ECOLOGY

A FEW POWER CUSTOMERS CAN FIND OUT THE CHEAPEST TIME TO DO THEIR WASH

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, NY TIMES - Most people are not aware that
electricity prices fluctuate widely throughout the day, let alone
exactly how much they pay at the moment they flip a switch. . .
Participants in the Community Energy Cooperative program, for example,
can check a Web site that tells them, hour by hour, how much their
electricity costs; they get e-mail alerts when the price is set to rise
above 20 cents a kilowatt-hour. If just a fraction of all Americans had
this information and could adjust their power use accordingly, the
savings would be huge. Consumers would save nearly $23 billion a year if
they shifted just 7 percent of their usage during peak periods to less
costly times, research at Carnegie Mellon University indicates. That is
the equivalent of the entire nation getting a free month of power every
year. Meters that can read prices every hour or less are widely used in
factories, but are found in only a tiny number of homes, where most
meters are read monthly.

The handful of people who do use hourly meters not only cut their own
bills, but also help everyone else by reducing the need for expensive
generating stations that run just a few days, or hours, each year. Over
the long run, such savings could mean less pollution, because the
dirtiest plants could be used less or not at all.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/business/08power.html?th=&emc
=th&pagewanted=print

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CRACKED HOUSES: ANOTHER THREAT OF CLIMATE CHANGE

NEWS, AUSTRALIA - Homeowners should water their houses, not their
gardens, as the big dry causes Australian homes to crack, building
advisory service Archicentre has warned. With water restrictions
affecting most Australian capitals, more than 35 per cent of houses in
most states were experiencing cracking as the ground dried out, an
Archicentre survey of 75,000 homes around the country has found. "When
the soil dries out, strain is put on the house structure and cracks can
appear overnight," Archicentre general manager David Hallett said.
Returning moisture to the soil could allow cracks up to five millimetres
wide in brick walls to close up, Mr Hallett said. "We may see people
with cracks in their homes strategically watering their homes with
buckets of water recycled from the shower," he said.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21037434-421,00.html

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