Energy
Table of Contents
- Ten simple things you can do to create a more efficient energy world
- Typical annual kilowatt hour consumption levels for appliances
- Brown outs and black outs
- Lake City Awakening
- Global Perspective
- Senate Proposals
- Look for the Energy Star label when you go shopping for appliances, home electronic, office equipment, and heating and cooling equipment
- Turn off the lights when you leave the room
- Buy Energy Star compact fluorescent light bulbs for frequency-used lights in your home
- Shut the door behind you. Letting heated or cooled air out wastes energy
- Turn on the Energy Star power saver feature on your computer
- Learn about how TVs with the Energy Star label save money
- Seal the windows and doors in your home so air drafts can't get in or out around the edges
- Check to see if your have an Energy Star labeled refrigerator. Refrigerators use more electricity than any other appliances.
- Learn how to make your school an Energy Star at www.epa.gov/buildings
- Visit www.energystar.gov for more things you can do in your home to save energy
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Following are typical annual Kilowatt Hour consumption levels for some
appliances. To determine your annual cost of operating one of these
appliances, multiply the kWH/year on the table by your electric rate.
These are estimates:
| Appliance |
Time In Use |
kWh/ year |
| Iron |
1 hour week |
52 |
| Clock radio |
24 hours a day |
44 |
| Microwave oven |
2 hours per week |
89 |
| Coffee Maker |
30 minutes a day |
128 |
| Radio (stereo) |
2 hours a day |
73 |
| Clothes Washer |
2 hours a week |
31 |
| Refrigerator frost free-18 cubic ft |
24 hours a day |
683 |
| Refrigerator frost free-16 cubic ft |
24 hours a day |
642 |
| Dishwasher (does not include hot water) |
1 hour a day |
432 |
| TV (color) |
4 hours a day |
292 |
| VCR |
4 hours a day |
30 |
| Vacuum Cleaner |
1 hour/week |
38 |
| Water heater (40 gallon) |
2 hrs. a day |
2190 |
| Water pump (deep well) |
2 hrs. a day |
730 |
| Water bed (no cover) |
12 hrs, day 180 days/yr. |
620 |
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Courtesy of the Park Rapids Enterprise
BY LU ANN HURD-LOF
THE ENTERPRISE
Brown outs, black outs and soaring energy
bills in California have prompted Minnesota residents to look at their own
energy future.
"If we do nothing in Minnesota, we could
be like California in five years," Sharon Rezac Andersen, executive
director of the University of Minnesota Central Region Partnership, said
Saturday, introducing speakers for a local energy conference.
The conference here followed one in St. Cloud
the weekend before which drew 300 to 400 Minnesotans.
Conferences will be held in other Minnesota
communities, but Park Rapids? was the first, based in part on the city?s
successful application for a site study on renewing hydropower at the Fish Hook
River dam.
"A lot of studies have been done that sit
on the shelf," said city administrator Betty Thomsen. "We took this
one off the shelf and are anxious to have the study done, this time to make it a
reality. It has been a dream of Scott?s (Burlingame, city public works
supervisor), Mayor John Eix and the council."
Park Rapids is one of five communities in the
state chosen for studies on developing alternative power.
"The idea is to work with communities to
take command of their energy future," said Dr. Paul Imbertson, an engineer
with the U of M, who will complete all five of the site studies this year.
"Something can be done to preserve the nature of small communities in the
state."
Imbertson introduced the 40 people attending
the conference to the basics of electricity: how it has changed civilization,
how it works and how it?s distributed. "This all goes to explain the
complexity of the distribution system and its limits," Imbertson said.
The impression he left on the audience was
that it is easier to generate electricity than it is to get it to consumers and
to build a system that meets their needs, including times of peak demand.
Imbertson also indicated that if communities
can help the state system meet those periods of peak demand, the existing
infrastructure may be able to serve the state awhile longer.
"Part of the study will be to come out to
the community to see what your interests are," he said. "You want to
use the dam because it?s there and should be used. I think it should
too."
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Sig Anderson from Lake City said his interest
in distributed energy was piqued when the legislature designated Prairie Island
as the location for spent fuel from Northern States Power (NSP). Lake City is
120 miles downstream from Prairie Island, he said.
In 1995 Anderson and others formed CURE
(Communities United for Responsible Energy), a group which has been working to
find alternatives to building more power plants.
Anderson said in 1996 an NSP lobbyist told him
and other citizen lobbyists "nuclear waste was a problem that was our
responsibility to solve because it was a byproduct of the generation of
electricity for us Minnesotans."
His first reaction was to disagree since no
one asked if people wanted a nuclear plant or where one should be built.
"But it?s true," said Anderson. "We need to take some
responsibility."
Like Park Rapids, Lake City has been chosen as
another regional partnership study site, proposing to erect wind generators on
bluff ridges and build a gas turbine in the industrial park. Lake City has
already received a grant from the state Department of Commerce for a feasibility
study, he said.
Lake City is part of a power consortium, which
already buys and distributes energy to 18 communities. It is also located on a
major natural gas pipeline.
Carrying the idea one step farther, Anderson
said a gas turbine could produce steam or hot water for heat which could be
distributed to city hall, schools and the central business district.
Anderson, who is president of a private
engineering firm which designs and manufactures engineering research equipment,
gave a presentation on wind generators, how they work and what their advantages
are, showing slides from the Buffalo Ridge area in southwestern Minnesota where
a number of wind generators have been cited. Because it lies in a high wind
speed area, Anderson said, Buffalo Ridge has the potential to provide enough
energy for the city of Chicago.
Best of all, he said, a wind generator only
requires an 80-square-foot footprint so farmers can continue to grow crops
around them and harvest some revenue for themselves.
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Dr. George Seielstad, of the University of
North Dakota School of Aerospace Sciences, provided some motivation to looking
into the idea of locally distributed energy and sustainability.
As an astronomer, he said, he likes to ask,
"How well are we taking care of our planetary environment?"
Looking at Earth from space, he said,
"you can?t see geographic boundaries, It reminds you the planet is a
global village?a natural system."
Fifteen years ago, Seielstad said, "no
one listened when you talked about El Nino. Now we know the effects are
worldwide."
Similarly, he said, "there are global
connections to the actions we take and what we put into the atmosphere.
Astronauts are all committed to preservation."
The solution is not in physical power but
knowledge, he said. "We can do incredible things, like creating great
architecture, and incredibly stupid things, like burning the oil fields in
Kuwait after the Gulf War," said Seielstad.
"I hope creativity and ingenuity win out
in the end."
He compared humans living on the planet as
"a global experiment, but a reckless one," recognizing some of the
consequences of our actions.
As the population grows worldwide, the species
on the planet become fewer "because of the demands we?re putting on the
land and water."
He compared the proverbial "canary in the
mine" that dies when there?s not enough oxygen as symbolic of what?s
happening on the planet. "Twenty-five percent of bird species became
extinct in the 20th century,? he warned.
"We?ll do the right thing if we have
enough information," Seielstad optimistically. "I just hope we can do
it fast enough."
He suggested there are three challenges facing
the human race: 1) justice and equity in access to resources, 2) recognizing the
relationship between our species and others and 3) concern for future
generations.
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Following the presentations, the speakers and
state Sen. Tony Kinkel participated in a panel discussion on "Solutions or
Lights Out," which gave conference participants a chance to ask questions.
Kinkel, who is from Park Rapids and serves on
the Senate Telecommunications, Energy and Utilities Committee, said the Senate
is wrestling with how to address energy issues.
"California is the Armageddon of
deregulation policy," saying Minnesota and other states are retreating on
the idea since the usual tenets of the free market system don?t apply to
electricity. "People need it regardless of price," he said.
The last power plant was built in Minnesota in
1983, Kinkel said. No one wants another one or the transmission lines that go
with it in their back yard.
An "energy independence" bill will
receive its first hearing in committee next week, Kinkel said. The Senate
measure calls for at least 50 percent of the state?s energy needs to be met
from sources indigenous to the state by July 1, 2010 and for at least 95 percent
to be derived from sources and devices within the state by July 1, 2020.
"It is probably the most aggressive push
for renewable energy in the country," he said.
Other measures propose incentives for reducing
demand, create an energy resource center at the University of Minnesota and
require buildings built after 2004 to be 30 percent more efficient, according to
Kinkel.
The state is also looking at finding new
products for agriculture, such as soy diesel (processing soybeans into oil),
Kinkel said.
Methane, wood chips and sawdust are being
considered in addition to wind power, he said. The Senate is talking about
hydropower, solar power, wind and biomass as alternatives.
In addition, Kinkel said, the tax committee is
looking at property tax incentives for homeowners and there may be some grants
for local units of government in the form of an energy conservation revolving
loan fund, which would allow capture of the savings so another public entity
could use the money.
"The most difficult problem with
renewables is distributing them to where the population is," Kinkel said.
Imbertson said that is why the idea of giving
communities a chance to say what they want makes sense. "They have no
stockholders to answer to and they can decide what they want to do."
At the conclusion of Saturday?s energy
conference Rezac Andersen said, "Education is the key to finding solutions
for this complex issue" and she was pleased with the attendance. About 40
people signed up for the event.
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