Yes We Can (Rent Solar Panels, That Is)

Hey Mr. Green,

I've heard that there are solar installers who will now lease you the panels for zero down. Is this for real or too good to be true?

--Erica in Berkeley, California

Yes, you can indeed lease solar panels rather than purchase them, which would enable you to go solar without any payment up front. You can also choose to pay considerably less money down than the full purchase price, and lease at a lower monthly rate than if you put no money down. I contacted one of the leasing companies, Solar City, and quickly received a reliable estimate of the solar capacity I’d need based on my annual power consumption.

But before you jump into any solar lease or purchase, you should first see how much you can cut your energy use by taking all my eminently sensible power-miser measures on the Cool Home Checklist here (PDF). Why hive up more solar capacity than you truly need, especially if you’re worried about the price?

Consider this CBS News story about solar leasing that quoted one satisfied customer who slashed her electric bill from $200 to $300 per month to less than $60 per month by paying a $100 per month in solar rent. She enjoys a net savings of between $40 and $140 per month, but since she had “five TVs and four computers” in a suburban home, she might have saved even more by better managing her excess computer and home-entertainment consumption.

Many U.S. households could easily cut their electric use in half—which would help bring U.S. per-capita consumption down to the level of, for example, Germany or Italy. Because increased power consumption jams up the system, power loss between dynamo and user zoomed from 5 percent in 1970 to 9.5 percent by 2001, according to the Department of Energy. In light of such wretched excess, let’s halt dumb use, or the “smart grid” will begin losing IQ points even before it’s built.

Don’t Smash That Thermostat!

Sometimes Mr. Green gets a rant worth quoting at length, especially if it reinforces his own skepticism about substituting technology for common sense. Here goes:

Hey Mr. Green,

You recently mentioned various energy–conservation projects, one being to install a programmable thermostat. Well, yes, they may work for some people, but the one we had was without a doubt the sorriest piece of electrical equipment ever to deface an innocent wall.

Our coldest and most miserable winter in more than 50 years was caused by that savage little monstrosity in the downsized house we moved into. Being retired, we aren't robots on a rigid schedule, and didn't need any fool computer telling us when to turn on the furnace. However, instructions in hand, we humored that idiotic device, trying to move it down from 72º to a more reasonable, lower figure in winter, but it popped right back up. Nothing we did to this instrument of the devil, this Rasputin, or maybe Cheney, would help. We ended up turning it on when the house got cold and shutting it off when it warmed up. A pair of bare wires and a clothespin would have accomplished the same thing.

Finally we bought a real thermostat like the one we had in our other house for 40 years. All we have to do is rotate it one way to warm up the place, and turn it the other way to cool it down—the very epitome of simplicity and efficiency. No goofy buttons, no failed attempts to coordinate time and temperature, and no waste of natural gas.

So, after our experience, whenever someone comes around with "programmable thermostat" I start thinking of getting out my heaviest hammer and gleefully smashing that electronic monstrosity to bits.

–Tom (location undisclosed)

Tom, I share your antagonism toward gadgetry, but millions of folks are so “distracted from distraction by distraction,” as T.S. Eliot put it long ago, that they simply can’t focus on mundane tasks like adjusting the thermostat. It was mainly for these unfortunate victims of the economic system and the false gods of digital technology that I prescribed the programmable thermostat. Personally, I consider these and many other energy gadgets to be the moral equivalent of overmedication. If you live sensibly, you won’t need most of those remedies advertised on TV to keep your bladder happy and your legs from involuntary twitching.

But don’t go gleefully hammering your old thermostat—or any used thermostat. Recycling well is your best revenge. Find out where to do so by contacting your local waste-management authorities or locate nearest thermostat recycler at earth911.com.

And if you know anybody who has one of those older thermostats that might contain mercury, implore them not to smash or discard the device, but recycle it. Last year 1,300 pound of toxic mercury were contained by the recycling of 100,000 old thermostats.

People who still get their knickers in a knot about the minute amount of mercury in fluorescent lightbulbs should note: Those 100,000 thermostats contain as much of the toxic metal as 118 million fluorescent bulbs, or a roughly a bulb for every U.S. household.

Mr. Green Exorcises His Vampires

The cleanest, quickest, and cheapest way to fight global warming and save energy is simply to use less. I've harped about this constantly, noting, for example, that folks like the Germans and Italians consume roughly half the electricity we Americans do. I'd managed to cut electricity use in my house in California down to 3,200 kilowatt hours a year, half the annual California average of 6,960 kWh, and way less than a third of the national average of 11,232. Mr. Green, of all people, dare not be caught with a stupendous utility bill like Al Gore was a few years ago.

Among the many suggestions I've given for painlessly cutting energy use is to shut off or disconnect computers, chargers, and other electronic devices, including those in standby mode. Yet, let it be noted that not until this April did I began to systematically turn off power strips that were feeding standby devices and chargers in our house. The results proved instructive, yielding a 25 percent reduction from last year's April consumption. Happily, our standard of living didn’t drop by 25 percent because we had to wait five seconds for the idiot box to glow and vibrate with the sounds of reruns or somber reports about global warming. All we had plugged in were a DVD, a CD, a TV, a phone charger, two computer chargers, and a printer. Yet these alone were wasting 2 kWh per day.

The reduction in our house tallied with one study that found that the average Northern California home has 67 watts of standby capacity, with the highest at 169 watts. This means that if you're at the high end of standby use, you could waste 4 kilowatts in just a day. That would cost anywhere from $90 to $370 per year or even more, depending on electricity prices where you live. So make sure your house isn't lurking with vampire-like gadgets.

When to Replace Lightbulbs

Hey Mr. Green,
I know fluorescent lightbulbs are more efficient than incandescents. In terms of overall resource use, however, is it better to replace a functioning incandescent bulb now or wait until it burns out? --Tom (submitted by e-mail)

I salute you for wondering about what goes into industrial processes. Some people chirp about a "postindustrial" era as if their toys were birthed by an invisible techno-god--rather than a polluting, energy-burning, all-too-earthly system.

Anyway, replace incandescents now. The resources used to produce either kind of lightbulb represent a fraction (as little as one percent, according to researchers at the Technical University of Denmark) of the bulb's overall toll on the environment. Powering the bulb in your home uses far more energy.

Podcast: Disposing of Batteries

"Hey Mr. Green: What's the proper way to dispose of used household batteries?"

Click here to listen to the answer! You can also subscribe to Mr. Green's podcast.

Podcast:Computer recycling

"Hey Mr. Green: How can I recycle my old computer and monitor?"

Click here to listen to the answer!

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from June 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
I usually get 47 to 50 miles per gallon on my 2005 Prius and pay between $2.50 and $2.75 per gallon for gas. Is it cheaper, or better for the environment, to charge gadgets like my cell phone, iPod, and laptop in my car or in my house? I'm in the car about two hours a day. —Joe in San Francisco

I could be lazy and simply tell you to worry less about your toys' relatively small energy use and more about their toxic guts and batteries--and to make sure you safely recycle them. But this is such an intriguing question I couldn't resist poking around for an answer. Though off-the-grid energy production appeals to Americans' do-it-yourself spirit, it turns out that a gasoline engine is not a very efficient device for such efforts.

Using your Prius to charge your cell phone will cause you to emit about 80 percent more carbon dioxide than plugging in at home. (The cost is slightly higher too.) There is, however, one exception: You can get "free" energy if the car's battery is fully charged and the braking system is generating enough power so that the gasoline engine doesn't have to run the alternator to charge the battery. Though this is generally not the case, it might occasionally occur as you roll down the famously twisty Lombard Street or one of your city's other steep hills.

Mr. Green is busy on his world-wide publicity tour for his new book. In the meantime, here's a Mr. Green classic column from March 2007.

Hey Mr. Green,
Should I turn off my computer at night or put it to "sleep"? —Dave in Bozeman, Montana

Unless you have software or network hookups that require your PC to be on constantly, turn that sucker off. The sleep mode cuts energy use by 70 percent, but using the off switch reduces it even more--and turning off the power strip stanches the flow entirely. (Please don't confuse power saving with screen savers; though the latter may feature a heartwarming picture, they do not save energy.) Since computers in the business sector alone waste more than $1 billion worth of electricity a year, it's surprising that more fuss isn't made about these simple steps.

It's also rumored that turning a computer on and off repeatedly will cause it to die prematurely. This is simply not true. Even if it were, planned obsolescence would likely kill off your machine first. And when your desktop PC is put to sleep--permanently--consider replacing it with a laptop, which uses only about a fifth as much power.