worldwide so even if you produced all bulbs at the cheapest location where you get 6 cents a kwh, it would still be $60 of electricity.

This alone should make you doubt the truth of every claim made by that source of yours, Sean.  You're not uncommon in being confused by the FUD that is bouncing around the Internet concerning CFLs.  The other common claim is that one broken bulb will cost $2000 to cleanup.  I and other bloggers have shown this to be clearly mistaken through both scientific analysis and plain old common sense.

I won't bother trying to refute each of your other claims because you failed to provide any background analysis or links that could be validated.  Due to the association with your other claims I have very little confidence in their validity, however.

Plug-in Hybrid as Household UPS?

It's almost exciting when you come up with what sounds like a really ingenious but crazy idea, and after a bit of research find you're not alone.  On one hand you start to feel a bit less crazy, on the other you realize you'll never make billions of dollars of that idea.  Of course you probably didn't have the capital to productize it anyhow.

That's how I felt when I found out about the PG&E project to use plug-in hybrids as battery backups.  My thought was really just as a battery backup for homes, but PG&E has a bigger idea of using the hybrids as battery backups for the entire power grid. 

The second idea has a number of tricky points, like how to compensate the vehicle owner (flat monthly rebate, per kwh, or both?).  Also if it's used for more than just blackout/brownout backup there is the question of the tradeoff between risking more gas usage by the hybrid's, and the cost of turning on an extra peaker plant. 

I'll let PG&E figure those out, and instead just think how you might use a plug-in hybrid at home.  I wonder how long a hybrid could power an electric heater and a light or two?   A stock Prius is only 1.5kwh.  A plug-in version would likely be at least 6kwh (some mods have given more than 16kwh).  An average space heater is 1000-1500 W, meaning you'd get 4-6 hours of heat from a plug-in's battery if you can manage to seal one room off enough to make the heater efficient.  Or you might use it to power a fridge for 8 to 10 hours.

If we're talking about things like freezing to death, maybe we should consider more than just the battery.  It is a hybrid right?  You'd need to find a way to run the ICE without killing yourself from carbon monoxide poisoning.  If so, you can run the ICE at 13.5 hp with an efficiency of 34% to recharge the batteries, and then draw electric power from the batteries.  I have no idea what the power loss from charging and discharging the batteries is, but lets guess at 20%.  Gasoline has about 35MJ/L, and the Prius gas tank is 12 gallons but could shrink to 10 gallons in cold weather.  That's around 38 liters, or 100kwh (38L x 35MJ/L x 1kwh/3.6 MJ x 0.34 x 0.8).

If you could survive on a 1000 W space heater (don't know!), that would give you 4 days of power, which is a lot more than you're average generator.

Evil misuse of the "executive summary"

I was in the middle of reading a Washington Post article about the decline of reading, when I had a tangential thought.  It came to me as the author describes high school students who read about books, rather than reading the books.

Cliff notes can help you pass a test, so one might be tempted to believe they contain all the value of the original book, or at least a higher per word value.  But that's simply not true.  A great book is not about the ending, or any concluding moral statements, or even it's observations of human behavior.  It's not about any observation you'll find the common interpretation of summed up succinctly in Cliff notes.  The real value is the why of those interpretations.

The same is true of the average book/article on business, technology or other topics.  Surely, many could be better written to be more succinct, but the executive summary concept isn't attempting to make a more compact, denser and clearer book.  It's cutting to the ending.

That's okay in some situations, hence why I caveat the title with "misuse".  The ending may be a suitable substitute for someone who only needs to know what is going on. 

It's far more questionable for decision making.  It may be a necessary evil for individuals responsible for large numbers of decisions.  But if you're forced into a situation like this, perhaps you need to reconsider how decisions are made.  Maybe you need to delegate more decisions to people with time to fully consider them, and devote more of your own time to the most important decisions.  It's hard letting go, I know I have that problem, but it's definitely necessary.

However, implementing conclusions without understanding why is generally wrong.  There are exceptions.  When the Surgeon General says "stop smoking", you don't need to read the 400 page report to implement the conclusion.  Most conclusions are not so easy.  The books and articles for which executive summaries are created have vague and/or shaky conclusions.  If you understand the "why", then you'll have a framework to fill in the gaps which your situation presents.  Reading one-hundred 2 page executive summaries won't equal the value of one good 200 page book.

LCD Monitor Trends

See: http://tech.norabble.com/2007/08/lcd-pricing-update.html for latest info

When first introduced LCD monitors were expensive and small.  But even then the long term value was obvious.  I remember explaining why LCDs would change the monitor production game and drive costs down, rather than up.

Today it's quite obvious that was right.  When LCDs were introduced 20" CRT's had been holding at $1000 for several years.  There wasn't much motivation for manufacturers to lower prices since they couldn't sell larger monitors, and the production of CRTs required a number of diverse parts and produced a bulky, heavy device that was hard to ship, stock and sell. 

 

Size	Surface Area	Lowest Price	$/sq in.	Resolution	$/10k pixels	dpi
19 wide	164 sq in.	$160 $119	$0.98 $0.72	1440x900	$1.23 $0.92	89.3
19 square	176 sq in.	$175 $169	$0.99 $0.96	1280x1024	$1.34 $1.29	86.3
20 wide	179 sq in.	$184 $159	$1.02 $0.89	1680x1050	$1.04 $0.90	99.0
20 square	192 sq in.	$199 $196	$1.03 $1.02	1400x1050	$1.32 $1.30	87.5
20 square	192 sq in.	$264	$1.38	1600x1200	$1.38	100
22 wide	207 sq in.	$229 $218	$1.11 $1.05	1680x1050	$1.30 $1.24	90.0
24 wide	258 sq in.	$459 $429 $419	$1.78 $1.66 $1.62	1920x1200	$1.99 $1.86 $1.82	94.3
26 wide	303 sq in.	$673 $620 $615	$2.22 $2.05 $2.03	1920x1200	$2.92 $2.69 $2.67	87.1
28 wide	335 sq in.	$689 $683 $668	$2.06 $2.04 $1.99	1920x1200	$2.99 $2.96 $2.90	80.9
30 wide	404 sq in.	$1270 $1190	$3.14 $2.94	2560x1600	$3.14 $2.90	100.6

Current LCD Pricing Metrics

(In table above, prices are links to products, usually working)

Today, a 20" LCD goes for about $200, and the prices continue to drop.  Partly because LCD manufacturing is based on just a few types of parts, to which efficiency engineering can achieve dramatic results.  A bigger part is people are buying 30" LCDs.  When higher price items sell, manufacturers are forced to compete in these arenas which drives down costs for 20" items too.  Eventually 22" monitors enter the mainstream as they did 12 months ago.

24" monitors are likely to cross this boundary soon.  Right now you can find $450 24" monitors.  More importantly you can find at least one $700 28" monitor.  That Viewsonic monitor will put a lot of pressure on the higher end 24" monitors.  Low end 24" monitors will be pressed low enough to slip into the mainstream price range.  High end 24" monitors will follow in rubber band fashion.  So by Christmas 2007 I expect to see a $250-$350 price range for all 24" monitors.

One question is, what will happen to the 30" LCDs?  Surely they'll drop south to $1000, but unless 36" desktop LCDs or something like it shows up, and has some demand manufacturers may not be compelled to drop the 30" prices below the $1000 mark.  Perhaps it will be through differentiation of 2560x1600 30" LCDs and higher resolution 3840x2400 monitors (150 dpi).

Update: The 28" Viewsonic in two weeks depressed Acer's 26" substantially, and slightly affected 24" monitors as well.

Update 8/28/2007: 28" and 26" panels continue to combat while other low-end prices remain largely unchanged.  22" and 24" price bands are narrower as high-end models gravitate closer to bargain models.

One Billion Bulbs

I forgot to mention in my last post about the new sidebar element.  I found this on Matt's Free CFL site and thought it was a great idea.  OneBillionBulbs.com allows you to track your CFL replacements and the impact.  It's simple and easy, so I thought it was worth sharing.  I even created a group for the readers of this blog at http://www.onebillionbulbs.com/group/technorabble that anyone can join.  Give it a try!

Success Stories

Matt from freecfl likes the idea of a warning label for incandescent bulbs.  I'm glad to have his support and he pointed out an oversight in the original text which I've corrected.  The $12.00 savings was a yearly estimate, which I think consumers will connect with more than a per bulb estimate.

Matt also has an interesting idea where he plans to give away a CFL to interested Philadelphians to get them past the initial skepticism.  I think this is a great idea.  I've done a little bit of it myself.  At work I split up a 3 pack of GE bulbs.  I just ordered 12 CFL flood lights for my father.

Results from work are a bit mixed, 1 bulb came back with the comment that it didn't fit any fixtures in the house (I've since decided it's a better idea to do these tests with 60 watt bulbs, since their more likely to fit).  1 bulb never got installed.  But 1 coworker is in the middle of moving and plans to install CFLs in all his new apartments fixtures.  The only discouraging aspect is that I think he was planning to anyhow, but was just unsure enough that he wanted a test first.

The most encouraging success so far is my mother, who was in the middle of renovating a New Orleans home and has used CFLs for all of the lights there.  Also my grandfather has mostly CFLs though unfortunately his main lamp uses 2 100W bulbs that are arranged such that all the 100w replacements I've seen wouldn't fit.  I'll keep looking though.

I'm trying to convince my apartment building to stop using incandescent bulbs in the lobby.  All the upper floors use plug-in CFLs, but for some reason they haven't replaced the screw-ins on the first floor.  That would be about 40 75w bulbs which run 24 hours a day.

Light bulb labeling petition

I've created a petition to ask for incandescent light bulb packaging to be required to explain the benefits choosing a CFL light bulbs instead.

You can find it at:  http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/warning-label-for-incandescent-power-costs

If you want to read more about why labeling is a good idea, try: "Educating Consumers on the Benefits of Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs".