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Last Fall, my contract with Gas South was up. They had been the cheapest 18 months earlier, right around the time of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I locked in at 77¢ a therm then thinking that Natural Gas prices would stay high due to less production from the Gulf. But I didn’t count on the expansion of fracking which has flooded the market with an inexpensive supply of domestic natural gas (it’s very hard to import natural gas except by pipeline since it involves compressing or liquefying the gas in order to ship it). So prices have been going down a lot lately.

I had signed up with Georgia Natural Gas in part to take advantage of a program they had with Delta to give you frequent flyer miles for switching. I was just short of what I needed for a free ticket, so signing up and getting the bonus was almost like getting a free airline ticket (except I haven’t used it yet and it’s not as simple as that: some flights require more miles than others). I only locked in for six months (at 64.9¢ a therm) because I wanted to be able to renegotiate in the Summer when gas is cheaper rather than winter as prices are going up. My plan expires at the end of this month.

I looked into prices and found that the lowest price now is around 50¢ per therm and GNG would charge 58¢ for renewing customers (51¢ for new customers). I called them to see what kind of deal they could offer. They said the price to renew would be 58¢ a therm. I said “Is that the best you can do?” and they said they could knock 8¢ off (giving me the new customer rate!) or take $5 off my bill every month.

So I made a quick break for my spreadsheet where I’ve been tracking natural gas usage. An 8-cent reduction in 2011 would have saved me $41.67. In 2010, the savings would have been $48.60. So I opted for the guaranteed savings of $60 a year with the $5 a month plan. If I hadn’t asked for the discount, I would have been out sixty bucks. Gas prices could continue to go down, but I feel better locking in.

I’ve been learning a lot about flashlights over the last couple of years and that has meant learning a lot about LED’s. All of the flashlights I have bought have an LED as the light source. For the last couple of years the biggest name in LED’s for flashlights has been Cree, a company in North Carolina. Right after getting into flashlights, they introduced the XP-G LED which put out a lot more light than their earlier XP-E and XR-E LED’s. About a year later, they came out with an even brighter LED called the XM-L which can put out maybe 800 lumens compared to 400 for the XP-G and maybe 200 for the XP-E. But the XM-L also uses a lot more power. In addition to bigger and brighter LED’s, they have also introduced tints other than cool white, such as neutral and warm white tints. Also they have started focusing on higher Color Rendering Index values. Sunlight or incandescent light has a value of 100, but LED’s are often around 70. But “high CRI” LED’s are around 85 or 90.

Here are the XP-E and XP-G LED’s:

Continue reading “New LEDs!”

Last night as usual, I let Katie out into the front yard to go to the bathroom before we go to bed. She doesn’t like to go in the backyard. Then she stands around for a while until I go get Austin. Austin goes right away and I let him back in. Then Katie will go and we will go back in. Except last night when Katie and I were going back in the door seemed to be locked. I wondered if maybe Austin had locked us out. Katie has done this before by jumping up on the door and hitting the deadbolt, but this was the door knob.
Continue reading “Front Door Gone Bad”

Yesterday I did a bunch of reading about wind power on Wikipedia. After initially finding out that the largest wind farm in the world was one in Texas that I’d never heard of, I found out that a new one in California that is still under construction is producing more power. So clearly the Wind Farms article I had read was out of date, while the article about California’s Alta Wind Energy Center had the latest number. Because I had been misled, I felt like the Wind Farms article should be updated, so I went in and edited it. But it’s Wikipedia so they like you to add sources to back up any facts you add, so I had to get the source from the other article and add it to this one. Then it turned out they mentioned that same factoid about the world’s largest where they talked about Wind Farms in the United States. Since I was using the same source, I learned about naming a source so it is easier to recall, which is fine because I like learning new things.

Continue reading “Updating Wikipedia”

I’ve always thought windmills were pretty cool. I think I just like the idea of free power. When I drove out to Los Angeles, I wanted to try and drive through one of the biggest wind farms in the country that is near there, but didn’t make it. On a windjammer cruise there was a windmill up on top of a hill of one of the islands we visited (great idea for an island since otherwise they would have to import fuel and they already have plenty of wind). When I went to Ireland, there were windmills all over the place and I took pictures and video of them. As part of the European Union, Ireland has a goal of producing 22% of its power from renewable sources which would include wind, solar, and hyro, but the biggest renewable source would be wind. They never made 22%, but they had an intermediate goal of 13.2% and in 2010, got to 11%. But since power demand and wind are not consistent, wind has sometimes supplied as much of 50% of their demand at one particular moment (probably of low demand and a nice wind).

Some of the biggest wind farms in the world are in the US. California started some massive wind farms in the 70’s that are still operating. The one near LA is called San Gorgonio Pass, with 3,218 windmills producing 615 megawatts of power. The Tehacapi Pass Wind Farm produces 705 megawatts. But the biggest concentration of windmills is the Altamont Pass with 4,930 windmills producing 576 MW. The older windmills are much smaller and produce less power each. They were trying a lot of things early on including egg beater windmills that spin no matter which way the wind is blowing, one-armed giants, and variable pitch blades that adjust to the strength of the wind and can withstand potentially damaging winds by slicing through the wind instead of catching it. The fast-spinning older windmills also made a lot of noise and kill a lot of birds.

Continue reading “Wind Farms”