Fuel cell cars and other things

Last week I attended an interesting presentation at the California Fuel Cell Partnership located near Sacramento.  I have been aware of this organization for a decade or so, but this was my first visit. 

The showroom contains some very impressive looking fuel cells on shelves and installed in a cut-away automobile.  I worked in the fuel cell industry more than a dozen years ago and was very impressed by the obvious advances in technologies and workmanship in the ensuing years. They have moved from "experimental" devices to high tech, high quality products.

When I refer to fuel cells I am talking about one specific type of device that combines gaseous hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity and water at temperatures close to room temperature.  In the simplest description, these devices consist of two chambers separated by a membrane.  One chamber contains gaseous hydrogen, the other contains oxygen (or air in most cases).  The membrane is called a PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) (sometimes called the polymer electrolyte membrane).  These are just two names for the same thing.  The last time I actually saw some of this membrane it looked like thin Suranwrap. The finish device is sometimes called a PEMFC (PEM Fuel Cell).

The PEM is the heart of the system.  It contains molecules (often platinum) that act as a catalyst to break the hydrogen molecule (H2) into two hydrogen ions (+charge) and two electrons (- charge). The hydrogen ions are small enough to migrate through the PEM to the other side containing oxygen molecules (O2).  The PEM blocks hydrogen, but allows the flow of hydrogen ions.  The hydrogen and oxygen are anxious to join and form water, but they are missing the two electrons.   The two electrons get there through a wire, creating the electricity that powers the devices that are in the circuit.  Typically, the hydrogen is supplied by a pressurized (10,000 psi) storage tank of hydrogen.   The oxygen is often supplied by a stream of fresh air flowing through an open chamber.  The existing stream of air carries off the water molecules.  Hydrogen is depressurized, then piped to one side while flowing air passes across the other side of the PEM, producing abundant amounts of electricity.  All of this happens at relatively low temperatures.  The temperatures are maintained close to 100C (212F) so that the water turns to steam and doesn't clog up the system with liquid water. 

There are very few moving parts in this device.  The hydrogen flows just enough to give up the electrons required to supply the desired amount of electricity.  The air needs to be pumped, or blown, through the air side of the chambers.  That is about it.  It just sits there and works - almost as passive as PV solar panels.  Of course there are a lot more things involved in the way of sensors, valves and safety devices - but it still turns out to be quite simple in comparison to something such as an internal engine. 

For many years there were giant roadblocks due to patent problems that resulted in stifling the ability to turn the idea into a viable product.  Foremost among the barriers were the patents on the PEM material.  Instead of being the pennies per square foot that is paid by the oil companies for use in their refineries, it cost hundreds of dollars a square foot for fuel cell applications.  Apparently many of these barriers have recently been removed and the quality of the membrane has been significantly improved.  The presenter said that many companies have opened their patents so that they can be freely used without royalties or restrictions.  They did this because it became clear that the industry would never grow as long as the patents were in place blocking integration of the various parts into a working system.

today there are about two dozen automakers worldwide that are actively pursuing the fuel cell market.  Many of these companies have mature, fully tested, vehicles on the roads. Apparently there are currently about 300 of these vehicles in California.  An oft-cited observation is that they aren't an important technology because there are so few of them.  Of course, when the first shoe sized cell-phones came out the phone companies said they weren't a concern because they had such a tiny share of the market.  Obviously this situation of being a tiny slice of the market can change quite rapidly given proper market forces.

One problem with their widespread introduction is the current lack of fueling stations.   Studies have determined that 100 strategically placed filling stations in California should be enough to push the technology "over the top" for everyday use in that State.  Currently there are 68 of these stations completed or in construction.  The plan is to complete the full complement of 100 by the end of the year.  At that point, most customers will be within acceptable distances to a filling station.   California will then have the hydrogen filling infrastructure to support a fuel cell vehicle fleet, possibly jump-starting other States to follow suit.

The current range and filling times are impressive.  Automobiles get a range of 300-500 miles between fill-ups, and it only takes three minutes to fill the tanks.  The volume of hydrogen to achieve this range is about 1/3 of the volume of gasoline to do the same.  That is comparable to current gasoline vehicles, and MUCH better than electrical vehicles.  It is even better than Tesla's super chargers located along major interstate highways that charge a car in about 20 minutes.

All this sounds promising, but there is still the question of where does the hydrogen come from?  This is a similar problem to that faced by the electric car industry. One obvious answer is to make hydrogen using solar produced electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen (hydrolysis).  I suspect that this will be a long term answer, with the bulk of the hydrogen being produced locally by distributed ("roof top") solar installations on homes, building, parking lots and shade structures. However, that is not likely to be short term solution because it requires additional infrastructure to be in place first.  It is a bit of the old chicken and egg problem.  You need the one before the second, but the second before first.  A second problem with producing hydrogen from water is that it requires about one gallon of water to travel 70 miles (as compared to requiring about 2 gallons of water to produce one gallon of gasoline).  While the water use is much less than for other fuels, it is still a lot if the entire fleet were to be powered by hydrogen.  Solving the water use problem is needed.  I wonder why the water can't be condensed from the exhaust and re-used.  It is pure water at that point.  I think some simple and effective solutions will be found to solve this issue.  (For example: The air from the cell will be saturated, 100C air.  Cooling that to 50C or less will cause the vast majority of the water to condense.  Since this device will be used in a moving vehicle, a source of relatively cool air will be usually be available to achieve this temperature change - solving most of the water use problem when the less than five gallons of water is discharged at the filling station.)

The obvious interim solution will likely be creating hydrogen from natural gas - a well known and common process.  In addition to that source of hydrogen, there is a growing number of facilities that produce hydrogen from agricultural products and waste materials such as waste food.

It appears that we might be on the verge of a hydrogen economy.  Currently, the main application for this technology is powering leased vehicles (terms are about $600/month - but include free hydrogen).  There are also PEMFC cells used to power portable light stands used in highway construction and to provide lighting for large events because they are quiet, non-toxic and portable.  Some of the large package delivery services that use all electric vehicles are adding fuel cells to achieve longer range operations, an electric - fuel cell hybrid.

I found this to be a pretty exciting turn of events.  It has always been clear that battery technologies are an interim step to moving toward an all electric fuel economy.  They are heavy, expensive, contain hazardous materials, contain huge amounts of stored electrical energy and have a relative short life before needing to be replaced.  PECFC's avoid all of these problems (turning off the hydrogen will automatically eliminate electrical power).  Not only that, but as far as I have been able to determine after studying them for many years as a system safety engineer, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are far safer than all-electric, hybrid or pure gasoline or diesel vehicles.  A caveat to this statement is that for vehicle use, there will likely always be a hydrogen-battery hybrid configuration that allows for recouping energy through regenerative breaking.  This results in a high voltage battery pack that has all of the hazards associated with an all electric, battery powered vehicle.

I find one of the most interesting parts of this move toward a hydrogen fuel cells energy economy is that it opens up to the possibility of using a very wide range of "primary" energy sources to produce the needed hydrogen, and it provides the possibility for long term, portable/transportable storage of fuel that is not achievable with battery storage.  One of the prime advantages of liquid fuels (oil, gasoline, etc), is that it can be stored and transported - and that it has an energy density high enough to be used in large moving vehicles such as automobiles and trucks.  It is turning out that hydrogen storage for applications such as trucks and automobiles uses less space, and is significantly lighter than that required for a comparable range using gasoline or diesel. One application that is unlikely to be involved with fuel cell technologies is for powering airliners because they get their thrust in a large part by expelling high velocity mass from the burning fuel, they are not just giant fans in the sky.

Once again, when considering whether or not we have the technology to implement vast improvements to the environment through a reduction in pollution and green house gases, the answer to "are we there yet?" is - "look out the window, we are there - are we willing to make use of it?"

Ygrene - yet another energy scam

I have been looking into financing energy improvements for homes and businesses and came face to face with a program called Ygrene.  It seems to have been implemented throughout a large part of California (and probably other states).  The idea behind it is pretty simple.  You can get a "no-down payment" loan for energy upgrades, and it becomes part of your property tax bill.  Because it becomes property tax, it is tax deductible, goes with the house if you sell, and does not impact your credit rating. 

Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, it could be good.  However, there are VERY high "fees" associated with getting the loan (3% fee plus expenses that aren't called fees, but still cost money to the tune of an additional 7% or so).  Not only is there a 10% upfront expense for these loans (sounds a whole lot worse than a down payment to me, at least a down payment goes toward the loan), but the interest rates are sky-high.  Right now a "normal" second-mortgage seems to be around 4%.  The Ygrene loans are around 9% - more than double. 

The only reason that Ygrene loans are attractive is because if you are in a high income tax bracket (30% or higher) the tax savings ends up with an overall reduced cost for the loan.  This means that taxes are once again being used to subsidize very high interest rates for some corporation that is masquerading as a part of the County or City.  The Counties and Cities are advertising for them on their web sites, making it look like that are tax supported entities intended to make energy improvements more accessible and affordable to everyone.  That is not true, they are private loans that the governments have agreed to guarantee, and in doing so they have agreed to cut taxes to high income folks.

I have been unable to find out who or what is actually behind Ygrene, other than to see that it is a corporation, not a government program.  I also have not been able to find what the Counties and Cities are getting in return for their part in the scam.  It don't know if they are getting kickbacks of some sort, or if they just get to advertise that they are doing something "green."  If anyone knows how this all works I would sure be interested in learning more.

When I went to the Ygrene website it felt like a great thing.  It looked like a way to get low income loans, with low fees, and no credit rating required.  However, that is not the case - it is high interest rates, high fees, and attached to the property directly so they take first priority over any credit issues. If you don't pay your property taxes, the County just takes the property and sells it at auction, using the returns to pay off the loan - no questions asked and no way to protect yourself. 

The unfortunate part of this is that it is already approved by most municipalities in the State (maybe in the Country).  I wonder how these sorts of things happen.  Is nobody paying attention?  Or are they paying attention, and the point is to stick it to the citizens?  Do the municipalities get an windfall profit from this arrangement?  It appears to be the latter, but I suspect it is just laziness and ignorance.

I wonder who is putting up the capital, and I wonder what the municipalities are getting out of this arrangement. (My bet is that this is Chinese money, they are very actively attempting to put a lot of money into our energy business as a source of very high interest rate investments.  They are behind many of the extremely expensive non-down payment lease deals on rooftop solar.)

I don't know that much can be done to fix this scam, but I think we should all at least be aware of it.

 

We have spoken

I probably shouldn't, but now that the election is over I can't seem to help myself - a comment is required. 

A relative of mine sent a message showing the new red and blue map, with a message saying that "now maybe things will get better."  Hum, I wonder what that might mean.  I wonder what things are bad and are going to get better.  Is health care going to get better?  Unlikely, it has actually been getting better, now that will likely regress since there seem to be no other plans or suggestions for improvements.  I agree that there are major problems - but my idea for a solution is universal healthcare paid out of tax dollars.  We now have something sitting somewhere in the middle of "on your own" and "we will help."  We tried "on your own" for many years, that doesn't work out so well. 

Will we not fight so many wars and spend so much on the military?  Hardly - it will likely increase not decrease.

Maybe now we are going to get a lot more jobs and productivity.  The last Republican leadership gave a pretty good demonstration of what they can (and will) do with that.  Providing large tax incentives to send jobs overseas was a pretty good solution.  We are slowly recovering from the previous administrations economic disaster, but it was pretty bad and is taking awhile to recover.  It is kind of funny that as the power swings back and forth between R and D so does the economy.  Up when D's are in charge, down when R's are in charge.  It is directly related to the amount of regulation, reduce the regulations and the economy goes down.  The D's have quite a difficult job always pulling the economy back up from whatever depths it was driven to.

Maybe global warming is going to get a little relief now.  Green house gas reduction seems to be about the last thing on the minds of the R's - so maybe not.  Maybe pollution of the air, land and water will be decreased.  Nope, that doesn't seem like the issues on the table.   We will undoubtedly attempt to make less expensive and easier to pollute than not - which of course will result in more pollution rather than less.

Maybe the price of fuel will decrease.  Could be, however the last six years have seen the largest decrease in fuel prices in many decades.  I don't see that as a positive thing because it leads to increases in the problems of pollution, global warming and ocean acidification.  Low oil prices don't help create jobs, and don't help us move to a sustainable energy budget.  However, they seem to make us feel better.

Maybe we will now have vastly increased secret surveillance of our phone calls and internet traffic.  I suppose that is a good thing if you trust those who are doing the watching.  I tend to not trust them so much - but I guess a more intrusive, more powerful and more secret police force might be a good thing (really???).

I guess the very high end income brackets might get a lot of tax relief.  Probably not so much at the lower end of the scale.  Is this the thing that needs to be fixed to get better?

Maybe we will go back to rapidly escalating healthcare costs, with millions of people losing the health care and instead getting assistance in the extremely expensive emergency rooms.  Sure some of the folks who thought they had coverage but didn't because of bad insurance will get to go back to their overpriced and terrible insurance.  I don't see any solutions being presented - just a desire to throw the baby out with the bathwater.


Maybe it is social values that will improve.  Maybe abortions will get harder to get and we will be back to the bad old days when I was in high school and girls either had to got to a different country, or try it on their own and die.  I remember those times quite clearly and the only thing that was different was that abortions were much more expensive, and much more dangerous.  Nobody wanted them then, and nobody wants them now - but sometimes the choices are pretty grim. Nobody is forcing anyone to have an abortion as it is - it is only a safer choice. Will that be better??  I don't see how.

Maybe we can finally bring Christianity back into our schools.  I guess it is just too bad for those that find the messages to be offensive. I suppose it is a good thing to eliminate the separation of church and State since obviously everyone SHOULD be a Christian whether they like it our not - but I don't see how this helps anything to eliminate it, and I don't see how it hurts anyone to maintain that separation.


I am pretty confused.  What, specifically, is bad and will be improved?  Are the schools going to be improved by reducing funding and letting them make do with whatever they have?  Not likely.  Are roads and the country's infrastructure likely to be improved with reduced taxes on the rich?  Not likely. 

There is an interesting little thing floating around on Facebook these days titled "THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN."  There is a drawing of a crowd of protesters holding signs reading:

"We want dirtier air and water so CEO's can make more money;" "Send our jobs overseas;" "YES on costly healthcare;" "Please tap our computer messages;" "Limit our internet freedom;" "No laws for industry;" "Give our forest to the timber companies NOW;" " Stop giving us benefits for our tax dollars;" " Give us e.coli burgers;" and "Don't tell us what is in our food." 

These are pretty silly, but point to the issue that I am wondering about.  Just what is it that the red folks are wanting to do?  What things are bad, what things could get better, and how is the best way to get there?  Most of the regulations that we currently have came about because industry was clearly unable to regulate themselves.  When they didn't have laws to prevent pollution, they polluted.  When they didn't have minimum wage laws, they paid slave wages.  When there were no safety standards in cars, we have extremely dangerous cars.  I don't think this happens because evil people want to destroy the environment or make unsafe products, it happens because of market forces that always drive the prices as low as they will go.  That means cutting out "extraneous" costs such as pollution controls, increased safety, providing a living wage, providing health care, etc.  As far as I can see, industry cannot regulate itself, just as the military can't.  When the driving force is always to get more money and more power by paying little and charging a lot, then that is what happens - a few people get more money and more power, and some don't.

I would really like to see a clear listing of what bad things will get better but weren't with the current administration.  I am not totally in love with the current administration, but I at least can articulate what I see to be a problem and have ideas of what I would like to see change.  I haven't seen that from the red side - all I see is NO.   

A few years ago I made an agreement with one of my senior engineers that I would keep my safety consulting business going until he reached his retirement age goal, and I reached my 65^th birthday.  At that point my plans were to “retire” in some way or another.  Not completely retire, but reduce my staff and begin working part time instead of full time – choosing more interesting projects.

In preparation for this event, my wife and I made a few changes to our living arrangement – mainly this involved paying off the remainder of the mortgage on our house and installing a 7 kW solar array.  Those investments resulted in our having almost no rent and close to zero energy costs.  So far this year our total electric bill is about $20 after ten months; including our air conditioning, swimming pool and hot tub electricity use.  Now we can comfortably live on Social Security.  We also managed to put aside a retirement nest egg that allows us some flexibility to do things besides just existing on Social Security.  I no longer have to work for a living, I now only work for fun.  (Not that work hasn’t always been fun.)

My idea for starting my “retirement” phase was to have no plans, just follow my nose and see where it leads.  One of the first interesting things I found was a series of energy efficiency classes put on by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E -our local utility).  They have a curriculum consisting of about a hundred classes on all sorts of energy efficiency topics.  The students range from the complete novice homeowner to engineers, senior trades-persons and contractors.  The instructors are all very good, having many years of actual experience in the field.  Not only that, but the classes are free, including free breakfast and lunch.

I started by taking whatever classes seemed interesting and fit into my schedule.  I spend the first year taking a class or so a week.  At first I was just being entertained, but as time went on I started to gain knowledge and the understanding that the problem of energy efficiency is a complex and very interesting “systems” problem.  In order to achieve an effective energy reduction strategy in a building the problem quickly turns on itself.  One can tighten up the building envelope to reduce energy loses through air exchanges with the outside environment.  However, it is easy to make it too tight, and then fresh air needs to be added – causing additional energy demands.  Changing lights to lower power LED lamps from incandescent bulbs is great, but then you lose the heating contribution from the hot incandescent lamps and the heating system may need to be enlarged.  It turns out that the system is so tightly bound together that every change impacts other parts and finding an “optimal” solution is an interesting challenge.

For several months it looked as if I was moving back into my old career as a General Building Contractor, installing photovoltaic systems, fixing air leaks, and doing other construction related activities having little or no obvious connection to my career as a system safety engineer.  I appeared to be walking away from my system safety background and into something entirely new.

However, it has slowly started to become apparent that I am still in the System Safety game, but from a much different point of view.  The “undesired event” seems to be something close to the “collapse of Society” because of an over use of fossil fuels leading to pollution, destruction of critical habitat, global warming and the loss of fisheries because of the acidification of the oceans.  Realizing that my attention moved to such an important and high level safety goal has led to some very intriguing considerations. The problem is to identify the various risks and find cost effective solutions.   I have been looking at the problem using something similar to fault tree logic, working from the top event down the tree to finally addressing the basic events leading to the undesired top event.

My first step was to do a little research to see if we are advanced enough to shift to a global energy economy that is based upon renewable, environmentally “friendly” energy sources rather than the three big fossil fuel sources of coal, oil and natural gas.  While it might not be possible or desirable to eliminate all uses of fossil fuels, it is clear that the use needs to be reduced to the point where it is sustainable without causing the exponential increases in problems that we seem to be experiencing.  Studying the entire world is a little daunting, so I narrowed my focus to California.  I picked upon California because that is where I live and I am therefore aware of a lot of subtle issues that might not be obvious in other locations.  My research question was along the lines of “is there an affordable and environmentally benign way to provide the power that California needs without using any fossil fuels?” 

As far as I can determine, there is a rather surprising answer of: “Yes there is a solution, and not only that but the solution is free.”  Not “free” in the sense of not requiring an initial investment of goods and capital, but “free” in the sense that it will cost more to not make the changes than to make them just considering the cost of energy without even bringing in the cost of the damage to the environment and health impacts of not changing.  For example, the electricity costs for using a 100W incandescent light three hours a day in California is about $22 a year.  Replacing that light with a 12W LED lamp would result in an electricity cost about $2.63 per year.  Assuming a lamp cost of $15 for the LED bulb and zero cost for the incandescent one, the total annual cost of the light for the first year would be $17.63, saving a little over $4 in the first year.  Actually, it is much better than that because the incandescent bulbs cost about a dollar and would have to be replaced about once a year.  After about nine months, making the “upfront” $15 investment is the same as not making the investment – the same amount of money would be spent in both cases.  However, the LED light has a life of about twenty years, resulting in a lifetime savings of almost $400.  Not a bad return on a free investment – it can be thought of as a gift from technology.

It turns out that there are enough simple, inexpensive ways to reduce energy use in California to easily reduce the entire energy budget to the point where all of the power needs can be met by a mix of existing large hydroelectric power plants, existing geothermal power plants, new and existing biomass power plants, and rooftop solar.  No large solar or wind power generating facilities are needed.  Existing nuclear power may be needed during the transition period, but can be shut down in the future.  The technology and knowledge exists for us to power our society without using fossil fuels for electricity, heating, or transportation and without needing large amounts of corn based ethanol.   The answer to the question of “are we there yet?” with regard to having the technology to make this transition is “yes” and in fact we have been there for a couple of decades. 

A very large part of the total energy use in California is associated with heating, cooling, lighting and ventilating buildings.  The part of the puzzle that I am currently focused on is how to bring homes to “net zero” (using no net energy over the year) in an affordable and environmentally sustainable way.  The first obvious answer is that it is easy, just stick a lot of solar panels on every home and we are done.  However, that doesn’t solve the larger problem because the energy use during non-solar times is too great to be able to be met using non-fossil fuel electricity production sources on the electrical grid.  In order to be able to shut down coal, oil and natural gas power plants we need to reduce the peak electricity use to an amount that can be met with sustainable sources.  This means either reducing our lifestyle, or increasing efficiency (achieving as much benefit for less energy).  It turns out that the efficiency reduction path is by far the best solution because it saves much more energy than just not using the energy, and those reductions are reflected in additional efficiency savings throughout the energy production and distribution system.  The light bulb illustrates the problem.  In order to save $17.63 a year in power costs by not using the light means that the light can only be run for about twenty minutes a day!  Assuming the light is needed for three house a day, then it is practically impossible to achieve savings by cutting back use – energy efficiency improvements are necessary.  The lower demand translates into lower production by the electrical utilities.  Since about 60% of the fossil fuels used to provide electricity used (wasted) to make and distribute that electricity, the reduction from 100W to 12W in the building actually results in an additional 52W of fossil fuel energy not being used.   The 100W lamp actually takes about 160W of energy, while the 12W only takes about 20W.  Therefore, changing the lamp from 100W to 12W actually saves 140W of energy!  Multiple this saving by 10,000,000 lamps and you start to save a substantial amount of energy.  An interesting aspect of almost all energy efficiency improvements in a home or building is that they also result in improvements in comfort, noise levels, and general quality of life.  We don’t degrade our quality of life by implementing efficiency improvements; we increase them – for free!

The things that I am focusing my attention on are those improvements that have a very rapid “payback” – generally short enough that they can be funded out of normal “cost of living” expenses.  I have broken these opportunities into three main categories.  The first are things that cost less than about $20.  I think these should be selected to pay back in less than about a year.  The investments are generally small enough that they can be paid for out of normal monthly expenses and the reduction of cost is significant enough to be enjoyed immediately.  The light bulb example fits into this category. It costs $15 out of pocket, but it saves about $2 a month for nine months, then it saves about $1.50 a month for 20 more years.  It is basically unnoticeable in the short term budget. 

The second category includes things that cost more upfront, but pay for themselves in a slightly longer period of time.  These are the items that can pay back in less than about three years.  Typically they are items that cost up to about $1000 or $2000, and therefore require more investment than can be paid for out of daily budgets.  They might require dipping into savings, but probably not into investment accounts or taking out loans to pay for them. Refrigerators, washing machines and equipment like that fall into this category.

The third category are those larger investments that have great long term returns, but generally require adjusting investment accounts, taking out loans or other means of payment.  They include things like solar systems and new HVAC systems that cost in the $10,000 to $30,000 (or more) range, having payback times of from between five and ten years.  Longer “payback times” may not be viable because of issues and concerns related to their lifetime, future technological improvements, and how long the investor (homeowner) is going to be able to enjoy the benefits of their investment before moving or dying.  These investments take careful economic evaluations.   

The savings to be enjoyed by careful consideration of energy uses in homes and other buildings is amazing. 

It is relatively easy to reduce energy use for lighting by as much as 90%, a seemingly small item for a home, but since residential lighting accounts for about 22% of the total electricity use in the United States, it represents a very important opportunity to reduce our total use of electricity by about 20% and our overall energy use by about 30% just by switching to better lights.  Very high efficiency incandescent lights are close at hand that will reduce the energy use even further, at a much lower cost per lamp.(That's right, incandescent lights will make a come back in a few years.)

Possibly the largest unrecognized opportunity is in designing and installing heating and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to work much more efficiently.  In California (and most the rest of the County), heating and air conditioning systems are selected and installed in such a way as to waste approximately 80% of their energy.  It is a relatively easy task to install a properly sized and installed system to reducing their energy use by 80% or more, bringing the annual heating and cooling bill to about $200 a year instead of the now common amounts of $2400 a year or more.  In California, summer cooling bills of $350/month for a modest sized home are not uncommon, with similar heating bills in the winter months.   Using a properly sized and installed system, those bills should be closer to $25 a month.  Older homes can be upgraded to achieve this by modest air sealing of the boundary between the conditioned space and the attic, bring attic insulation up to levels of R38, and sizing the air conditioning system properly for the building.  Over one third of the energy use in homes is associated with heating and cooling air so there is a large potential savings for the home and for the country's energy budget. 

The inefficiencies in HVAC systems are mainly created by manufacturer’s failure to provide systems that can be easily tailored to a specific environment, and by energy regulations (laws) that result in highly inefficient installations.  The problems are created by poorly designed regulations, poor training and in the refusal of the HVAC manufacturer’s industry to provide easy solutions to help the HVAC designer/installer to select equipment that matches the needs of the building.  The equipment selections reflect decades old “rules of thumb” that were not correct in the first place, and do not reflect the modern infiltration air control and reasonably insulated buildings.  The high SEER values used to advertise the equipment apply to a test setup that is highly artificial and not reflective of the actual use environment.  HVAC engineering societies provide standards and guidelines for achieving high efficiencies and comfort, but these are not well understood or followed, and are not reflected in the current energy efficiency codes such as California’s Title 24 Building Energy Efficiency Standards.  It is currently not possible to both follow engineering guidelines provided by ASHRAE, the ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors of America) standards and guidelines, or other science based guidance for HVAC design while meeting the requirements of codes and laws such as Title 24.While the codes are intended to achieve higher efficiencies, they do so by promulgating prescriptive standards that force the design and installation of inefficient systems.

Once the easily achieved, low cost improvements are made, then a much smaller amount of roof-top solar can be used to effectively bring the annual energy use of homes and most small to medium sized buildings to net zero consumption.  The cost of fixing the efficiency problems is often offset by the resulting reduced size of a solar system to offset the building’s power use.

Currently, the energy systems employed in the United State and elsewhere are broken. Huge amounts of money is spent on approaches that provide little or no reduction in the use of fossil fuels (such as large scale wind energy), while little or no attention is placed on fixing the many low tech, “free” approaches to fixing the problems associated with our excessive use of fossil fuels. The trick is that it requires a systems engineering approach to properly size all uses and appliances to work together in buildings and other uses in a way that is helpful to the grid rather making the grid control problems worse.  It can be done, and it can be done quickly if the various parts of the entire system are aligned to work together.  The problem is more about politics and vested interests than technology or economics.  Power companies and large HVAC manufacturers are currently not willing to change their way of doing business.  

From my way of thinking, achieving the goal of solving the problems associated with excessive use of fossil fuels falls into the realm of being a very large, complex, system safety problem.  It requires understanding the system, understanding the hazards and associated risks, and requires a creativity and hard work to finding the path(s) to achieving “optimal” safety for Society and the environment in a cost effective, safe, way. 

The decider

I have been engaged in a reading frenzy that seems to unintentionally follow a single thread of violence, greed and power.  These are topics that I normally steer away from, but for the moment are focusing my attention.  The first book in this series was "I am Malala" (she was the young school girl that was shot in the face by the Taliban while on a school bus a couple of years ago), the second was "The Imperial Cruise" (a book about Theodore Roosevelt's imperialistic thrusts into several wars, particularly the Spanish American War in the Philippines), and now I am reading "The Source" by James Michener (a novel about the history of a fictitious place close to Jerusalem represented by an archeological dig down through ten thousand years of cities stacked one on top of each other through the ages). 

A common thread through these books is the unbelievably nasty and deprived behavior of people in power.  As I have been reading these books I have been have been making an assumption that these horrible events, and many others such as Bush's attacking Iraq, Hilter and Mussolini's actions during WWII, Japan's actions during WWII, our historical and current treatment of the "Indians" in America, and on and on into history are the result of apparently unstoppable insanity, greed and the thirst for power.  

In the middle of these readings I came across one of those "spiritual" postings that find their way into my email.  I normally ignore them, but this one caught my eye because it posited that maybe our understanding that successful people got that way because of greed  and a thirst for power, and that they are necessarily "bad" people because of that greed and power hunger.  We seem to believe that in order to be hyper-successful you need to climb on top of others and to do that you need to be greedy - which is therefore "obviously" a "bad" thing, maybe even evil.  The thought in the spiritual email was that maybe the judgment of them being "bad" because they are successful, and obviously greedy as proven by their great success, is in our minds and does not represent reality.  Maybe that concept is saying something more about us than about them, and maybe it isn't a useful concept to cling to.  I am willing to entertain that as an interesting point to consider.

This morning as I was reading about Harad and the treatment of the Jews, as well as the Romans and Greeks and all those old dead guys a phrase came to mind by a contemporary guy in power.  The phrase is "I am the decider."  It is not very elegant, but maybe it is naive and simple enough to capture the nature of the problem.  President Bush seemed to have truly believed that he was in the position of being the decider, and as such maybe he was forced to make all sorts of decisions that might not be so popular with those lucky enough to not be the deciders.  Maybe there is something about being in the position of being the decider that perverts our ability to find compassion, fairness, truth or justice.  Maybe some of us are wired in such a way that when in that position we come to believe that our decisions come from a place where they are by definition they are fair, the best for the people, the best for the world, necessary and justified.  Since they have nobody else to rely upon they have to rely upon themselves, and since they know they are have very little to go by, they feel that their direction comes from somewhere outside, from God or something like that.  At that point they lose their moral anchor and come to depend upon an inner voice instead of the voice of others.

Maybe Bush's statement that he is the decider wasn't making a claim of power, but it was a simple description of the situation.  Maybe it was more of a plea for help than a statement of power.

I haven't spent a lot of time puzzling this out, but I am entertaining it as an idea to be mulled over.  Possibly the problem is that some people are incapable of acting rationally when in a place where they are depended upon to be the decider.  Maybe people in general fall apart at that point.  Maybe the only way to prevent the deprivations that they keep forcing upon the world is to design social systems that don't place people in that position.  Maybe it isn't greed, a thirst for power, insanity or any of those things, maybe it is just what happens to people when they find themselves in the position of having to make final decisions based upon their own instincts and where they can't "share the blame." 

Just a thought - maybe not worth anything.

I attended a PG&E Energy Auditing class last week and found a few interesting tidbits on the topic of energy costs.  One thing that the instructor said that caught my attention is that PG&E recently changed the residential electricity rate schedule structure from five rate tiers to three.  This surprised me, so when I got home I went to their web site to see for myself.  I didn't find that particular change (maybe it is not implemented yet), but I found some really amazing changes to the rates and rate structure.  This is one of those topics that is totally "off the radar" to most folks, but which has dramatic impacts on their cost of energy and the economic benefits associated with energy efficiency improvements or the installation of roof-top solar.

In order to explain what has happened I need to provide a short discussion of PG&E rates, rates schedules and those things that show up on our bill that make no sense at all to almost everyone. There is a LOT that could be said about this topic, but for the moment I will attempt to keep it simple. Similar issues apply to rate schedules for utilities other than PG&E, but the details are different. 

Here goes:

PG&E residential rates fall into two categories, time-of-use and non-time-of-use.  The typical homeowner is on E1 rates, which has a constant rate structure (with important seasonal changes) but not by time of the day.  E-6 is the time-of-use option where the rates are dependent upon the hour that power is used (or produced).  Since most homeowners are on E1, and because the discussion gets much more complicated for E6, I am going to limit this discussion to E1.  There are five rate tiers that increase in cost during a billing period (a month) as the amount of power use increases.  Just to make things a little more confusing, there is a summer baseline amount and a different winter baseline amount. For example, in my area the 2014 electrical rates are:

Summer baseline = 13.8 kWhr/day
Winter baseline = 11.2 kWhr/day

•  $0.14707/kWhr for tier 1 (power used within the baseline amount)
• $0.17028 for tier 2 (>100% to 130% of baseline)
• $0.25859 for tier 3 (>130% to 200% of baseline)
• $0.31859 for tier four and five. (above 200% of baseline) 

This means that a unit of power (kWhr) costs a little over twice as much once the monthly use enters the forth tier.  This is supposedly intended to provide a powerful incentive to keep the use low.   

PG&E has frequent rate increases, averaging something like 5% - 6% a year.  This rate of increase is higher than inflation, but low enough to keep the frogs from jumping out of the pot. They usually don't advertise a rate increase in terms of percentage, instead they talk about the increase in cost to the average user dollar increase. This year this is about $5 per month - not much is seems. 

According to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) The baseline is supposedly about 50% of the average customer use.   Therefore the "average" user should expect that half of their electricity use will fall within tier 1 (the baseline amount).  Tier 3 ends at 200% of the baseline, meaning that the average user gets billed the entire tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 amount which combined creates their "average" rate of about $0.22/kWhr in 2014.  Heavy users get an additional surcharge for their use above tier 3. The $5/month is spread out across that range for an average increases of the various baselines, tiers and seasons.   The average cost is about $146/month.  The about $5/month increase is about 3.4%.

However it isn't so easy.  Looking back one year to 2013 the situation was very different.

Summer baseline = 18 kWhr/day
Winter baseline = 28.6 kWhr/day

• $0.13230 tier 1
• $0.15040 tier 2
• $0.31114 tier 3
• $0.35114 tier 4 and above

This is an average rate of about $0.197/kWhr resulting in an average rate increase of about 11% if you assume that the baseline is one half of the average use.

Summer baseline was 18 kWhr in 2013 (it is 13.8 today), winter baseline was 28.6 kWhr (11.2 today).  This means that last year it took 540 kWhr per month in summer to get out of the baseline, this year it takes 414 kWhr; last year it took 858 kWhr in winter and this year is is only 336 kWhr.  The rates don't look all that much different, but the amount of power in the lower rates before moving to higher tiers is MUCH lower. The smaller sizes for the baseline amounts means that the higher rates are reached sooner - pushing up the average rate much faster than the rates themselves would indicate.

The average cost per month last year based upon the same assumptions of the definition of "baseline" (taken from the California Energy Commission) a twelve 30 day months, and the same power use in 2014 as was used in 2013 results in an annual cost of $1343 for 2013 and an annual cost of $1706 for 2014.  This is a 27% increase in cost for the "average" family (about $30 per month).  From the looks of the numbers, it is pretty clear that the 1/2 of the users who use less than the average got a large rate increase, while the 1/2 of the users who use lots of power got a large rate decrease.  On the "average" it is about the same - the difference is entirely in who gets to pay pays more and who pays less.  The third tier got a nice 17% decrease, while those using more only got a nice 10% decrease in rates. However, the folks who are careful with the power use got a substantial increase in their costs.  They paid for the decreased costs of the large users, and much more. Averages don't necessarily show the important details.

Finding this to be fascinating, I started wondering what impact this dramatic shift in baselines and rates might have on the economics of energy efficiency and roof top solar systems.

This might be a good time to introduce the concept of "net metering" of solar systems.  The idea is pretty simple.  If you have a solar system under a "net metering" agreement, then there is only one power bill a year at the time of "true-up" which is usually the anniversary of when the system was first powered up.  As time goes along during the year power either flows from the utility, or toward the utility when the solar system is making more power than the building is using.  The meter readings increase and decrease depending upon which way the power is flowing.  At the end of each month a tally is made and you are either credited or charged for the cost of the power in that month.   The value of the power is based upon the daily average use and the daily baseline quantity.  Using this scheme excess power made at a time of excess production gets credited to the cost of power when there isn't sufficient solar production to cover the use.  If the rate is a time-of-use (TOU) agreement it is a little bit more complicated but a similar approach is used tallying monthly use and production in the various TOU time slots. (If anyone is interested I can describe what happens in that case - it is totally mind boggling and yet another way that the utilities and the PUC distort what should be an obvious concept - but I don 't have nearly enough space in this discussion for that).

The important point about this is that the immediate amount of power being used or produced doesn't matter, it is a monthly average.  In general, solar systems are designed to produce an annual average amount of power to offset the annual use ("net zero" energy use). While the rates in the tiers are constant throughout the year, the baseline amount is different in summer than in winter. While there was a modest shrinkage with the 2014 summer baseline being about 76% of 2013 baseline, there was a very large decrease to 39% of the 2013 winter baseline.  Most power in the summer is made and used on site for air conditioning, some is saved for winter.  During the winter when there is not so much solar, the baseline shrank substantially meaning that most of the power is billed at the higher tiers.  This has the effect of making solar power much less attractive.  It is produced and credited at low summer rates but offset by high winter rates. This change makes a large shift in the economic value of a solar investment. 

In my case, when I installed my solar system it was designed and operated to get close to net zero, but not make extra.  For the first couple of years our annual true-up bill was about $60 a year.  However, when the baseline was changed, that turned into a bill of about $400 a year even though we have been continually making energy efficiency improvements in many small, and not so small, ways. While this is not a tremendous difference, it came as a surprise and was certainly not in my calculations for determining the financial viability of the investment. Large, unanticipated, changes in the cost of power, and the way that it is credited back to the user creates an unstable investment environment.

The same logic applies to retrofits or improvements in energy efficiency of the building envelope and appliances.  For my home, when I installed solar the top tier for my rate schedule was $0.44/kWhr, now it is $0.25/kWhr. For an example of the importance of this change, consider changing from a incandescent light to a new high efficiency (and relatively expensive) LED light. Assume replacing a $1 - 70 watt incandescent light with a $10 - 9 watt replacement.  If the light operates 6 hours a day, everyday, at $0.44/kWhr the cost of the 70 watt light is $153/year while the 9 watt light costs $8.67 (a $135/yr savings after paying off the lamp!)  At the new rate of $0.25/kWhr the cost of operating the 70 watt light is only $38 and the cost of the LED is $4.90/yr (a $25 savings).  This is a difference of $110 a year - making a huge impact on the value of an investment, potentially changing a great investment in energy improvements to a questionable, or negative, one.   While the "average" rate for electricity has remained relatively constant (about 5% per year increase) during that time, there has been a very large shift in how the rates are distributed.

It is interesting how things are changing in the power pricing world. It appears that the more people attempt to conserve and use less power, the higher rates they pay - and the more they use the bigger the incentive to continue doing the same. 

Being "In the Moment" is one of those topics that at first seems obvious, but becomes rather slippery as we ponder what that might mean.  The first and most obvious meaning is simply that our attention is on what is happening at the moment rather than focused on the past or the fantasized future.  That might well be enough to enhance our well-being; if we can be released from those uncontrollable concerns we can shed a lot of drama from our lives.  We can stop worrying about a lot of things that are in the past ("water under the bridge") and we don't have to worry too much about a future that won't turn out like we imagine in any case.  That is good, and that can be very useful and "freeing" in many ways.

However, I don't think it ends there. Being in the moment in the sense of having no past or future seems a bit like being in the moment for a dementia patient.  They can certainly be in the moment by having almost no memory of the past, especially the very recent past, but that doesn't seem to be such a  good thing.  It leaves them confused, not knowing where they are or why, often putting a visitor into the uncomfortable position of being caught in an continuous loop of "question and answer" about the same topic over and over again with no apparent resolution because the question vanishes, as do the answers - but the desire to know and communicate does not.  Being in the moment like that is not such a great thing - being in the moment as a healthy experience has to include the past and the future, but the focus of attention isn't elsewhere in time or place - it is here and now.

As I think back on those times when I really felt like I was "in the moment" and "connected" to the universe (or nature or whatever) it felt like I was experiencing with my body rather than my mind.  It seems like a whole body experience, the center of my experience seemed centered in the chest region (maybe this is why the heart is associated with feelings of love and compassion).  The feeling is of being energetically "connected" to the rest of the world rather than as being separated and independent. It is a very good feeling of being "full" of life.

This morning, while sitting in my hot tub watching the constellation Orion shining overhead, I found myself wondering if this feeling, and this point of view of being in the moment, might not be associated with an older more primitive part of our being.  I began wondering if maybe there is a part of us that is very similar to other animals where the focus of attention is more on the body and the immediate surroundings rather than upon the intellect.  I appears that these animals are conscious in some way, and memories are still there, but the memories provide advice about what actions to take based upon past experiences rather than becoming the focus of their attention.  The same situation exists for planning ahead.  We are amazed when we see evidence of animals (especially our pets) planning ahead even just a few minutes.  It appears that they normally plan for the immediate future events, but not beyond just a few minutes at most.  However, we plan ahead hours, days, months and years, with that often becoming the main focus of our mental attention. Not that this is a bad thing, its just that it appears to be beyond the capability of almost all other species. 

When meditating I often get the feeling that there are two parts to my consciousness - one is the quiet observer rooted in my body and breath, the other is the talking mind that flits about from topic to topic, leaving very little trace and seemingly coming from nowhere.  I wonder if that quiet observer might be an ancient part of our mind/brain, while the talking part has to do with the large "new brain" that makes us so different from most other animals.  Maybe "being in the moment" is an exercise of focusing our attention using the "old" part of our brain and consciousness - and therefore is much more attuned to our body and the immediate world around us.  

I woke up this morning to the sound of a huge tractor breaking new ground down the street from my house.  If it sounds familiar, it is because it is.  Last week "they" (whoever "they" are) finished ripping up a 600 acre or so field of previously unirrigated pasture land and sinking a new deep, very large well to provide water for about a quarter of a million new almond trees.  Today they seem to be starting on the parcel on the other side of the road.  It will undoubtedly be another one or two square miles of unirrigated pasture land turned to trees, and at least two more very large water wells.  The total will come to something like a million new trees planted down the street from my house in a couple of months.  This is not an isolated event - the new orchards are going in for miles around, many of which are on what has historically been unirrigated land.  This amounts to hundreds of millions of new trees and an unimaginable drain on the local aquifer because all of these trees are being watered via wells - mostly irrigated by new wells on previously dry land.

I see signed along side of the interstate highways saying things like, "Don't restrict our water use - farmers feed America."  That is true, farmers do feed America - however these particular trees don't do any of that, they grow nuts that are shipped to Asia and sold to the newly affluent Chinese.  They create money, but not food for America. I doubt if the bulk of the money even ends up in America.  Basically, these farmers are mining our water by pumping from the local aquifers to plant trees whose crops are not used locally, or even in the USA.  Not only that, but almonds are not an important part of anyone's basic food needs.  They are luxuries.

I have been talking to some of the local farmers, the ones whose families have lived and farmed in this region for the past 150 years or so.  They are the ones that traditionally grow crops such as corn, alfalfa,  beets, tomatoes, wheat, rice, melons, onions, garlic, beans, walnuts, apricots, peaces, and things like that - crops that really do "feed America" - and a very large part of the rest of the world to boot.  They are expressing fear that their livelihoods are going to be destroyed by the extensive water mining to water these trees by draining the aquifer(s).  In order to keep up with the falling water levels they have been having to drill deeper, expand the size of their pumps, install new pumping equipment, replacing burned out pumps from wells that ran dry -  and even that is barely keeping up.  Even the ones who have leased their land for the almonds are becoming worried.  Some claim to have attempted to get out of their contracts before the land is planted in trees, but they are not being allowed to break their agreements.  These farmers tell me that they signed the agreements several years ago before the magnitude of the planting explosion was evident.  They were thinking in terms of a small number of trees on their own land - which they figured wouldn't be much different from what they were currently doing (even those who had traditionally farmed on dry land).  They were thinking of personal gains, not regional impacts.

However, now it is becoming evident that not only did one or two farmers sign these long term leases - but maybe all (or almost all) of them did.  Now that a large portion of the western side of the Sacramento Valley is getting blanketed by rapidly increasing square miles of heavily irrigated almond orchards they are starting to recognize the magnitude of the potential problem, and that it may well drain the aquifer. 

The problem with this is that the orchards are relatively short lived.  They start producing in two years, are in full production in three and pay off their initial investment in four to five years (a darned good return on investment by any measure).  If they last another four or five years, huge profits will be made.  It sounds like they are hoping for a production lifetime of ten years or so.  At that point, most of the orchards will be past their lease times and the ownership will revert to the landowner (the folks who have been here for many generations growing food and grain on unirrigated, or carefully irrigated, land).  The current investors who are leasing the lands, planting the orchards, and drilling the wells have short term goals in mind.  They want to make their profits in 6 to 10 years, and move on.

However, they are making their huge profits by "mining" the aquifers.  This term means that they are removing water faster than it is recharging - so they are emptying the aquifers.  This has the immediate impact of causing the land to subside, compacting the aquifer formations so that they can NEVER recharge.  In addition, much of the water that is stored in the aquifers, and the water that is recharging the aquifers is "ancient" water - the water seems to come from hundreds of miles away, possibly starting its journey during the end of the last ice age!  These basins are only partly recharged by annual rains, mostly it is water that took thousands of years to accumulate.

What the local farmers are slowly starting to realize is that these orchards are taking the water, and that when they obtain ownership of the trees and the use of their land again, the water is likely to be gone!  This scenario has already played out in the San Joaquin Valley (the part of the great valley to the south of Sacramento, about 80 miles south of my home).  In that region, many farmers leased their land to almond growers who planted hundreds of square miles of trees and "mined" the aquifers.  In many places the land has subsided 30-50 feet, and is no longer capable of storing water.  The leases ran out, and the farmers were forced to bulldoze the trees because there is no water for irrigation.  Unfortunately, there is also not enough water to maintain other crops either.  This is much of the reason for the big push to put two huge pipes (30 feet in diameter or so) to transport water from northern California to these now parched lands. 

I find this whole thing to be extremely scary - it is the kind of thing that we have watched happen in foreign lands (Brazil with the deforestation for farming and mining, Canada with the exploitation of coal sands ... the list goes on and on) where large corporations move into an area, take control of the natural resources until they have been depleted, and then move on to new places - leaving the local populations with huge environmental disasters and a ruined economy.   Now it is happening right here in my back yard (almost literally) - and there seems to be nobody noticing or attempting to do anything about it.  Everyone is happy happy happy - the leases are making 2-3 times what they land was worth for whatever it was being used for, so the farmers are "getting rich," the County is pulling in lots and lots of tax money, the State is getting tax money, and the investors are getting rich.  Nobody seems to care that this is a very short term situation and that in a very few years those trees will be torn out, but the water will no longer be there - just like happened to our friends and neighbors a mere 100 miles to the south in the same beautiful, productive valley.

This morning I found myself meditating on the idea of meditating while I was doing my morning meditation.  A kind of meta-meditation I suppose. 

I have noticed that there seems to be quite a bit of confusion about the subject, especially by those who are not dedicated "practitioners."  I can't say that I am really very knowledgeable about the topic, all that I know about is what I have hear, read and experienced.  Clearly my view is just a tiny peek into the full topic, especially since the experience is undoubtedly unique to every individual.  I can barely describe or understand it for myself, to myself.  Going beyond that just becomes a tangle of words.

However, maybe there is something to be said on the subject. One thing that can be said is that meditation is NOT doing the practice as described by anyone as if there is not ONE correct way to do it.  There are many prescribed ways to meditate, many "correct" postures, lots of ways to hold your hands and fingers, and a wide variety of environments that are "best" for the practice.  In my youth, in the "way back time" I used to sit and listen to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ("the Maharishi" from Transcendental Meditation fame) describe the practice.  Two things in particular struck me.  

The first was that it can be practiced in any position or posture.  This is a big relief, even if you can't get into a traditional sitting position, you can still meditate - even in a dentist's chair.  The point of the traditional position is to be comfortable, alert, and not asleep.  It has roots back into antiquity when people sat around on the ground or on cushions.  I happen to like sitting on a cushion in meditation, but it is not part of "the practice" that I know about.   It is just convenient and comfortable.

The second interesting thing was his description of thoughts while meditating.  The Maharishi used to describe them as being like bubbles in a glass of champagne - starting very tiny and imperceptible, rapidly growing and becoming the focus of attention as they stream upward, and then simply vanishing as they pop on the surface.  When I first heard this I thought it was an odd analogy - kind of cute but not really describing my experience.  However, over the past 50 years or so of daily sitting I have come to appreciate the analogy as being quite nice.  The point is not to watch any of the thought bubbles form, glide by and vanish - the point is just to notice that they are there and that they seemingly come from nowhere, become the center of attention and then are gone back into nothing. It is just a process, nothing more. 

Over the years I have explored many different meditation techniques.  Sometimes the time during siting was fairly short (15 minutes or so), sometimes fairly long (an hour or longer), sometimes once a day, sometimes two or three times, sometimes with my eyes open, sometimes with them closed, sometimes in a quiet place, sometimes in the middle of lots of action,  sometimes with a mantra (either short, medium or long), sometimes "following" my breath, sometimes "visualizing," sometimes not.  The interesting thing is that all these different approaches feel the same.  I would like to be able to describe that feeling, but don't know how.  It is related to quiet, calm, at a distance, observing .... I know the feeling, but can't find words to convey the experience. 

It might be a little easier to explain what it is NOT, rather than what it is.  It is not emptiness or the stopping of thinking - that seems to be sleeping.  It is not "working out issues" - that is our normal planning, concentrating, talking to ourselves.  My mind never stops, I never have a break from "thinking" - but I find that my relationship to those thoughts is different. Maybe the difference is that I am not "talking to myself" in my meditation, I am thinking, but not engaging in those thoughts as if in a conversation.   The thoughts are there, but I am observing them sliding by rather than fixing my attention on them.  My attention is in observing myself (my mind, thoughts, feelings, skin, hearing, cold, hot, sore, not-sore, etc.), rather than fixing my attention on any of these things.  

This is very different from the experience of doing something with so much attention that everything else vanishes.  Common examples of these are being engrossed in an activity (knitting, painting, woodwork, writing - whatever).  These kinds of activities can certainly result in a sense of peace because they shut off outside distractions.  They allow an inner peace are very important and real - but I don't think they are the same as meditating.  I say this from experience - I very often do both of these, but there is something very different happening when I sit and meditate.  However, I can't explain the difference - it is one of those things that has to be experienced to be understood.  Kind of like smacking your finger with a hammer - you can talk about it all you want, but you don't really get the essence of the experience until you feel the pain.  Good food is the same - you can think and talk about it forever, but until it is experienced you just can't know and enjoy the flavors.   
 

A friend of mine brought up an interesting topic the other night.  He reminded me that one of our teachers used to say that, "Our beliefs control our attention." or maybe it was "Our attention controls our beliefs."  Maybe it is both - I get confused.  The discussion would then wander off into something about "the first attention" and "the second attention."  My friend wondered what I think about such things.

Well - since I am basically confused about what those phrases mean, I just punted. 

My thoughts are along the lines that when we are young and taught to be who we are, we are inculcated with a set of beliefs.  We agree to accept these beliefs (don Miguel Ruiz calls them "agreements"), and from there on out they form the basis of what we understand about the world.  Even more, they form the basis of what we pay attention to.  An example that helps me understand this process is when I go in the "outback" with my friend Gary.  Gary is a super "birder" - he seems to know and recognize every bird there is, and not only does he recognize them, but he knows their songs, their habitat and their habits. He sees and hears birds everywhere we go.   I, on the other hand, can recognize a few birds such as chickens and ducks, but the rest are a blur of big, small, dark, light, colorful, noisy or silent creatures flying, flitting, and hopping about.  Basically I am a total failure at being a birder.  When we walk in wild places, he experiences a world filled with birds of all sorts, and he is filled with the knowledge and stories of those birds.  I find a world with trees, dirt, streams and a few (very few) wild animals, insects and birds. He pays attention to and sees an entirely different forest than I do even though we are strolling side-by-side, surrounded by the same environment.  His background, learning, and beliefs focus his attention (and his experiences) in one way, and mine do the same for me in a very different way.

In this example I am speaking of the effects of prior learning, but this also includes beliefs.  Gary learned all of those things about birds (and a whole lot of other things in nature) because he believed that it was important to do so.  I enjoy the same places, but I don't believe that it is important for me to learn the details about the plants and animals.  I do believe that it is important to learn the details about physics and engineering things, so I notice and appreciate those things - and point them out to Gary.  We have different beliefs about what is important, and what our roles in life should be, and based upon those beliefs we focused our attention and therefore have very different experiences.  If you look closely, I think you will notice that this effect goes far into our lives - focusing our attention and controlling our experiences. 

Experiencing the world based upon our belief system is sometimes called the "first attention" because it is how we first learned to attend to things, notice things, and give them meaning (and emotions).  We didn't learn these beliefs on purpose, they were taught to us by our parents, friends, teachers, television, movies, etc.  We were bombarded with beliefs, many of which were in direct contradiction with each other.  We accepted what we accepted, and agreed that those were correct and "right." 

Later in life maybe we get a chance to revisit some of these beliefs.  Maybe we can learn to place our attention on a wider range of topics and maybe we can then use what is found in this new attention to change our beliefs, or even use our attention to observe and experience without biasing it by our beliefs.  Maybe we can find a way to question our beliefs and then search for new 'truths' and new ideas about what is correct and "right." Maybe we can break the link between our beliefs and our attention. I think that when we start to do this it is the beginning of a new life, one that more closely aligns with reality. This idea of observing based upon what is there rather than upon our beliefs is the starting point for "the second attention."

There is a much weirder, and much more mysterious meaning associated with the idea of "the second attention."  In some traditions it alludes to the possibility of expanding our attention to actually see and experience things that are real, but "hidden" from us in everyday life.  (Not actually hidden, just not noticed) Who knows, maybe ghosts fall into the realm of things that can be experienced, but that we have learned to not experience. I will leave the discussion of these topics to another time and maybe another place. 

On an entirely different topic.  I dropped my smart phone the other day and cracked the screen into a whole mosaic of small cracks. Everything still works, but it doesn't look so good.  I went to a tiny store in Davis that I was told fixes them for $30.  I was offered a repair for $100 (I guess I look like I could afford it).  That seemed like too much, so I ordered a repair kit for $15 (I think I could have gotten one for around $5 but didn't want to mess around trying to get a super deal).  I wonder how this is going to work out.  Maybe it will be easy, and I will have saved $80.  Maybe it will be less than easy and I will have wasted $300 (because of my breaking the phone in the process).  I am anxious to try, but worried about whether or not I have the skills or patience for this sort of thing. 

Here I am, wanting to write something "creative" but am all out of creativity.  I am finding my self imposed task of maintaining a running, more or less constant, blog to be a big challenge.  I get all excited and write some things when something fires up my brain -- but most of the time it seems to be just more days sliding by - one after another.  As Shakespeare so aptly stated; "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day ... It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

My days are full of course, everyone's are - even if only full of sleeping, daydreaming or working.  All of the time is used up.  However, most of the time it seems like there is nothing much of interest or importance.  For example, today I got up at 5:30 am and sat outside under the stars in my hot tub - to think, relax and meditate.  Pretty boring for anyone except for myself.  Then after a small breakfast of melon I spent about five hours designing an air conditioning system for my house.  It was time spent filling in tables, calculating pressure drops, solving math equations, figuring out what kind of elbows and supply registers to use, which filters pads might work and other parts to use so that I can get the correct amount of air and heat (or cool) to each room throughout the year.  For me this is pretty engrossing, and keeps my attention - but it sure isn't much to talk about. 

In the afternoon we went to my grandson's 11th birthday party.  That was more "fun" - but still not much to talk about.  Hot outside, cool inside - but crowded.  He had a lot of friends over to play in their swimming pool, there were lots of good little finger foods, I got to talk to a bunch of my son's friends, and we just sort of drifted through the afternoon. It was a pleasant day, but with nothing much to speak of.

Along the way through the day there were a number of bumps, crunches and odds and ends of encounters with strangers and loved ones. Nothing very big, nothing that got to the point of needing a discussion (or maybe they did, but that can't be discussed here).  Then it was an evening reading "Home Power" magazine (a really neat magazine by the way), cooking some chicken on the BBQ - and that is about it. 

So here I am at the end of another day, wondering what - if anything - is worth writing about.  I could of course write about global events because there are always things going on in the world that demand our attention (wars, abductions, water shortages, global warming, atrocious acts by crazy people .... even some good news news such as people saving animals or animals saving people, or people helping each other  - etc, etc.) I don't like to talk about those topics on this blog unless they somehow personally intersect with my immediate focus or activities.  That doesn't in any way imply that they aren't critically important, it just isn't what I am trying to do here.  I am not trying to make a newspaper, it is more like I am working a semi-personal diary - one that can be shared with others and that might help me feel that I am doing something of value.

What value?  Where is the value?  I really have no clue about these questions.  I know I don't have anything "special" to say, and have no "special" insights into anything.  I am just me, with whatever comes with that.  However, I feel that we (all of us) may be missing something  and that something seems to be related to sharing what we know, what we think we know, what we don't know - and as Rumsfeld pointed out - what we don't know we don't know.  I am writing and sharing my thoughts in the off chance that they might line up with someone else's thoughts, or just maybe will help someone see an issue from a slightly different point of view.  Maybe what I have to say will just make someone furl their brow when wondering if there might be more than they believed.  I am not looking for anything big, or anything that will change the world.  I am just wondering if we might not all benefit from a little more open exchange of thoughts and opinions. 

Since I seem to think this is important, it seems like I need to do something about it.  This blog is part of my desire to move toward more open communication. 

So today, I have nothing particularly important to say.  Maybe most days will be like this, but maybe some days will bring something useful - maybe some days will help one or two of us see something a little differently.
  

A friend of mine started on a three month solo trip through Asia last weekend.  What an adventure! 

As I was talking to her, and thinking about the adventures to come to her I thought to suggest that she take along a sketch pad and take the time to draw things of interest.  Her immediate response was similar to mine over most of my life, "I couldn't possibly do that - I am not an artist." 

I thought that - until I happened to be sitting in a theater in the Santa Clara Tech Museum getting ready to watch a big screen travel movie.  I was seated next to a young lady who had just returned from a tour around the world. She was anxious to show me her drawings of her trip.  It was very basic art - mostly stick figures and a couple of words describing the scenes.  However, as she described the drawings to me it became clear that she had tapped into something really big - she found a way to notice what was happening around her - the sights, smells, noises, people and what she was feeling.  Magic I think.  So I decided to try my hand at very personal, not for anyone's view, attempt at sketching where I was when traveling.  Here are a few examples:

 This is a sketch of the "observatory" from the front steps of my hotel at Chichen Itza in Mexico.  It is a very pretty sight, but what is missing are my friends who were sitting on the steps with me - talking, laughing and having a good time.  I can recall the smells, feelings, warmth, and friendship of the day.

This is a sketch looking out of my hotel room in Vietnam.  I was waiting for my traveling companions and decided to see if I could figure out how to get the doors and walls "correct."  I didn't get exactly what I was hoping for, but I got a view that brings me back things not in the picture such as the chair I was sitting on, the talk in the lobby and the feeling of the place.

This is a little sketch of our room on the island of Moorea (next to Tahiti).  It was a pretty spot, the rooms were great, the weather was perfect, and the costs were out of this world ($20 for a standard beer!)  It was pretty, and pretty boring.  We finally rented a car and toured the island - much better than sitting around in a high priced hotel.

A flower, sketched while being bored on Moorea.  It is just a flower that fell onto a table outside of our room.  By this time we had ventured off to "town" and found a bottle of affordable wine - and that lead to time to sketch a flower.




These are examples of very simple sketches that really bring the moment back to me.  They aren't particularly "good" or "artistic" - and they don't have to be because they are just for me.  They are my personal reminder of a moment.  I highly recommend that everyone try this - it is fun, doesn't have to take very long, doesn't have to be shown to anyone else - but is a world of difference from shooting a quick shot with a camera, or cell phone.   It is worth the time to stop and look at what you are seeing.

I don't think I have mentioned it in the past, but I have been lucky enough to be allowed to "work" (very loose term here) with a local film company for the last year or so. Check out their web site at http://www.littlethunderfilms.com/.  I see that I am even shown as part of the crew!  What a hoot!  I have really been enjoying myself even though I am not at all sure what my role is.

I seem to be something like a "camp follower," not in the sense of selling goods or services, but in the sense of hanging around and attempting to provide whatever support I can.  I hold things, pick up and move things, sometimes I provide a very brief "body" as an extra - not footage, more like inches.  I hold microphones sometimes, or reflectors, or carry gear from place to place.  What I do is whatever is needed and within my abilities.  It is really, exceptionally, fun.

At first I showed up out of curiosity, pure and simple.  However, as time went on I found that I was liking the people, and perhaps even more importantly their point of view of the world.  In free moments they sit around and talk "movies" - nothing that I have ever done, and frankly nothing that I know much about.  I am not a movie "fan" - I like to go to the movies, but seldom do.  However, I find that when I do now I see lots of things that I missed.  Lighting, techniques, presentation, mood - all sorts of things that make watching movies so much more interesting.

Last week we were in the sound studio finishing up a few loose ends with "Rain."  What a joyous day it was for me! The day stated with panic because the equipment in the sound studio wouldn't work. Oh no! - this was our tightly scheduled day and no equipment!!??  Yikes.  We (they - I didn't have anything to do with it) finally got it all working.  Then there was obvious tension about how long it was going to take - and could we finish it within our allotted time.  The LittleThunder crew is good, works fast, and is efficient - but they won't "speed things up" to meet a deadline.  They do what they need to, and do it well, but they stubbornly refuse to be rushed - I love them for that.

When we finally got under way it was magic!  Much of the day was involved with re-recording audio for clips that had sound problems (car noises, children in the background, poor sound quality for various reasons).  That meant that the actors (stars!) had to redo their lines in perfect synchronization with the action.  They were AMAZING!  More than perfect - they not only synchronized perfectly, but they brought the level of the energy in the scenes from "excellent" to "it blew me away."  

I am so anxious to see the final cut!  I have been truly blessed to have been able to participate in this project.  Along the way, there have been other projects that have been really exciting to participate in.  For example, right now we ("they," but I am feeling like it is "we") are finishing up a little video about the local Senior Center.  It is an interesting project because it isn't clean to me what the "point of view" is going to be. The obvious choices are that it could be a "documentary" or maybe a "promotional piece."  Both of these outcomes might be involved, but I feel that it is something different - it is more of a honoring of the place, the helpers and the "customers."  It is a friendly view of the daily happenings at the center (which are constant).  I am finding it just plain fun to watch folks come to the center for fun, friendship, exercise, nutrition - to enjoy and share their lives with each other and "outsiders" such as myself.  I think the movie is capturing that feeling of community, and it is a very good thing.

I went looking for Little Thunder's "motto" and couldn't find it on line - however, I think it could be summarized as "films that make a difference."  It is such a refreshing, and exciting, thing to be involved with.  There are a lot of ways to make a difference - I spend a lot of my time trying to do that through engineering, a lot of people do it with spending a lot of time with social outreach, Little Thunder is doing it through communication.  It is a beautiful, joyous and important thing to do. 

I am having frustrations about the design and installation of heating and air conditioning equipment.  It has become very clear to me that one of the direct paths out of our global energy crisis is by increasing efficiency of the machines that we take for granted.  If we can achieve a 50% increase in overall efficiency, that translates into a 50% reduction in our energy use, which translates into lots of amazing changes in the way we are treating, and mistreating, or environment. Actually, a 50% reduction is rather trivial - it is what would be called "the low hanging fruit."  Examples of staggering efficiency improvements abound.  Switching from standard incandescent lights to LED lights is an example.  That results in something like a 85% reduction in energy use, and lights that work better and give better light.

Some numbers might help understand my point.  Consider a 60W light that operates 4 hours a day.  That is 4 hr x 365 x 60 = 87.6kWhr/year.  At $0.20/kWhr (about the average residential rate in California), that comes to $17.50/year for electricity to power that single light. If that is changed with a 10W LED light, the annual power use would be 14.6 kWhr for a power cost of about $2.92/year.  That LED light now costs about $10, so the lamp would pay for itself in a little over 8 months.  If you kept the old incandescent lamp, it would have cost $17.50 to use it for a year.  If you switched to a new LED, it would cost $12.92 for the same amount of light for the same period of time = an overall savings of $4.58 for that one year.  If you didn't do anything, you would have spent $17.50.  If you bought a new light, you would have spent $12.92.   Every year after that it would be generating a savings of about $14.50 without any additional investment - it is a "free" savings at that point in time because you already recouped the cost of the initial investment.  You get almost $15 a year handed to you for spending on more important things.  What a deal!!  A lot of people have switched to CFL lights for similar reasons.  However, even they end up costing more like $10 a year - a good savings, but nothing like LEDs.

The point is that this simple changing of a single light can create a big income stream in the form of avoided costs.  It also creates a big energy savings that doesn't require power from the utility (and the impacts to the environment).  It is a win-win for you and the environment.  You save a lot of money, the environment doesn't get the impacts from the extra power use.  This of course only works for lights that get heavy use.  The light in the closet that gets turned on for 5 minutes once a week isn't such a good deal. It still saves energy, saves power, and helps the world - but it costs you to do that.  That will never pay for itself because the 60 W light only costs $0.03 per year and would never save enough to pay for the initial cost.  It takes a little care to find the savings that are cost effective.  I am searching for "free" solutions, ones that cost less than not implementing them. There are plenty of these to bring the entire country into a state of "net zero" energy when matched with local solar production, and has the potential for completely eliminating our need for fossil fuels for powering our equipment and machinery at a cost that is less than what we are currently paying.

As I have mentioned in the past, a huge area for massive energy savings is associated with the heating and cooling of homes.  In California, a typical cooling cost in the summer is $200/month from June to Oct and about the same for heating from November to April (we get about four months for free).  That translates into about $1600 a year in heating and cooling costs.  Many homes use twice as much, and many use less.  However, if properly insulated, air sealed and with a properly designed HVAC system that cost should be closer to $250/year, with an annual savings of about $1350 (not to mention the related reduction in our "carbon footprint").  Fixing this hypothetical home could easily cost a lot of money, $10,000 wouldn't be out of line.  However, even at $10,000 a simple payback time for the improvements is about 7.5 years.  Taking into account the expected increase in the cost of power, that is probably more like 6 years.  Looking forward to a 15 year lifetime of the investment (at which point the HVAC system might need replacing, but not the insulation and other improvements), that yields a return on investment of over 10%.  Not a huge return on an investment, but not too shabby either considering it has extremely low risk associated with it (you will need the HVAC and the cost of energy will go up).

If the HVAC needs to be replaced in any case, then the equation is totally different because the cost of the installation will need to be spent regardless and the only "extra" costs are associated with better insulation and air sealing.  The fact is that a properly sized HVAC system is much smaller than what is normally installed, and therefore costs less - usually enough less to pay for the "extra" costs of the air sealing and insulation.  The result is a new, much higher efficiency HVAC system for little or NO extra cost (therefore it is "free").  By being careful in the design and installation of the new system it is very reasonable to expect a $1300 or so annual savings for little or no cost (assuming that the system has to be purchased for other reasons).  Personally, I am in the process of throwing away a brand new HVAC system and replacing it with a "right sized" unit because of the savings in operational costs.  It would have been a much smarter thing to have installed the correct one in the first place - it would have saved me about $10,000.  However, the investment is still good enough to make the changes, even though it means throwing out a perfectly good, almost new, HVAC unit.

The frustration that I am having is that it is next to impossible to purchase a system the is correctly sized.  None of the HVAC manufacturer's produce an "off the shelf" system that is even remotely close to what is needed.  There are no gas furnaces that are even close to the small sizes needed for the vast majority of homes.  They are so oversized that they really can't be used in a "right sized" unit.  The resulting efficiency of the installed unit is far from the advertised efficiencies.  The only choice is to use heat pumps.   However, while it is possible to get correctly sized heat pumps, it is not so easy to match them up with the other parts of the system.  The evaporator (cooling) coils are all vastly undersized for the matching compressor, the blower fans are far undersized for the coil and the needs of the home, and the air speed choices are not correct. The air handler boxes do no accept the correctly sized coils or fans, and the control boards and other devices don't work in the range that is needed for a home.  There seems to be no way to match the components.  In addition, the manufacturers don't publish the detailed data that would be necessary to find correctly matching parts to put into a custom enclosure. 

Why does this situation exist?  Good question.  I think it has to do with tradition.  Old poorly insulated, drafty houses in the South (think hot, humid environments) required much larger systems that have very low air flows to allow the AC unit to dry the air to control inside humidity.  Those requirements defined the "correct" size for a system.  Because most of the "design" homes were pretty similar, it soon became apparent that a few "rules of thumb" could be used to size systems.  A common rule of thumb is that it takes one ton of air conditioning for each 500 square feet of house.  Thus a 2000 sq ft house "needs" a 4 ton unit.  Actually, it takes closer to 1 ton per 1000 sq ft in a modern house - so right off the bat the systems are over sized by a factor of two.  The result is that they turn on and off too much and never reach anything close to optimal efficiency.  Not only that, but typically the ducts and registers are installed incorrectly knocking out another large part of the potential efficiency of the systems.

It would sure be nice if the equipment manufacturers would design and sell systems that follow the recommendations of the various heating and cooling engineering standards and specifications such as the ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers), the ACCA (Air Conditioning Contractors of America), or the guidelines of various universities and utilities such as PG&E.  For some reason the science and engineering is there, but the equipment manufacturers continue to produce the same incorrectly sized and mis-matched systems.  Not only that, but they are the main source of training for the HVAC contractors, who then follow the spec sheets in the manufacturer's literature (even though the literature clearly states that their specs can't be used without modification and describe how a system should be correctly sized - but can't be purchased that way because they don't make the necessary parts).  It is a real mystery.  Even the HVAC equipment manufacturers describe how to design the systems correctly, they just don't happen to sell the parts needed to meet those designs.