Electric Rates (where you live)

SageBrush, your dedication to conservation is admirable and most of us could do a lot more without sacrificing much. But speaking of cost opportunity, but also environmental opportunity, for some of us, it is cheaper and of additional environmental benefit to go with an electric dryer.

For example, if I took the time needed to hang out clothes but instead used an electric dryer, powered by PV solar, and used the saved time each year to work overtime, I could spend that extra money buying more renewable energy/more efficient/conservation products.

At my household we use the electric dryer 3x a week. Let's assume it takes 10 min to hang out laundry to dry. I get:
(10 min) x (3 times per week) x (52 weeks per year) = 1560 minutes yearly hanging clothes = 26 hours yearly hanging clothes

With me, I would just work half that time extra and save the cash to buy the next great green gadget, more PV solar panels, higher efficiency appliances, carbon offsets, etc. Now if I were retired and enjoyed the conservation aspect of hanging clothes to dry, I might still choose that option.

 

Hmmm, I don't like that calculation as it can be used to justify almost any time saving device regardless of power usage.
I also hang dry my clothes. If I were not hang drying my clothes I would certainly NOT be using the time to work. Perhaps go for a walk, watch TV, read a few more pages of a book, but certainly not work.

While I don't enjoy hanging clothes, I enjoy work less;-)

 

iPlug, this is why I invested in hangars
I find I spend about the same time hanging clothes on a hangar on the line, and then taking them directly to my closet, than I used to spend folding the clothes after they came out of the dryer.

Zythryn is also right about the opportunity cost argument, or we would all just have homes full of domestic servants. Well, besides our kids, that is

 

Yes, it can be used to justify many things. Such as why we drive a car instead of walk or bike even when we are only traveling within a few miles. I enjoy working less too, which was one of the points of my example and why I don't hang clothes to dry.

 

I am interested in your setup. I hang about half of my clothes, but after they are dried. It sounds like you put wet clothes straight on a hanger then take them outside to dry, perhaps? The problem I have had with this is that even with premium hangers, I notice stretch marks from excess weight of the wet clothes from the hangar.

As for servants, I do have a home full of them. But they are much better than domestic servants - they are electronic.

 

I take the wet clothes out to the lines, and there hang the clothes on hangars, which then go on a line. I'm sure some clothes come out nicer than others on the line -- all my clothes are cotton. I have to say though, that avoiding coal use is vastly more important to me than a wrinkle, if the 'cost' of line dying was a wrinkle.

Electronic servants do not hang clothes. Kids do
I found it also taught my kids to be a little more tidy in their habits, since they eventually learned that bad habits means more chores.

 

Agree, for environmental benefits alone, if one doesn't have PV solar or lives in areas that use almost exclusively renewable energy electric sources, hanging clothes out to dry makes a lot of sense. Most electric utilities have a significant coal footprint and do not get most of their power from renewables.

I also agree there are often reasons not to do or avoid things for optimal economic cost opportunity benefits alone. Besides environmental benefits, societal benefits, personal responsibilities, fairness, and good habits like you mention are often important factors to balance and no two situations are identical.

 

In the West, there is essentially no coal usage. It is primarily hydro (where available) or natural gas, plus some from nuclear and renewables like wind and geothermal.

 

Coal Consumption by State for 2011

And production by region (I think the mountain states are included in 'West'

 

Mea culpa. I was thinking primary of California/Oregon/Washington. I guess that whether the Mountain States are "West" depends on one's perspective.

 

Electric generation by Source and State, 2010
Vehicle Technologies Office: Fact #753: November 12, 2012 Sources of Electricity by State

 

Nice graph, but do not equate it with use since states import from one another using regional grids. IIRC California e.g. imports coal based electric from AZ.

 

Indeed. At the EIA website, one can look up consumption stats by zipcode, specifically. For California, though, it is still very small (low single digits):

http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-1

 

What's up with Texas? It uses as much coal as the next two states combined. I know it's a populous state but geez they could use a solar plant.

 

Texas is 8.3% of the US population, and they use about 11% of the coal. That is *much* better than their idiotic neighbor to the west, New Mexico.

Glass houses and all that; I try not to rag on them too much.

 

Per capita tells a different story:
California is 12.1% of the US population, and they use 2.34% of the coal.
So per capita, California uses about 20% of average capita. Certainly an excellent result relative to the US, but negligible ? No

 

42% of electricity generated in the US in 2011 came from coal – I think a few percent less in the last few months. California continues to wean itself from coal over the last few years. For the most recent information I could find, March 2013, California consumed 21 thousand tons of coal for electricity generation compared to 70.5 million tons nationally for the same month (http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_2_05_a). So per Californian (per capita) that’s a very tiny percent who get their electricity from coal compared to the national average (less than 1% of the national average per capita).

 

Oops. I am off by a factor of 10 for California .. Below I am reposting with correct numbers:

Per capita:
California is 12.1% of the US population, and they use 0.234% of the coal.
So per capita, California uses about 2% of average capita in the US.

 

I want to add that there is nothing wrong with preferring to work more and buy PV to run an electric dryer; I just thought it might be interesting to put a $ number on the preference:

A good PV site collects about 1.75 kwh annualy from each STC watt, and an installed watt is about $5.
A load of clothes in an electric dryer is about 3.3 kWh, so each load/week is 171.6 kWh a year. iPlug would consume three times that amount, or 515 kWh. S/he would therefore install 515/1.75 ~ 300 watts of PV to dry the clothes, at a cost of $1500. Some of that cost would be paid by other taxpayers, but the cost is $1500.

No doubt about it, some people really dislike hanging clothes. I am lucky (and $1500 richer) that I enjoy the couple minutes in the sun while stretching a little. I'll also readily admit that my wife appreciates not having that chore on her shoulders, and that makes it easier for me to shirk garbage duty.

p.s.
If we wanted to, the cost of the machine could also be included. I have a simple $300 machine that gets used a couple times a year, but I figure it will outlive me. No so a machine used frequently.

 

I have a 6.86 kW system and generate all of the electricity I consume yearly. With the high PG&E rates (and taxpayers assist- federal credit and state rebate) the system pays for itself in 5 years. I'm not too worried about the other taxpayers, though. I earn very little from capital gains and pay high marginal tax rates, so the tax payers still make out just fine in the end.

Direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies are not new to solar panels. For example, some people drive tens of thousands of miles yearly on roads, others little to none, but the latter pay disproportionate taxes for it (federal and state gas taxes are not enough to cover for infrastructure like this).