City of Monterey Ca Replacing Sodium Lights With LED's
Back in the 80's the new thing in energy efficiency was high pressure sodium lights for cities and municipalities looking to save money on a yearly electric bill that could run thousands of dollars depending on the number of lights they were running. Now for the City of Monterey Ca they are replacing those old school high pressure sodium lights with much higher efficiency LED lighting. This will be for all the street lights and the lights in the tunnels around Monterey. The city plans to change out about 1900 lights and fixtures because the new LED's won't go into the old fixtures. In the end this comes at a large cost, this project is costing about $900,000.00 which is pretty much about what a nice ocean view cottage runs in Monterey. But the upside is the change over to the high efficiency lights will save the City of Monterey about $100,000 a year annually. Now that's real money. So the loan they city gets to pay for the project will be paid back in about nine years and after that it's $100,000.00 in savings. The City of Monterey is going green to save some green. I'm sure with this experience and if it works out for them and the savings come they will be looking at other ways to go green and save money in city coffers during these times of spending cuts.
Antigua Style Street Lighting,
a photo by Rudy A. Girón on Flickr.
Sanyo Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries
The last post I wrote on battery chargers being regulated got me thinking about all the throwaway batteries we all use in our day to day lives. How many do you use? If you just think of the ones in your T.V. remotes and your alarm clocks and handheld games and computer mouse and keyboard that comes to a lot of batteries. mostly double A and Triple A. With a few 9 volts and D and C thrown in for good measure. The Sanyo Eneloop system is a way to get out of the go to Costco and buy the huge pack of batteries and use them until they are gone and then replace them. How do you recycle batteries again. I tell you I have to look at the website every time and I should have this down by now. With the Sanyo Eneloop rechargeable system you can buy a starter kit that comes with a charger and several different sizes of batteries. Then you can use them as they go dead you simply replace them in the charger and take out a new one. The batteries can be recharges as many as 1500 times before they need to be recycled that's a pretty good deal to me. Now this system is not cheap. But you are not buying a cheap throwaway item you are buying something that you will use over and over again. Then if the starter kit does not have enough batteries to supply all the things you need it for you can buy extra batteries that come all ready charged and they fit your charger when they run out as well. So I think this is a very good way to throw away a lot less hazardous material because how many people are out there recycling batteries. It's not as easy as putting it in the green bin every Friday morning with the cans and bottles for the truck to pick up. So until they make recycling batteries as easy as that this is a way around that. The only downside is the expense.
Your iPad Charger Is Going Green
That's right your iPad charger is getting a greener makeover. Not just your iPad charger either every charger you have from your iPod to your cell phone from every brand to the Nintendo DS game system if you can get your kids to put them down long enough, to that rechargeable drill charger that's in the garage that he will never let you clean up. So basically everything that has a charging system will basically have that charger redesigned with a chip or switch inside so that when the drill, game system, phone, iPod, or iPad is charged the charger stops drawing power from the electrical grid. Go to your charger that's plugged into the wall now. The one with nothing plugged into it and feel how warm it is to the touch. That's all the power you are using when it's not charging your devices. I wonder how much that costs you. Now consider how many people are in the state of California who have rechargeable devices that are constantly plugged in but not charging. That's a lot of wasted power. This new law is coming down from The California Energy Commission starting in 2013. It will only be for consumer electronics like cell phones and things like that then in 2014 it will expand into chargers for businesses and then in 2015 expand again into industrial applications. Business groups say this will inevitibly cost consumers and consumer groups say that the savings will offset the costs and scientists say it's better for the environment. Hopefully we will all save a little energy and consumer groups will be right and we will save over the long haul.
