Living Like Ed (22 page)

There’s another variable that can affect what you pay for your electricity: the time of day. Now, most people pay a flat rate for electricity, no matter what time of day or night they use it. They pay the same price, no matter what.

But one way you can save some money on your electric bill,
if
you can control when you use power, is by doing what I did: I had a time-of-use meter installed at my house. Most electric meters just keep track of how many kilowatt-hours you use. A time-of-use meter keeps track of
when
you use that power, too.

It has three tiers for electricity:

HIGH PEAK.
Peak power is very expensive. That’s power that is used from 1
P.M.
to 5
P.M.
, when the drain on the grid is heaviest. That’s when you may experience brownouts and when power stations tend to go down. People have the air conditioner on. Everybody’s in their office with their laser printer on. People are at home watching soap operas on their plasma TVs.

Any power company will tell you that one to five is the period of highest activity, so they charge you the most for power during peak hours if you have a time-of-use meter. Peak power hours are when utility companies have to buy more power for the grid. They buy power from Canada. They buy it from Utah. They buy and sell it on an exchange. And it costs them more when they have to buy this extra power, so they charge you more. High peak is very expensive. That’s like 14¢ a kilowatt-hour if you use power then, ac-cording to the LADWP.

LOW PEAK.
This is from 10
A.M.
to 1
P.M.
and 5
P.M.
to 8
P.M.
During these two time slots, the price is just a little more than what you would normally pay if you were to buy your power at a flat rate, regardless of the time of day.

OFF-PEAK.
All other hours outside of high peak and low peak are considered off-peak—that is, from 8
P.M.
to 10
A.M.
, as well as weekends. I mentioned in Chapter 2 that power plants are generating so much extra power that it’s wasted. Power plants are surprisingly inefficient structures. They can’t just be shut down when the power isn’t needed; instead, these huge electric plants are literally doing make-work to shed extra power at night. They’re doing things like pumping water uphill so they can use up those extra electrons they don’t need. So power companies charge much less for power off-peak because it encourages you to use power when they actually need to get rid of it.

And guess what. I buy nearly all my power from the LADWP off-peak. It starts at less than 4¢ a kilowatt-hour. If I used the exact same amount of energy, but during peak hours, my utility bill would be more than double.

You can do a lot of things off-peak. That’s when I do laundry and charge my electric car. You certainly can wait to run the dishwasher until after 8
P.M.
, or you can run it before you leave for work first thing in the morning. If you’re going to be doing a lot of baking or printing out a whole bunch of stuff on your home computer, you also can control when you use that power.

Creating My Own Power

Now, one of the reasons I’m able to buy nearly all my power off-peak from the utility company is because I actually
generate
most of my own electricity—and this is something you may be able to do, too.

Most people don’t know this, but I’m a strong supporter of nuclear power. After all, we have the perfect reactor sited in a safe position 93 million miles away cranking out clean power 365 days a year. It’s called solar energy. And I know that solar works because it’s been running my house and charging my electric car since 1990.

Going solar is something I’ve been intrigued by since I was a young child. Being the nerd that I was, I pored over the
Edmund Scientific Catalog
and the
Heathkit Catalog,
and I would drool over those solar panels. They were insanely small—and insanely expensive—but I coveted them.

I clean my solar panels about four times a year, and I see a real current increase.

I believe that solar is the cleanest form of energy. There are no emissions from the panels themselves, and the only emissions involved in the entire process of making solar energy are the minor ones from the manufacture of the panels and from transporting them to the installer and finally to your house.

I was able to take my entire home solar electric in 1990. I’ve upgraded the system twice, installing fixed arrays of photovoltaic solar panels on the roof of my house and garage, as well as a tracker that follows the sun all day long. The system performs flawlessly.

Now, there’s periodic maintenance with anything—well, nearly anything—that you have in your life, and solar panels are no exception. You just need a little bit of water to loosen up the smog dust and the dirt that gets up there. You want to get these panels hosed off, then brushed. So then you see the voltage go up and the current increase—sometimes 20 percent, depending on how much smog dust was on the panels.

         Ed is so in love with those solar panels. I swear, he spends more time up there on the roof. Really, sometimes I wonder if he’s trying to get away from me. He knows I’m afraid of heights, so what does he do? He goes and hides up there on the roof. The neighbors might not like him looking in their windows, though.

I do worry about him, especially when he gets up there to clean the panels four times a year. He’s up there with a broom and a hose, washing off all the gunk from the air in L.A. He says it makes the panels work better, and I’m sure it does. But growing up, I never thought the electricity in my house would depend on a man on the roof with a broom.

Stand-Alone vs. Net Metering

My solar electric system was installed in 1990, long before they had
net metering.
So mine is a
stand-alone
system—the kind that is more common in rural areas where there’s no electricity available at all.

In other words, I’ve got between 6 and 7 kilowatts of solar up on the roof—that’s a lot—and then I have a big battery storage system in my garage. Thanks to those batteries, I have 2,400 amp-hours of power available at 120 volts. That is a lot of power. It could be cloudy and rainy for a month, and I would still have power for the bare necessities, like my electric teakettle, my computer, a few lights, and the refrigerator. Even on a cloudy or rainy day, though, there is still current going into the system. I have been out in the garage during a heavy rain and witnessed firsthand 5 amps of power going into the system at 120 volts. That is 600 watts of power. So you’re still getting something even during the worst weather. You’re still going to be able to limp along even if you don’t have bright sunshine every day.

And besides, where does it rain for a month? Even in Seattle, it doesn’t rain a month straight. So even under the most dire conditions, you’re still going to have
some
power going into the system.

Compared with many American homes, of course, I don’t require a tremendous amount of power. For instance, my electric car draws 32 amps at 240 volts, or 7,680 watts (about ¾ of a kilowatt) of power. The air-conditioning pulls 18 amps at 240 volts, or 4,430 watts. A lamp with a compact fluorescent lightbulb draws a mere 1.5 amps at 120 volts, or 18 watts.

Besides, having a solar system with batteries for storage means I don’t have to worry about brownouts or rolling blackouts or natural disasters. I’m self-sufficient to a very great degree. I sometimes hear from my neighbors that the power has been out for several hours, and I’ll have no idea that occurred. And during the 1994 earthquake, for several days mine was the only house in my neighborhood with the lights on and the power functioning.

         When I was first living here, Ed would go out of town, and he sometimes would send me running out to the garage to check the numbers on the battery system. And I’d say, “0.6 and 2.10,” and he’d freak out and start saying, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Switch it up to the grid. But no-no-no. Don’t do that first. Switch this one down first.”