Vanishing Ice and What We Can Do About It

This past week, my wife and I went to the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota to see the “Vanishing Ice” exhibit. The exhibit includes a documentary film by nature photographer James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey. It was well put together with time-lapse photography covering glaciers in Glacier National Park, Alaska, Greenland and Iceland over a four-year period. The results were amazing. In all cases, the glaciers being monitored had receded more in the 4-year period than in decades previous.

While we argue over all aspects of global warming, the fact remains that we must consume less things or consume less energy or both. We can consume less energy without sacrificing our creature comforts. Being an energy researcher, I trolled the Energy Information Administration (EIA) website for data. I found a study/survey - the Residential Energy Consumption Survey. A table from the survey is shown below. I have highlighted the Lighting End Use as light emitting diode lighting was really taking off. As you can see, about 11% of residential electricity consumed is through lighting. LED prices started out high due to low production runs, but as state and federal mandates kicked in, production increased and LED bulb price decreased. By 2012, LED bulb prices flirted around $5.00 per bulb – my threshold. So, I used my house as an experiment. I bought bulbs (in quantity) at $5.00/bulb, first lighting high-use traffic areas in my house. Then, I finished lighting the rest of the house at $5.00 per bulb or less. I did not wait for the incandescent light bulbs to burn out before replacing them. I wanted to see if there was an impact and if so how much of one.

Both of our utility companies (Xcel - electricity and CenterPoint - natural gas) have tracking methods that allow you to compare energy consumption to your neighbors and your energy efficient neighbors (defined as the 20% most efficient of all neighbors), based on historic and seasonal energy consumption data. Xcel Energy defines my neighbors as having 4 people, 3,785 square feet of floor space, natural gas burning, and a single-family house. My household is 4, natural gas burning, a single-family house, slightly larger than the Xcel's definition. As you can see from the chart, we start off consuming more electricity than our average neighbors in 2013 – averaging 1,300 kwh per month. All neighbors were averaging about 1,100 kwh per month, with energy efficient neighbors averaging about 700 kwh per month. We were almost double the energy efficient neighbors. In the following five years, you can see our progress (passion to reduce our energy consumption). By last month, we were averaging about 500 kwh per month and finally steady state for this house. You can also see on the chart when we employed the LED lighting in bulk in September 2014, September 2015 and September 2016 (high usage rooms, outdoor security lighting, and basement lighting (high use by my sons)). Then I read about phantom power consumption – energy consumed by stereo equipment, computers, anything that is in standby mode. I bought a packet of smart plugs, which go on and off when a blue-tooth device is present - January 2017. Lastly, we replaced an old energy-Inefficient refrigerator with and energy efficient refrigerator - September 2017. And the results are amazing. We did not alter our “at home” behavior - all our changes were that efficient.

At this point, you should have 2 questions in mind about LED lighting. First, is it economical? Second, what kind of impact can I have on the environment?

The answer to the first question - YES. Our total cost for LEDs was $873. The smart plugs were $160 and the refrigerator was $1,500. The savings from LEDs pays back in about 6 months (now it is much cheaper as I only purchased in bulk when the per bulb price dropped below $5.00). Our overall cost per month decreased for and average of $150 to $70, or a savings of $960 per year. Again, we did not change our "at home" energy consumption behavior. For this reason alone switch now and all at once.

The answer to the second question is equally impressive. So, what is the simple math for energy savings by switching from incandescent lighting to LED lighting? According to Statista, the number of households in the US in 2016 is 125.82 million households. According to the EIA, in 2015, the average kilowatthour (kWh) consumed by each household (average size is 1,094 square feet - about 1/3 of the Xcel household in our area) is 901 kWh per month or 10,812 kWh per year. Multiplying the number of housing units by the average amount of electricity consumed per household of 10,812 kWh per year is 1,351,500,000,000 kWh per year of residentially consumed electricity. From the first chart highlighting that the average household uses 11% of electricity consumed for lighting multiply it by 1,351,500,000,000 kWh - the result is 148,665,000,000 kWh per year for lighting. I experienced a greater than 50% reduction in the use of electricity from my switch (most of our electricity consumption is for lighting, followed by the refrigerator (which resulted in a larger overall reduction), followed by the stove and lastly the AC - which is only on in the evening during the summer). So, let us assume that there is a 50% reduction from the switch, 148,665,000,000 multiplied by a 50% savings is 74,332,000,000 kWh savings for the US. To put that in some context, in 2012 there were 1,308 coal-fired power plants generating 310 gigawatts. From the above calculations, the LED switch would save 74.3 gigawatts of electricity. Which means we could shut down 24% of the coal-fired power plants.