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I was reading a story in the Nashua Telegraph about a new solar panel installation at Stonyfield Yogurt in Londonderry, NH. This $400,000 installation is now the fifth largest solar array in New England, generating 54 kilowatt hours next year. Impressive, no? The CEO had a telling line:

“Frankly, conservation is a lot more impactful, but we wouldn’t get a bunch of reporters here to look at our new insulation.”

The article clarifies his statement:

[The CEO] estimated that the installation would displace about 1 percent of the electricity use at the plant, which has huge refrigeration needs. By contrast, the extra insulation that Stonyfield has installed in its state-of-the-art refrigerated warehouse will have much more of an effect. But you can’t see it, can’t photograph it glinting in the sun, and can’t get reporters to come and admire it.

The Telegraph's science writer summarizes is succinctly (quoting an EPA official):

“The kilowatt that is not used is the best of all.”

This is something I've been trying to factor into my analysis at home. Given n dollars to spend on energy improvements, what is the best application? While a solar panel array may seem technically sexy, at ~$9000/kilowatt, there are plenty of ways you could first spend that money to save a kilowatt. For most US homes, the first dollars would be best spent in reductions in usage before you work on generation. Boring, yes, but a better way to spend the early money. Sigh.

Our house is well insulated, has two wood pellet stoves, and efficient windows. Our focus this month will be to take three or four of our largest light fixtures and replace their bulbs with compact fluorescents, aka CFs, which use about a quarter to a third of the electricity while lasting much longer. We have several fixtures that take three bulbs each on the first floor (where we spend most of our time). Our finished basement is the worst offender. A single light switch turns on six overhead light bulbs to illuminate it. The problem is that the kids are forever forgetting to turn it off when they come back upstairs. We're seriously considering having an additional control installed at the top of the stairwell so we can reach around and shut them off from upstairs — perhaps sometime next spring.

The thing I've been trying to be careful about is that some CFs look too cold and sterile, unlike their incandescent counterparts. We have a pair of CFs above the kitchen island and Michelle doesn't like them. She says that the lighting reminds her too much of hospital lighting. Given her associations with hospitals, I can understand her reservations. It turns out that when you buy a CF, you need to look at the "color temperature" of the bulb. Anything above about 3500K indicates the bulb will have those sterile, cold, bluish tones that Michelle doesn't like. Ideally you'd want something in the 2500-3000K range to get a rough equivalence to incandescent bulbs.

Hopefully one of these nights this week, on my commute home, I can stop at a hardware store and see what the local shops have. Now if I could just better train the twins to shut lights off...