Green Edge: Saving Money on Electric Bills

Do you wait for it to rain again before you
fix the leaky window?

I just got a message with the August bill from an electricity provider who adds extensive advice on how to save money on air conditioning.

1. Why now? Because now is when people pay attention to saving money on A/C, because they have gotten their August electric bills.

When my children were much younger, I had the pleasure of watching a Sesame Street episode (#0344) in which Bert complains to Ernie: "The apartment is wet. The rain is coming through the window." Ernie responds: "The window is stuck. I have to go outside to fix it. But it's wet outside. Later." Then the rain stops, the sun comes out. Bert complains again: "Can you fix the window now?" And Ernie responds: "Why Bert? There is no rain coming through the window. What's to fix?"

2. Another possible reason we get the advice in September is that the electricity provider doesn't want us to blame them for the high August bill. Giving us advice shifts the burden to us.

Anyway, here is a summary of some ideas on saving electricity, focusing on A/C use, to implement now or next spring: 

• Set the A/C Fan Switch to Auto. Choosing the “auto” setting causes the fan to shut off when the desired maximum temperature on your thermostat is reached. If the A/C cycles off 60 percent of the time, turning the fan switch to “on” will make the fan run more than 400 extra hours a month, which can cost $16 or more for a single-room A/C unit. A fan given a rest will last longer, and the system will dehumidify more efficiently if moisture is given time to drip from the cold cooling coils into a condensation pan and drain outside.
• Set Your A/C Thermostat at 78 degrees or Higher. With each degree higher that you set your A/C temperature, you will save between 1% and 5% on your electric bill, depending on the utility company and what else you plug in. 
• Raise the Thermostat Temperature When You Leave. If no one is home, raise the maximum   temperature to, say, 82 degrees during the day. If you normally have it at 78, you’ve saved at least 4 percent of the cooling cost during the time you were gone. Programmable thermostats make this a routine and they may be subsidized through your utility.
• Install Ceiling Fans. Ceiling fans circulate cool air downward and can make a room feel up to 10 degrees cooler. Ceiling fans can save up to 25 percent on the energy bill if used to cool down rooms instead of lowering the A/C thermostat setting.
• Pull Down the Blinds on Windows Getting Sun. Indoor lighting requires much less energy than extra A/C usage. Cover your windows when the sun hits them during the day. Blinds and curtains are a good investment. Our ancestors knew.
• Use the Delay Setting on the Dishwasher.  Have the dishes washed when the sun is down and the heat that is generated doesn't add to A/C use. Use the barbeque outside instead of cooking indoors to keep the kitchen cooler.
• Install Solar Panels. With subsidies and tax breaks, solar energy panels can pay for themselves in five years, which implies simple-interest return of 20 percent a year. Better than banks are paying! Solar panels generate the most electricity when it is most needed for A/C.

For More Tips

• Energy-Efficient Products and Homes: the Federal EPA Energy Star website. 
• Renewable Energy for the Home: A starting point for looking at solar, wind turbines, home hydropower.

BLOOMBERG | Cloning Himself

Nearly 30 years ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg left Salomon Brothers (it was the recession of 1981-82), and he transformed his $10 million severance check and his Salomon shares into a giant company with more than 9,000 employees concentrated in the New York City area.

He had a hunch he could compete with the Reuters terminals and he was right.

Now he wants to clone himself so that in 30 years other people can look back and say: "My giant company got started in New York during the Decession (Repression?) of 2008-2010."

His new idea is one I hoped the Mayor would come round to. I said so last October in an Op Ed in City Hall News:

Today, the city has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to harness the energy of Wall Street entrepreneurs bursting with ideas as grand as Bloomberg's was in 1981, but who need partners to make their ideas a reality. Layoffs from the downsizing of Wall Street create a unique opportunity for talented displaced workers to start or partner in new businesses or social ventures. The displacement could help advance the Mayor's PlaNYC 2030 agenda by encouraging green entrepreneurs--profit-oriented or nonprofit, like Solar One and GreenEdge NYC--to make the Big Apple into the Green Apple.

When I wrote this less than five months ago, the latest estimate from Albany of the likely loss of New York's financial services jobs was 40,000. The estimate now is 65,000.

Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t pretend his plan will restore all 65,000 jobs. But his “guess” is that the small businesses could create 25,000 jobs. Last week a NY Times story by Patrick McGeehan describes the Mayor’s new plan, which is to

invest $45 million in government money to retrain investment bankers, traders and others who have lost jobs on Wall Street, as well as provide seed capital and office space for new businesses those laid-off bankers might create. The plan is intended to stem a potential exodus of banking professionals from the city during the restructuring of the financial services industry, which has been the city’s economic engine for decades, and to speed the industry’s recovery, which will take at least several years, officials said. Mr. Bloomberg recounted how he created his company in a rented 10-foot-by-10-foot room. He received no help from the city, but he said that was no reason not to help other entrepreneurs now.

The most tangible aspect of the plan is the creation of new incubators, one of them at 160 Varick Street, where he announced his new plan. The Varick Street building

will house an incubator for start-up companies that might employ laid-off professionals. Trinity Real Estate donated the space for three years and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University will select the entrepreneurs who will occupy the space, beginning in April. A second business incubator is scheduled to open in Lower Manhattan later in the year, said Seth W. Pinsky, the president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation. The agency plans to put $3 million into funds to make small investments in start-up companies, Mr. Pinsky said. He said that he hoped to attract twice as much money from private investors and that $9 million would be enough to help start hundreds of new businesses.

I spent the first half year after retiring from the Comptroller's Office in a business incubator in Manhattan and I have recently written about another one, Green Spaces in Brooklyn, as “Green Edge 14”. A report I worked on for the NYC Comptroller on the software industry in 1999 concluded that NYC needed more well-conceived incubators.

Successful incubators such as those that spawned the successes of Route 128 and Silicon Valley require energy from several sources. The MIT-Stanford model is based on a three-way fusion of energy from business entrepreneurs, government money and leadership, and university knowledge. Incubators in New York City that have petered out have usually lacked strong enough government support or university involvement.

My friend Professor Henry Etzkowitz calls the fusion of energy from the three sources in a well-functioning incubator the "Triple Helix" of innovation. If we are looking to clone financial entrepreneurs, it’s hard to think of a better DNA to work with than the Mayor’s.