ENERGY
When we lived in NE Washington State my main strategy for the house was to use as little electricity as possible by super insulating, using the most efficient lights and appliances heating with dead wood and growing most of our fruit and vegetables so we didn't make as many trips to the grocery. We also had 2,400 peak watts of solar electric which there amounted to less than 20% of our usage.
Here in East Hawaii at 230' elevation there is no need for insulation or heating and we do have, so far, 1,680 peak watts of solar electric and solar hot water. Four months of the last year we had negative consumption yet with the $20.40 minimum bill we still average $33.52 per month on 670 kwh's consumption for the year and that is with an electric cook stove and hot water back-up. In the photo above the west edge of our house shows the back side of our hot water panels, the clothes line (solar clothes dryer) runs from our house to our guest house and beyond the clothes line you can see the top of the talapia tank that is filled by the rain water from the roof and drained to the vegetable patch.
A year ago it was my goal to get more solar when we next had money and then follow that with an electric car. Lately I've flipped that goal to getting the car first. I think I can easily explain why.
The grid here is 20% geothermal base load, about another 9% geothermal peaking load, around 1% wind and 1% solar. The balance is a combination of oil in conventional boilers and naptha burned in jet turbines. The power bill contains a fuel surcharge line item that increases every two years. Although we have had geothermal power here for decades the private power company has no incentive to abandon their investment in fossil fuel burners because they can always pass on the costs. To change this the legislature is working on a bill to separate power generation from power distribution businesses. Some are saying we could be 100% geothermal in 6 years.
Geothermal done right is closed loop, non-polluting, and should be there for the next 500,000 years till our Island moves off the hot spot. It also should be very in-expensive which would make electric cars very attractive. If we doubled our geothermal generation (hopefully in separated locations to reduce impact of a lava flow hitting one) over what we need in electricity, some could be exported to other islands and/or used to produce hydrogen or NH3 ammonia for fuel cell cars. Distributed generation, such as on-site solar, has additional advantages in that it would be less interruptable compared to the event of a lava flow taking out some geothermal. But if we, personally, were to move (as we have been prone to) after installing enough solar for an electric car we would need to leave behind a lot of investment with little likely return.
Another factor for buying a electric vehicle (EV) first is that there is a state income tax credit in effect for $4,500 on top of the federal $7,500 credit, but it expires March 31, 2012. Currently the Big Island Nissan dealer won't get certified for Leafs because she doesn't believe she would sell enough to be worth sending a tech to Japan for training and paying to have a level 2 charger installed. Mitsubushi has a sightly smaller EV that they have had on the road in Japan for 2 years and Austraila one year. It is now available on Ohau for $6,000 less than the Leaf and even though it has 10 miles less range at 60-90, that would still be plenty for my wife's 30 mile round trip to work in Hilo. If our former house in Chattaroy sells soon enough for both credits we've decided to go ahead and get the iMiEV. Here is a link to see it.
http://www.plugincars.com/sea-change-electric-cars-top-greenest-vehicle-list-112004.html
This row of "our" bananas is actually on the vacant lot next door and supplies about half our annual bananas.
P.S. The house sale did not go through so we don't know when we will get an EV. Stand -by for a report when we do.
