Keep the Change

Efficient and sustainable energy production has been the driving force in the creation of the Bia Tech Motor, however, this is just the tip of the quickly melting iceberg. The truth lives deep below the surface - where and how we consume our energy.

Imagine buying lunch for $10.00. When you pay, you hand the cashier a $100.00 bill and say, “keep the change.” On your way home you stop off at the gas station and put $20.00 in your tank. Again, handing the cashier $100.00 and saying, “keep the change.” Once home, you pay your $350.00 electric bill by writing a check for $1000.00 adding a note that says, “keep the change.”

This may sound silly however these values closely represent how little of the purchased energy we use compared to how much we discard as waste heat. The above analogy represents the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs. 10% of the energy input is converted to usable light and the rest is discarded as heat. LED bulbs are an awesome option where that ratio is nearly inverted to only a 10% loss in heat. Most of us have switched to this technology and it’s easy to notice an immediate decrease in the monthly bill. This was an easy solution for that one element but only represents a tiny sliver of the submerged iceberg.

We again need to zoom out and take a comprehensive, “systematic” analysis of how we use energy to make our lives comfortable and productive. Each of the devices and appliances today typically have an efficiency rating that shows relative yearly costs and energy consumptions. This, however, only gives you an idea of that device functioning in an isolated situation, not a systemic integration into our lives.

The medical field is a great comparative. Doctors must assess each patient as a whole. The human body is an incredibly complex group of integrated systems that all interact in a beautiful balance, each influencing the other. All things must be considered when rendering a treatment. Trauma, drug interactions, nutrition, disease, secondary responses from organ disfunction, responses to environment, and allergic responses all must be assessed, not only from the point of presentation, but from how it will affect our entire system to return balance… 98.6 degrees.

Our household energy “systems” paint an inverse picture to the efficiency ratings of the individual devices. Considering our homes as energy systems, we typically have a refrigerator, oven, water heater, HVAC / air conditioner/ heater, washer / dryer as basic devices. If we look at these as an integrated system, not as individual devices, and also assess the overall efficiency in “purchased heat” we see that all combined, we are giving away all of our change.

The first bizarre concept to wrap your head around is there is no such thing as “cold,” only a lack of “heat.” Refrigerators actually work by “transferring heat” from inside the box to outside in your kitchen. They don’t create “cold,” they remove heat which reduces the temperature to keep your food safe. You can feel this heat blowing out from under or behind the fridge. So, you are purchasing electricity to transfer heat from inside a box to inside your house. It’s a nice side effect in the winter months which increases its efficiency somewhat, but in the summer makes it more difficult to cool the area.

Central air “heat pumps” work in a similar manor. They either remove heat from inside your house and discharge it outside, or they absorb heat from outside and discharge that heat into your house. When used to cool your house you have paid for all that heat that’s being discharged into the neighborhood. While both devices are running you also have a hot water heater that’s either using electricity or gas to heat a tank of water. Depending on the system, some of this heat is dissipated through the pipes and walls of the tank. In the case of a gas heater, most of the heat is exhausted outside. Clothes washer / dryers also operate the same way in that the purchased heat that’s used to dry your clothes is mostly discharged out of a vent and is lost.

If observed from a high perspective we quickly see that one device is producing heat that another device is trying to cool, or multiple devices are generating “purchased" waste heat that’s discarded while simultaneously “purchasing” more heat in another device.

These systems can all be systemically designed to work in harmony. If we just use the heat we purchased more efficiently by creating appliances that are hybrids, appliances where one’s waste is another’s fuel, and consider our homes as a balanced system we can dramatically reduce our footprint as well as our monthly bills without sacrificing our quality of life. This technology can begin today and should be our first step toward a sustainable future.

Change will begin when we stop letting everyone keep our change.

-Andy Coppock, CEO/CTO Bold Earth Scientific