The Art of Engineering

Mercury in compact fluorescent tubes (CFLs) is a health hazard and therefore we should not use CFLs....at least that is the false message being spread by many people.

Yes, there is mercury in CFLs (typically less than 5mg), and yes, they need to be recycled correctly to ensure that the mercury (and electronic components) stay out of landfills. The thing is, the benefits of using CFLs and the associated reduction in mercury emissions far outweigh any issues associated with the mercury in a CFL.

So why do CFLs contain mercury? All fluorescent lamps contain mercury (compact fluorescents as well as conventional straight tubes). The mercury is excited by an electrical current which causes the mercury to emit ultraviolet light. The ultraviolet light stimulates phosphor in the tube which produces visible light. Interestingly enough normal fluorescent tubes have escaped the mercury stigma even though they can contain more mercury that a CFL.

What does coal have to do with it? The burning of coal to produce energy is one of the largest sources of mercury from human activity (in South Africa 80% of our energy comes from coal). This mercury enters the atmosphere and eventually lands in our water systems. Mercury entering into aquatic systems can be transformed by microbial action into methylmecury which bioaccumulates in the food chain.

Incandescent bulbs release more mercury into the environment than CFLs. When you take mercury emissions from coal into accout it turns out that a normal incandescent bulb results in more mercury being released into the environment than a CFL, even when a CFL is disposed into a landfill rather than properly recycled. The US EPA estimates that 1.8mg of mercury enters the environment from a dumped CFL while the use of an incandescent bulb results in 5.8mg (for 8000 hours of use). See the Energy Star's mercury fact sheet for their assumptions.


What about CFL breakages in the home? Breakages need to be dealt with carefully, but do not pose a serious hazard. Ventilate and have any people or pets leave the room. Follow the recommended clean–up guidelines in the EPA mercury fact sheet. There is an old and false story about expensive clean–up procedures which came about due to a misunderstanding – snopes.com has the full history of that story, which makes for interesting reading.

What do we need to do? Switch to CFL or LED bulbs wherever and as soon as possible. This reduces both energy consumption and mercury emissions which is good for our well–being. Consider LEDs where suitable – they contain no mercury and have a longer life span than CFLs (although they only available in certain light formats, provide a different type of light, and you need to compare their efficiency to CFLs). Correctly dispose of your CFLs (and LEDs) for recycling, as this keeps the mercury out of the landfills and allows it to be reused in new lights.

Please share this, blog about it, write newspaper articles, tweet (and retweet) it, stumble it, tell your friends, and explain it to anyone who does not know that using CFLs will actually reduce your exposure to mercury. CFLs help us to reduce energy consumption and keep our environment clean – let the world know.

More resources:
[1] "Global Atmospheric Mercury Assessment: Sources, Emissions and Transport," UNEP 
[2] UNEP mercury programme

Image courtesy of Energy Star.

When was the last time that you enjoyed the wonder of a night time sky? I have fond memories of family holidays to Jeffery's Bay, and one of the things that stands out clearly in my mind is the beauty of the night sky from the beach near the house we stayed in. The richness and depth of the starry night seemed to suck you into itself.

When I look up from my home now all that I can see is a few of the brightest constellations while the rest is hidden by the haze of city lights. We have lost our night sky and we do not even know what the implications of that are (here are some). I was reminded of this by a photo essay on light pollution. The last line of the essay is particularly poignant: For all the benefits of artificial light, "we shouldn't pretend that nothing is lost."

On 28 March at 20h30 the WWF is asking us to turn out the lights for one hour as a vote for Earth and a vote against climate change. This global action will be presented to leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

This is not a vote against climate change, this is an action to win back some of what we have lost. This is an opportunity to start reclaiming our night sky. This is the chance to turn off not only your lights, but your TV, computer, cellphone and any other distraction and to spend an hour with the people you love – connecting and enjoying your humanity. This is a vote for a happier, cleaner and healthier world.

Sign up on the South African or International Earth Hour websites.



Image courtesty of Steve Jurvetson, licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Nature strives towards efficiency. Efficiency can be defined as any waste which occurs in achieving a goal, or, "The ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system."

Efficiency is the perfect use of material. Packaging is inefficient, as the "goal" is what is inside the package, while the packaging becomes waste. Packaging can be efficient if it is reused, as it never exits the system. Recycling requires extra energy, and is therefore less efficient than reusing, but more efficient than throwing away packaging. Using less to achieve the same is material efficiency. Smaller products, less packaging, lower material consumption. Have you ever considered how you could design exactly the same thing but smaller? Electronic engineers, think about small 0402 or 0201 size resistors over larger ones – in most cases they are functionally equivalent, but use less material and require less space on a PCB.

Efficiency is the perfect use of fuel. Internal combustion engines are around 20% efficient – that means 80% of the energy you put into your car is wasted. If cars were 100% efficient they would have zero emmissions and generate no heat. Did you know that cycling is the most energy efficient mode of transport?

Efficiency is the perfect use of water. Polluting potable water with waste such as sewerage and chemical cleaners requires energy and further chemicals to restore the water to a usable state. Efficient water usage means reducing consumption and leaving it in a usable state. Reducing waste and chemicals entering the water system means more efficient processing of water. Processing waste on site (composting toilets, greywater systems) reduces both waste and water consumption.

Solar energy is time efficient. Oil and natural gasses are the result of thousands of years of energy from the sun. Using the sun directly is an efficient time short cut.

Increasing crop yields makes more efficient use of space. Decreasing the use of fertilizers moves towards the perfect balance of an efficient ecosystem. Growing food near where it will be consumed is transport efficient. All our environmental goals centre around efficiency.

We need to learn from nature – waste nothing, strive towards perfect efficiency.

I am sure you have been in that situation where you are struggling to solve some problem, and then you take a break (maybe a nap or shower) and suddenly – WHAM – the solution hits you right between the eyes. Our minds are in continual process even when we are not aware of it.

Taking breaks changes us. Long or short, they matter because we allow ourselves to change the focus of our minds, and that change in focus allows us to think more clearly about all the other things. When we are deeply involved in something (be it a hard problem or the daily matters of life) our perspective narrows and taking a break helps to open up our perspective – we get a new view on the world.

I have been able to take a long break from life and travel in the USA for a month. Travel always changes our perspective, and this trip gave me much to think about. Returning to my business and normal life probably gave me even more to think about. For the next while I will be focussed on some engineering design and process issues that I think can be improved upon, but I will continue to discuss the environment and how we and engineering interact with it.

For now, some thoughts on my USA trip:

• America has a throw away culture. Everything is paper, plastic and polystyrene and meant to dumped after using. Restaurants, coffee shops, rest rooms and homes – waste is everywhere. Americans generate far more waste than South African's do.
• I did not see energy saving bulbs anywhere (except my brother's house). Energy crisis? What energy crisis?
  
• When we see stats and numbers about waste and energy usage they are typically based on American studies. Due to the the above points it may not be fair to impose those numbers on South Africa. That means we need our own numbers, and our own measures. Using the US yardstick against ourselves will yield false results.
• We need to make sure we move towards a culture of efficiency, reuse and longevity – away from a culture of waste.
  
• It is hard to get a decent cappuccino. It is even harder to get it in a ceramic cup (I learnt to ask for a "to stay" cup on my last day).
• We need to learn how to be patient on the road. The Americans are really patient and courteous drivers. Most people's instant reaction would be that they have more policing. Is it more, or is it the style that matters? Also, do we really need to be policed to behave well?
• You can get just about anything you can think of (except a decent cappuccino).
• Nobody really knows or cares what happens in South Africa. We fool ourselves when we think our economic fortunes are closely tied to our political situation.
• South Africa has a soul, character and diversity which I am absolutely ecstatic to come home to.
  

There are lots of really complicated and difficult ways to design for lower energy consumption, but most of us do not have the time or budget to do them. Yet, there are many really simple ways to reduce energy consumption which only take a few moments of our time. It is largely a matter of being conscience of the decisions we are making.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Use larger resistors
   

   Does that pull–up/down resistor really have to be 1k? Could it be 10k or more? There are always engineering trade–offs to be made. Increasing resistor size increases noise and can make your design more susceptible to EMI, but there are many cases where resistor values can be increased with no discernable effect. Think about this, at 3.3V a 1k resistor will burn up 11mW, change that to 10k and the power consumption drops to 1mW. Your signal line should be in the correct default state (high for a pull–up and low for a pull–down) to ensure no energy is being spuriously expended.

2. Turn off unnecessary LEDs
   

   We (I) often use LEDs for debugging purposes, such as internally on an enclosed board. It helps us get some visual information about the system while debugging. Did you remember to turn those off in your release version? LEDs can consume a significant amount of power (1.5V @ 10mA = 15mW) which adds up for each LED that is needlessly left on.

3. Dim or blink required LEDs
   

   LEDs that provide visual information to the user can be dimmed or blinked to reduce power consumption. Try to determine whether those LEDs are really necessary in the first place – are there other indicators which are providing the same information? A laptop typically has a power LED and a screen which both provide feedback that it is on, while cellphones have no power indicator other than the screen. Does the laptop really need the power LED to be on all the time? What if it was only on when the screen was turned off, or flashing while in sleep mode? What if the battery indicator flashed when the laptop was off and the battery was full instead of being permanently on? How else can you convey the same information?

4. Put microprocessors to sleep
   

   Microprocessors are often waiting for an event such as a timer or communications interrupt. It is normally a simple task to put a device to sleep while it is idle. Some simple code can reduce the power consumption (and extend the battery life) of your device.

5. Turn off unnecessary peripherals
   

   Microprocessors usually have a number of peripherals which are either not used, or not used all the time. If unused peripherals are clocked that means that energy is being banished to heat just to clock something that is idle. Not all devices support this, but more and more are coming out with these features (such as the Luminary Micro range).

6. Use low power components
   

   Duh! That may seem obvious, but take some time to look at the quiescent current of the components you choose when designing. Faster components (like high speed op–amps) typically require more power when idle, while slower components require less. Consider using a slower op amp or lower power transceiver.

7. Use a higher bus voltage
   

   When you are running long wires (e.g. power bus around a warehouse) use the highest voltage that is practical. This will help reduce power loss due to copper losses. It also means you can use thinner cable, or run more units from a single cable (if cable current is a limiting factor).

8. Use a lower bus voltage
   

   Have you considered using a lower system voltage (e.g. 1.8V instead of 3.3V)? The limiting factor is often peripherals which require certain voltages, but you can consider other peripherals or use level translators. There are a lot of trade–offs to consider here, so use your engineering wisdom to come up with the best solution.

9. Consider latching relays
   

   Normal relays require a continuous current flow to keep them in the on position, while latching relays only require a short pulse to switch from one position to the next. You will have to consider cost and a small amount of extra circuitry, but these are particularly valuable where there are power supply limitations.

These are all really simple ideas, many of which can be quickly and easily implemented. By being conscience of power consumption and the decisions you make you can help to reduce waste and create a cleaner, better world.

Photo courtesy of Windell H. Oskay, www.evilmadscientist.com

My last post spawned an interesting discussion on how we should be focussing our energy saving efforts – should we be worrying about saving a few watts in one area, while there are other areas which are wasting kilowatts?

How we each approach this depends a lot on our personalities. Some people think big and need to see huge value resulting from their actions. Others find joy in fine tuning all the details and making sure that everything is just right.

I feel that the two go hand in hand. Each on its own lacks substance. If all you can see are the fine details it is difficult to work towards a bigger goal. If all you can see is the big goal, it is hard to see the small steps that need to be taken to achieve it. It is a bit like that saying: how do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time.

Setting big goals is important, and so is sweating the small stuff. We still come back to that question though: where should we focus our energy to have the largest impact?

There are two important areas to focus on,

1. The biggest point of pain, and,
2. The easiest thing we can do.

For businesses and home users the biggest point of pain is probably paying their electricity bill at the end of the month, which means that water heating (for homes) and HVAC (for business) are the things to focus on. The easiest thing that everyone can do is activate your computers' energy saving modes (it is really easy and costs nothing to do). Making one small change can start a process of discovery leading to further changes.

I am currently working on a warehouse floor application and one of the issues is power consumption. Power consumption affects how many units can be powered from a single power supply, and what type of cabling is used. When I made some measurements I found that the system was consuming way more energy while idle than I was happy with. The easiest (and in this case only) way to address that was to do some investigation into the power saving options of the microprocessor. I managed to cut the idle power consumption to 20% of what it was. In this case the amount of power saved per unit is not much (100mW) but the number of units is high. It helps me to increase the number of units I can drive, as well as saves a reasonable amount of energy overall. That small saving per unit will save around 350kWh/month in this application – the monthly energy consumption of my home.

So sweat the small stuff, and sweat the big stuff. Build momentum and keep moving forward.

To the engineers: what you do matters – keep making good choices.

Photo, courtesy of Mandy Goldberg, licensed under a Creative Commons license.

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A quick guide to computer energy saving

1. Set your monitor/display to turn off after 15 minutes or less (don't use a screen saver).
2. Set your hard drives to turn off after 15 minutes or less.
3. Set your system to sleep after 30 minutes or less.
4. Choose "Minimal Power Management" as a power scheme in XP (this makes sure the processor can go into low power modes while it is not busy). In Vista make sure your "Minimum processor state" is set to a low value under the advanced power options and "Processor power management."
   

The Climate Savers Computing Initiative has a guide for minimising computer power in each operating system (see the list in the sidebar for your OS).

I am an advocate of making sure that every device consumes as little power as possible at all times. Indicator lights should be off, processors should be sleeping as much as possible, and generally the device should just be optimised to use as little power as possible.

I may have to rethink that....at least a little bit.

Dan Lockton has a brilliant blog, Architectures of Control, where he discusses how things are designed to result in a certain action (or lack of action) – or as he calls it, design with intent.

There are two devices in my home which have helped me to reconsider turning off all the lights, my DVD player and my laptop. Each has its own subtle "architecture of control" whether intentional or not.

Our DVD player has (to me) the most irritating standby light that I have ever seen on any device. When on, the light is constantly illuminated, but when in standby the light flashes continuously (at a slow rate). This drives me mad, but results in an interesting action – it causes me to turn it off at the plug when I am not using it (which is most of the time). Suddenly one little flashing light has resulted in more energy saving than having no light.

My laptop has a similar "feature." When it is powered down the battery indicator remains on (green if full, flashing yellow if charging). This used to bother me, and I thought, "Why not just leave the light off when the battery is charged?" My wife's laptop is like that, the battery indicator only flashes if it is charging, once charged it turns off.

That is all good, except my laptop communicates to me that it is plugged in and consuming standby power when it is not in use. When I unplug it from the wall socket, then the battery indicator goes off – I save the standby power of both the power brick and the laptop.

There is one problem with this, it only works on people who care. If I did not care about saving energy, then I would just leave the laptop plugged in and the DVD player on. That means that you have to consider how your users will handle this kind of subtle feedback and determine whether turning the light off, or encouraging unplugging results in more energy savings.

Sometimes the most obvious design decisions may not be the ones which result in the greatest energy saving. Keep designing for low energy consumption and also keep your mind open to new possibilities.

The DME has released the proposed amendments to the Electricity Regulations Act 2006. It makes for some interesting reading, but here is what it boils down to.

The "licensees" (the people you buy your electricity from – e.g. municipalities) must ensure the following,

1. Incandescent lights must be replaced with energy efficient ones.
2. Unoccupied buildings' lights must be turned off.
3. No street lights should be on during the day.
4. New dwellings with a value over R750000 must include solar geysers.
5. Dwellings larger than 300m² must include solar gesyers.
6. All new installations must have a geyser blanket.
7. Office blocks, hospitals, hotels, resorts, and shopping complexes must incorporate solar water heating by 2010.
8. All geysers must be able to be turned off remotely by 2010.
9. All heating, ventilation and cooling systems (HVAC) must be able to be turned off remotely by 2010.
10. Swimming pool pumps and heating must be able to be turned off remotely (interestingly no date is set for this).
11. Street lights must be fitted with energy efficient bulbs.
12. Time use tariffs for customers who consume more than 500kWh a month, before 2010.

You can submit comments on the regulations up until 25 February 2008.

There are two things which stand out for me:

1. HVAC that can be turned off remotely.

The interesting thing with this is that it will be very noticeable to the end user. Turning off a geyser has little (no) effect on the end user. If your air conditioner suddenly turns off you are going to notice. The other thing is that turning a motor (the compressor) on and off is quite different to turning a resistor (geyser element) on and off. I wonder what the impact of this will be on the lifetime of the equipment?


2. Time use tariffs for customers using more then 500kWh/month.

There are many households using more than this, and certainly just about every business is going to be affected by this. We will have to think more carefully about when we use energy. Business is probably going to take the biggest knock from this, as it eats straight into your bottom line.

Other than that it just looks like we should all start solar geyser companies ;)

We are in the middle of an energy crisis and each of us need to make some dramatic changes to ensure that we have electricity, and that the economy can continue to run.

The first thing we each need to realise is that in the short term Eskom and the government can't help us. In fact, the only short term solution is to punish everyone by load shedding or electricity rationing.

The next thing to realise is that we can help ourselves and everyone else. Here is what to do (keep reading and find out how...)

1. Turn off the air conditioners
   
2. Turn off your geyser
3. Turn off your pool pump
4. Turn off anything that consumes standby energy (TV's, DVD players, cell phone chargers, etc.)
   
5. Switch to CFL and LED lights (and use fewer lights)
   
6. Run appliances as late at night, or early in the morning as possible
7. Use your computers in energy saving modes

Eskom's problem explained

We first need to understand the problem to know how to address it properly. There is a lot of confusing information out there, from silly politician's statements, through to confusing technical information.

There are two types of energy shortages, supply shortages and capacity shortages. Think of it like a dam and pipes. A supply shortage means there is not enough water in the dams, while a capacity shortage means the pipes are not big enough to get everyone enough water.

Eskom has a capacity shortage. That means there is not enough power generating capacity to deal with the peak demands.

Each type of problem requires a different approach to solve it. The supply shortage means we have to use less (just like when there are water restrictions). A capacity shortage means we have to either demand less, or spread the demand out better so that everyone gets what they need. This can easily be done.


Spreading the load

Eskom needs to reduce the demand by about 3000MW (megawatts) ^[1]. So in other words, we need to spread out the load more evenly so that during the busy times there is enough for everyone.

1. Turn off the air conditioners

This is not a suggestion that people like, but let's look at how this could work.

Eskom estimates that HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) contributes 5400MW (about 15%) to peak demand. If we guess that half of that can be turned off without any dire consequences, we already have 2700MW of the required 3000MW. This would be quite an extreme approach. Eskom estimates that 10% could be saved by just applying some simple principles.

Start with good insulation! If you have good insulation you will need to cool much less in the summer, and heat less in the winter. Make sure your ceiling insulation is in good condition and find out what else is practical to do (weather stripping, better windows, etc.)

Use the fan to circulate cool air from outside early in the morning. Only turn the air conditioning on in the mid–morning. Set the temperature as high as possible, and make sure that it is no more than 10º lower than the outside temperature.

Conservative power saving: 600MW


2. Turn off your geyser

Turning off your geyser for a large part of the day can help significantly with reducing the peak demand. This does require a bit of planning and organisation, especially if you have a large family.

I can turn off my geyser in the morning, and still have enough hot water to bath in the evening. Then just before I go to bed, I turn it back on to heat up for the morning. This may vary, depending on your geyser and its insulation. One thing worth investing in is a geyser blanket (if Eksom hasn't already come to install one for you).

Remember that each time you use hot water while the geyser is off cold water is running into it and cooling the hot water. You want to try to use hot water all at the same time, i.e. get everyone in your family to shower/bath at the same time, then you should have enough hot water for everyone.

Turn your geyser off before you leave in the morning, and turn it back on just before you go to bed. Play around and find out what works for you.

Businesses need to look at how the geyser is used, and try to keep it off before 10h00 in the morning and after 18h00 in the evening.

If one million households with a 2kW geyser element do this...

Estimated power savings: 2000MW


3. Turn off your pool pump

Pool pumps can consume anything from 500–1500W. You will have to experiment with your pool and see what works, but try to run your pool pump at night (after 20h00) rather than during the day when there is a high demand for electricity. You can also look into other lower power pool maintenance options, like the Floatron.

Estimate power savings: 120MW ^[1]


4. Turn off anything that consumes standby energy

TV's, radio's, DVD players, video machines, microwaves, computers, cell phone chargers and (some) ovens are just a few of the things that consume power even while we are not using them. If any of these items are turned on at the plug they can consume anything from 0.5W to 30W (have a look at the results of this guy's power audit).

The easiest way to do this is to use a multiplug (power strip) with switches.

It is really hard to estimate this, but a lot of small savings will add up for everyone. I suspect the savings could be a lot bigger than we think.


5. Switch to CFL and LED lights (and use fewer lights)

In the 2001 census there were 7.8 million households using electricity as their main source of lighting ^[2]. If each of those house were to change a single 60W incandescent bulb for an 11W CFL the savings would be significant (learn more about the benefits of CFLs). Also consider changing your halogen downlights to LEDs.

Unfortunately household lighting does not play a big role during the day. Commercial and industrial users are the ones that need to examine their lighting and reduce their consumption. An easy way to reduce lighting consumption is to retrofit electronic ballasts to your fluorescent lights which consume up to 38% less energy than magnetic ballasts. Commercial installations also stand to win a huge electricity (and money) saving by changing to LED lighting.

Obviously the simplest thing you can do is make sure that lights are turned off when you are not using them. Security lights can also also be changed to motion sensing to avoid them running all night.

Estimated savings: minimum 400MW


6. Run appliances as late at night, or early in the morning as possible

Washing machines, dishwashers and tumble dryers require a fair amount of power to operate (particularly tumble dryers). By simply operating these out of peak demand you can help to alleviate the load on the network. It might not always be practical, but running them before 07h00 or after 20h00 can help to make a difference.

Estimated savings: 250MW ^[1]


7. Use your computers in energy saving modes

We often use our computers in energy inefficient ways – allowing a screen saver to run, or leaving a computer on when you are away from it for a while. Some simple changes to your computers settings can help to reduce the load it puts on the network.

In XP set your power management to "Minimal power" (to ensure the CPU uses as little as possible), and in Vista choose a power saving power plan. Try to optimise the settings for your own situation. Turn off screen savers, and set your computer screen to turn off instead. Set your computer to sleep if not used for more than 20 minutes. Allow it to hibernate if not used for an hour (desktop computers can do this too!)

Again, this is difficult to estimate, but if every business took a small amount of time to do this the total savings could be significant.

With those conservative savings we can "load shed" over 3000MW. I think it is worth doing so that we can keep out homes and the economy powered.

PS. Post your energy saving tips here in the comments, or add to the list we have going on The Forum SA!

References:
[1] National Response to South Africa's Electricity Shortage
[2] Census 2001: Census in brief

Load shedding and Eskom have been on the lips of many South Africans over the past few weeks. We have had some of our worst electrical outages ever — even to the point of mines being forced to close. We are in the middle of an energy crisis and fortunately everyone has now realised that.

On Friday the government released a plan to deal with this crisis, along with a background document explaining the current situation, and some more details of the plan.

The problem is that there has been a rapid growth in demand and the reserve capacity has been consumed, leaving Eskom with only about 8–10% reserve margin. They want to have 15% reserve margin. The current small margin puts a lot of physical strain on the grid as it reduces time for maintenance (generators have to run more), and results in the generators running harder (like driving your car close to the red line the whole time). These stresses result in more unplanned outages.

For example, in the week of 14 January a total of 8700MW (22%) of the capacity was unavailable. 5000MW of that was due to unplanned outages.

In the medium and long term Eskom is continuing to expand their capacity, but in the short term drastic measures need to be taken to keep the economy supplied with electricity. Right now Eskom needs to release about 3000MW of capacity to provide enough "breathing room." That is a large chunk of power....although you might be surprised at how easily it can be obtained.

There is a single viable option to solve this crisis in the short term, and that is power conservation. The government and Eskom have identified this and have the following short term goals (my comments below the bulleted lists):

1. Introduction of a quota system (rationing) based on success in Brazil
   
   • Consumption reduction targets for
     • Industial: 10%
     • Commercial: 15%
     • Hotels, resorts, shopping centres, conference centres: 20%
     • Large offices, government buildings: 15%
     • Agriculture: 5%
     • Residential: 10%
   • Penalty tariffs for use above quotas
   • Cut–off of repeat offenders
   • Incentives for exceeding savings targets
   • Trading of used quotas for large consumers
   
   Brazil's system was pretty simple: all users had to reduce their consumption to 80% of their previous year's consumption. There were penalties for not complying, and incentives for exceeding the targets. Large consumers could trade their excess savings. Interestingly, Brazil's greatest savings came from the low end of the market.
   
   The key to making this work would be to implement the simplest practical system, and stick to it.
   
   I think that it is a reasonable proposal, and could have the fastest impact, as there would be direct cost implications for all users, which would inspire energy savings and efficiency.
   
   
2. Efficient lighting roll–out programme (target 750MW by 2010)
   • CFL roll–out to users
   • Immediate restriction on sale of incandescent light bulbs
   
   There is an estimated immediate savings of 600MW if all residential households change to CFLs. I think energy efficient lighting is great, but residential users are typically only using lighting at night, so this does not really play a role during the day. I believe that if businesses focus on improving their lighting efficiency it could make a significant contribution towards the targets.
   
   It is also interesting that there are plans to back up the drive for energy efficient lighting with a restriction on incandescent lighting. 20 lumens per watt will be the minimum lighting efficiency allowed. CFLs and quartz halogen bulbs are both more efficient than this (examples of lighting efficiencies). For those of you concerned about mercury, there is a plan to develop a disposal protocol for the CFLs.
   
   
3. Solar water heating programme (target 650MW)
   • 1 million installations over three years
   • Unit cost and production capacity are issues
   
   The high cost and slow pay–off of solar heating make it unappealing as a retrofit for residential users. Industrial users probably stand to win the most by changing over, and the next point definitely has merits.
   
   
4. National housing specification
   • Mandate all new houses be built with solar geyser or gas geyser
   • Time switch or interlocker between geyser and stove
   • Ceiling insulation
   • Geyser insulation
   • Double glazing
   • Weather stripping of doors and windows
   
   The actual impact of this will take a while to materialise, but the benefits will be reaped for years to come. Interlocker switches will ensure that geysers and stoves do not operate concurrently, reducing the peak demand in the mornings and evenings. Improvements in insulation will reduce the need for heating and cooling, which is a benefit to the national grid, as well as the user.

Medium term goals include smart metering (I still do not understand how this helps with the load), fuel switching (to LPG), conversion of traffic lights and public lights (to solar powered), and the conversion of water heating to solar in the hospitality industry.

Overall, I think the approach is correct, but the reality is that the power still lies in our hands. That is a great responsibility for each of us. If we want to see our country grow (and our mines working again!) we need to each take responsibility for reducing our energy consumption as much as possible. We (and the government) need to take immediate action to resolve this problem.

I believe that the government and Eskom should embark on a huge national advertising campaign to support this plan. It should be hard hitting and demonstrate that each of us has a role to play in securing our future. It should become socially unacceptable to use power inefficiently. We each need to stand up for our own future.

To find out how to help read the 7 best ways to stop load shedding.

The short version (my "elevator pitch"):

Compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) use about a fifth of the energy of a normal (incandescent) bulb to produce the same amount of light, so switching to CFLs means more money in your pocket every month (lower energy bills). Even though they are more expensive to purchase, the upfront cost of a CFL is recovered within six to twelve months (depending on the price of your electricity). Incandescent bulbs only last for about eight months, while CFLs can last for up to 4 years or longer, which is an extra saving (fewer bulb replacements).

A lot of people say they do not like CFLs because the light is not nice, they flicker, and take time to warm–up. With the new CFLs all of these problems have been solved. They have quick start–up times, no flicker and good light quality. Make sure you choose a light marked "warm white" if you prefer the yellower colour of incandescents. CFL quality can vary quite a bit so buy a good quality bulb like the Philips Genie or Osram Dulux SuperStar.

The long version:

I am really passionate about energy conservation for a couple of reasons (which I'll talk about another time — one of the big ones is that it pays). So when I see people inventing technologies which I think will drive people away from good and practical ways of saving energy, something has to be done.

One of those bad ideas is the BC3 bulb which Dan Lockton's posted about on his blog. It forces people to choose expensive and difficult to find CFLs instead of just allowing them to choose what is best for them (see my comments on Dan's blog).

Education, I believe, is the key to the solution, not controlling people's behaviour. As soon as you understand the huge benefits of CFLs the choice becomes easy.

I was having a conversation recently where I was explaining my passion for energy saving and I was using the example of compact fluorescent lights as a simple energy saving solution that is not generally used. The guy I was chatting to gave me the answer that I expect a lot of people would, "When they can make a CFL which gives the same light as a normal light bulb I'll change."

You probably feel the same way, the first picture that comes to your mind when you think of a CFL is a dimly lit room, and a light that takes a few minutes to get to "full power." Think again.

I believe that there are two critical issues which keep people away from using energy efficient light bulbs — light quality and initial cost.

Unfortunately a bulbs ability to illuminate can not simple be measured by the wattage of the bulb. Firstly, CFLs have a higher efficiency than incandescents i.e. they are better at converting electrical energy into light — that means more light and less heat.

The more confusing thing is that not all light is equal. Light has two important properties: a colour temperature, and its ability to render colour accurately. Basically "warm" light (below 3200k) is yellower, and "cold" light (above 4000k) is bluer. Colour rendering index (CRI) is a measure of colour variation when compared to a reference (for a nice summary I found this on Osram Sylvania, and this on LightSearch). Incandescents typically produce warm white light and have a near perfect CRI, while CFLs are often cool white and have lower CRIs. Many new CFLs do have warm white light and higher CRIs, and the light they produce is comparable to incandescents.

I have yet to see a CFL that is marked with the CRI, so when you are standing in a store the best thing to look out for is the light colour which should be marked on the packaging (normally it will say "warm white" or "cool white" — if this is missing then the light is probably cool white). Also, buy a better CFL rather than the cheapest one.

The higher quality CFLs, like the Philips Genie or Osram Dulux SuperStar, are more expensive, but you can expect to get a longer lifetime, as well as a higher quality light — including flicker free start–up and short warm–up times. The price difference is really insignificant when you look at the lifetime of the bulbs.

So how much do you save, and how quickly do you recover the costs of the bulb? This varies from country to country depending on the price of electricity, as well as the price of the bulbs. Obviously the higher the cost of your electricity the faster you will recover the costs of the bulb and start saving.

South Africa happens to have some of the cheapest electricity in the world at about 0.43ZAR/kWh (kilowatt hour), but even for us the extra cost of the bulb is quickly recovered. In fact, if your light is on for 3 hours a day, and you replace a 100W incandescent with a 18W CFL, it only takes about 7 months to recover the initial costs, and you still have 60 months of savings to go (for a 6000hr lifetime bulb).

I have set up a little spreadsheet that you can use to calculate the savings (let me know if you spot any errors). I think that switching to energy saving technologies makes so much economic sense that I even sent a "Tip for Trevor".

The conclusion

You can put money back into your pocket, AND have good light — what more needs to be said? It is definitely worth trying out one of the new CFLs. Start today.

For lots of information about light, and lighting have a look at LightSearch's light guides.

[Update] I came across this on Digg, 10 things worth knowing about CFLs.

[Update] Just a quick comment on the burden on the planet (which Arash mentioned). I am trying to avoid making energy savings about reducing carbon emissions for a couple of reasons, mainly that I am not particularly convinced that this argument is going to change a lot of people's actions. Seth has some things to say about More or Less. There are some more compelling (and also more frightening) reasons to act other than carbon emissions reductions. More to come on this, but for now have a look at this.

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