PhilFAQS

I haven living with ADD (or ADHD) isn’t as easy as some people think … nor is living with an Internet Service Provider who thinks that providing little or no service 12 or 14 hours a day is acceptable.  (I’d be totally up to speed if I get up at three am every day, the service really "sings" about 0400 … but then around 8 am or so it switches to Japanese and then says, "Sayonara".  But hey, that’s  life in the Philippines and right now life is indeed good.

This idea of exploring energy costs and savings could not have come at a better time …right after the holidays we are probably starting on a house building project and since I will be the major decision-maker/risk taker, I am going to make an effort to do it right this time around.

Now there are a lot of alternative sources for electricity but I am not going to bore you with them.  Also, there is only one that I am familiar with and which is easily useable anywhere in the Philippines, and that is solar.  There are some places in the Philippines you might be able to use wind generation and some locations that geothermal would be practical (the Philippines is a world-leader in commercial geothermal energy production) but in general the average family is going to want to look at solar to solve most of their needs,

Let me take al closer look at a very interesting question that Ellen posed a few weeks back.  She wondered how a house that would need 4 or 5,000 Watts of power could be set up on solar, in practical terms.  The answer, in today’s world is, unless you are a very rich person, it can’t.  The solar collectors (Photovoltaic or PV) panels and the amount of batteries needed to provide that much power during the night would easily run $30 or $40,000 USD.  Of course, if you want to live somewhere where there is no commercial power then this might be an alternative.  But I think it’s unconscionable to build a house that consumes that much, no matter what’s in your bank account.

I have seen lots of people giving advice for things like portable generators and advising people to by 5 or 8 or even 10 kilowatt units.  I think the ‘thumbnail’ engineering involved in these thoughts revolves around looking at facts such as the average American house having what’s typically called "100 Amp service" (which, at 110 volts would be approximately 10 kilowatts).  But the cheapest, "bestest", fastest way to save money doesn’t involve solar cells at all … it involves adjusting you needs to fit a decent, but non-US life style.

First of all the single highest consumer of power in your US house today, on an every day of the year basis is your refrigerator.  This is also the appliance you are least likely to be able to do without.  So how would you handle refrigeration for your Philippine home if commercial power is a big concern price-wise … or if you want to live where the "grid" doesn’t yet exist?  Well there are three quick answers which come to mind and here are just a couple examples to set your mind thinking out of the US "it can’t be done" mind set.

• Solar Powered refrigerator:  You likely though NASA simply burned off money on space explorations, didn’t you?  I was looking for what was available in conventional solar ref systems which would normally require a ‘box’, a solar panel and batteries to provide the ‘cool’ when the sun wasn’t there.  But here’s one that is totally solar powered, no batteries required (up to 7 sunless days (try finding that in the Philippines)) and is already commercially available.  A quick price check showed them in the $1300 USD range, which, if you’ve bought any conventional "power sponge" refrigerators lately is not all that far out of line.
• RV-Marine style 3-way refrigerators:  This was my first thought before I found out how many fully solar refs were available today.  The link goes to just one sample of hundreds of different manufacturers/models.  The 3-way refers to using standard household "grid" power, 12 volts from a battery (recharged by a solar panel array) or LP (stove) gas.  I lived with an older, less efficient box like this for several camping summers in Colorado … the box ran almost exclusively on my trailer’s propane tank (usually the ref was on from memorial Day until after Labor Day), and with refrigerator, stove and water heater in use for several weeks total out of the summer I never used more than one 30 pound Propane tank. 
• Gas and Propane Refrigerators:  This will likely be the least familiar category to most of my American readers, but totally familiar to those who hail from countries like Australia where huge sections of the landscape have no grid and are unlikely to ever have one … the Outback in other words.  Also known as ammonia absorption machines, these boxes have been keeping the milk fresh and the beer cold on remote cattle stations for more than a hundred years.

Wow … I was wondering if I could make blog post out of refrigerators alone … turns out I could and more so.  Let’s look at where we are in my overall plan of showing you how you can use alternative energy to live well in the Philippines:

• Space Heating:  Not needed
• Water heating:  See my earlier article here.  There’s really no excuse of not going 100% solar on this in the Philippines.  No need for electric (commercial or solar) or any fossil fuel use. Use of electricity to heat domestic hot water in the Philippines … yes those ubiquitous little flash heaters next to the faucets, is one of the most wasteful and inefficient things I have seen.  Why it is so hard to sell economical and so easy to sell wasteful products here I will never know…
• Electric Consumption: Today we looked at refrigeration, tomorrow I’ll show you how little you really need for lighting.  After that we’ll tackle the big one … air conditioning.

Happy conserving!

Ok I promised a lot here.  trying to organize in my mind how I will put this series together and I don’t know if I have it figured out right … but times a wasting so I will take my best shot.  For anyone who feels I am being too simplistic, feel free to comment, but be a little patient with those who need some catch-up information.  For anyone who feels I am going over your head, feel free to holler, I’ll explain more.  I also, by necessity have to aim this series mainly at fellow Americans because you are the majority of my readership.  I’ll add in tidbits that I know based on living in other countries, as well as some interesting things I have learned recently from Australia … who I find has a TV industry who is refreshingly energy conscious … would that the US networks would wake up someday soon.

First of all you are going to have to accept a fact or two.  Essentially you have \been lied to for generations by both government and industry.  Perhaps not always lied to directly, but certainly brain-washed and misinformed.

The US runs on oil and coal (a lot more coal than many people realize, too).  Wyoming and Colorado coal travels all winter long in mile-long purpose built coal trains from California to Arizona to New Orleans to Florida to Chicago and all points in between.  The Navajo Indian Nation owns a huge mine and gigantic, haze producing generating station almost on the edge of the Grand Canyon that’s’ feeding the grid from Arizona to northern California (conveniently, as a semi-sovereign nation they don’t have to follow the same environmental rules as the USA … and the air quality shows.)

A few areas of the US are heavily hydro-electrified … much of the Pacific northwest (why Google and others are building huge server plants next to dams in Washington state … cheap power to essentially waste).  Parts of the southeast burn hydro power from the network of TC\VA dams.  A few nuclear plants are capable of producing more than they consume and an even smaller number of successful wind generation farms and one commercially-viable geothermal plant that I know of are on grid … but all these are a drop in the bucket compared to fossil-generated sources. 

And fossil fuel is where the money is.  We’ve had essentially 20 years of presidents with with either no energy policy or a big ‘drill we must’ big oil policy.  I don’t want this to sound like a conspiracy theory, because it isn’t that intelligent.  It is just what we are used to since childhood, and what we are taught in schools,especially colleges funded heavily by energy-based business is what we believe to be the norm.

As a result, the US has been essentially on a free energy ride for the past century-plus.  We are only now starting to feel a bit of the gas and diesel costs that others have paid for years, and electric costs are so low that we have developed a hugely wasteful way of building houses and become used to burning energy in our homes as if it were free.

Welcome to the Philippines.  Here we have the second highest electricity costs in the world … only Japan trumps us, and the system itself is broken.  Much of the infrastructure is antiquated, much of the generation comes from coal (in the most recent request for bids on coal exactly no suppliers responded) and in general I’d say the future doesn’t look bright.

So the first thing I am going to cover regarding electricity costs and ways to save on electricity here in the Philippines is to give you a homework assignment.  Find out how much electricity you have consumed in the past year (if you don’t save your bills you utility company will probably provide you a nice little printout that shows consumption and costs for free), figure out what consuming devices you have today that you are going to need in the Philippines and see what you can do to determine what the ones that are ‘keepers’ are costing you today. 

I’ll give some hints on this next time and also tell you about an eye-opening series I have been watching on ABC that can teach us all a lot (That’s an ‘A’ for Australia in the ABC, not American).