Power!

[fivemack]

This year (21 December to 21 December, because that's where the billing cycle rolls), I have used on average 642 watts of electricity, and 858 cubic metres of gas.

That is, if I remember my units and my GCSE physics correctly, enough electricity to smelt enough aluminium to make a seven-foot-high solid statue of myself, and enough methane to inflate a balloon larger than my house and capable of lifting that above-life-size statue.

I don't have any plans at present to divert my electricity and gas supply for 2009 entirely to that endeavour.

Comments

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Methane's half as dense as air, so a given mass of methane in air can lift an extra load equal to its own mass.

16 grams/mole, 24 litres/mole, 858000 litres = 572000 grams of methane, so even with the weight of the balloon that's enough to carry a fully-grown Bengal tiger.

I do not recommend tying Bengal tigers to methane-filled balloons.

[angoel.livejournal.com]

Do you have any plans to divert it partially to that endeavour?

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

But where would the fun be in a foot-high aluminium statue of myself, and a balloon full of explosive gas capable of lifting to the tropopause one averagely-scrawny kitten?

[aldabra]

Nonono, you make a leg. Then next year you make another leg. Eventually you have a statue.

[tau-iota-mu-c.livejournal.com]

You should. You so should.

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

858 m^3 in what time period - the whole year? That's not an average ;) </pedant>

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

For this reason, brave sir Pedant, I introduced a comma.

Perversely interested in electricity bills

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

That sounds like quite a lot of electricity to me! Can I ask how much it cost per kWh?

I estimate you'd need a 6kW PV system to generate that much electricity (and a big battery, if you were going offgrid). Which would be a *big* rooftop system, bigger than the average for California where the houses are massive. Then again California is about twice as sunny...

Anyway, the aluminium statue is probably a better investment.

Re: Perversely interested in electricity bills

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Assuming my electricity consumption isn't particularly correlated with the time of year (mostly it goes to running the Victoria Road Medium-Scale Computing Facility), I'm paying £480 a year for my 640 watts, or 8.5p per unit.

This is a bit fiddly to work out because I get gas and electricity from the same people so they show up in the same category on my online banking.

I think I would need a Reputation in the Art World before I could make back the cost of the electrons and the methane in tickets to watch the more-than-life-size statue soar upwards on a house-sized danger balloon.

Re: Perversely interested in electricity bills

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

mostly it goes to running the Victoria Road Medium-Scale Computing Facility

Yeah, I suspected that 640W was a fairly high average for a one-person household with otherwise fairly electricity-unintensive hobbies.

I strongly suspect you will have paid a variety of different rates over the year, not officially correlated with the time of year so much as correlated with changes in long-term gas and electricity prices. (These days you're doing pretty well to beat around 14p/kWh, though you may be able to be cunning with Economy 7 or somesuch.) Hopefully the rates will drop within weeks, but not likely to be nearly to the level of this time last year.