500 Work from Home Days

Who would have thought that in mid-March 2020 many of us would still be working from home following the initial wave of COVID-19 closures?  I certainly did not.

As of today, I have worked an estimated 500 days from home over the past two-plus years.  It seems like a milestone and just another day at the same time.

What does 500 days of working from home look like from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective?  Just taking into account commuting, I have avoided ~9,356 miles of driving which equates to ~12,476 pounds of CO2 avoided.  The numbers could be doubled to account for the same amount of commuting that my wife has also avoided over the past two-plus years.

It seems like a much bigger change than just avoiding the dreaded daily commute.  I just cannot figure out what the end state of all this change looks like when the dust settles.

In a few years will we all be filing back into offices and cubicles that are smaller than the space given to our cars in the parking lot?  Or, will work continue to evolve along an accelerated timeframe as COVID-19 kicked off a stair step function in the evolution of our relationship to employment?

2021 Personal Goals Scorecard

2021 was a year.  Actually, it felt like more than a year.

Looking back I do not know what I really did for an entire year.  Work feels like pretending as our ad hoc work from home arrangement is entering its third year with no end in sight.  Play feels like a constant question of “is this worth the risk of potential exposure?”  Heck, every time I think about going out to grab a pizza my minds starts to think about transmission rates and air handlers.  Yeah, that is what 2021 did to my brain.

Anyway, I digress.  How did I do when it came to my goals for 2021?  Read on below to find out.

Here goes:

1. Read 60 books—73 books in total against a goal of 60.  Victory.
2. Ride 3,000 miles on my bicycle—4,103.6 miles against a goal of 3,000.  Victory.
3. Ride 3 “new to me” trails—I only rode one “new to me” trail: the High Trestle Trail in central Iowa.  It seemed like coronavirus and weather killed every effort I made to ride new trails.
4. Local, direct, and packaging free beer—Pretty good.  You can see the details here, but the theme was heavy on the local (only one non-local purchase all year) and decent on buying direct from the brewer and/or in a packaging neutral form factor.
5. No new car in 2020—Epic failure.  We got through March before the reality of needing two cars that could travel more than 75 miles or so set in.  Granted, I am glad we did not spend the first half of this year trying to rent cars for those few weekends of kids activities separated by hundreds of miles. A single weekend was going for about what our car payment is right now.  That would have hurt.
6. Less lawn, more life—I feel like I am about halfway to my goal of ripping out my lawn in various spots.  I started to build out a large pollinator garden in 2021, but 2022 is probably going to see my finish the project and undertake another similar style bed in another part of my lawn.
7. Deeper decarbonization—Like the prior year, I do not know how to categorize this goal.  Without any effort on our part, my wife and I “avoided” 218 days of commutes to work.    Since 2019 we have “avoided” 383 days of commutes to work.  This is a lot of avoided carbon dioxide and other attendant pollution.  I have also decarbonized my lawn care with a battery electric mower.  It does feel, however, like we stalled out a little this past year.  Our delayed effort to replace out natural gas water heater with a hybrid air source heat pump model ran into supply chain realities.  As a household we made some efforts to reduce natural gas usage by keeping our house a little chillier and focusing on heating the person via electricity.  If there is one thing I am going to work on in 2022 this is it.

Third Quarter Progress on My 2021 Personal Goals

I am nine months into the year and the end is coming into focus.

Let’s see how things are shaping up with just under a quarter of the year remaining.

1. Read 60 books—57 books down.  Two in process should put me on the doorstep of my goal before mid-October.  With some cooler weather there are going to be some good reading nights in the near future.
2. Ride 3,000 miles on my bicycle—Ended September having ridden 3,839.2 miles.  Success and then some.  Aiming for something closer to 4,500 miles as a “stretch” goal.
3. Ride 3 “new to me” trails—Rode 1 new trail (High Trestle Trail), but COVID-19 seems to be getting in the way of me riding anything else.  Or the weather.  I have taken three days of vacation where it has rained—during a summer of drought—so I am not thinking this is my year.
4. Local, direct, and packaging free beer—Keeping it local.  You can check out my beer purchasing below:

• No new car in 2021—Fail.  I have spent enough time dwelling on this failure.
• Less lawn, more life—Took out some scrubby turfgrass and planted the start of a large pollinator garden.  (Part 1 and Part 2)  I have a few more things to do in order to get the bed read for the winter and future planting next spring when I intend to complete my vision of a pollinator oasis.
• Deeper decarbonization—Again this is an interesting case of how you frame the situation.  I did not end up replacing our water heater or furnace with air source heat pump models because supply chain constraints meant high prices that pushed me to wait until next year.  Plus, we finally got contractors in to complete repairs stemming from last year’s derecho so our house budget was kind of blown. However, consider that by the end of September my wife and I had not commuted to work for ~165 days or more than the entirety of 2020.  With three months to go, we will have avoided well north of 200 days of commuting.  Plus, we have not taken an airplane flight since the summer of 2019.  The direct carbon emission savings of those two differences is a big deal.

Second Quarter Progress on My 2021 Personal Goals

It has been six months since January 1, which kind of blow my mind.  In my household, that means we are on the downhill slide—pun intended—to winter and a, hopefully, abundant ski season.  I hope that I have not pissed off Ullr and cursed my future years of skiing.

1. Read 60 books—36 books down.
2. Ride 3,000 miles on my bicycle—1,441.72 miles by the end of June.  Okay, it was really by June 23^rd since we left on vacation.  I was really ahead of prior years’ pace.  If I do not lose 10 days in August to another derecho level event this should be another big year for miles ridden.
3. Ride 3 “new to me” trails—Nothing to report so far.
4. Local, direct, and packaging free beer—Keeping it local.  About the only “misstep” was buying a six pack of Odell Brewing Company beer in Denver rather than something from one of the local breweries that I visited, but nothing was really hitting the spot that was packaged. You can check out my beer purchasing below:

• No new car in 2021—Fail.  I have spent enough time dwelling on this failure.
• Less lawn, more life—Drought really helped this goal along in late-May and June.  I mowed twice in six weeks and once only because we were leaving town.
• Deeper decarbonization—This is an interesting case.  Through six months my wife and I have avoided 112 days’ worth of commuting.  This translates to a household savings of ~4,167 miles and 5,556 pounds of carbon dioxide.  In June my household also went “into the black” in terms of solar PV production versus electricity consumption.  Unfortunately, my goal of replacing natural gas fired appliances in my home—both water heater and furnace—has run up against supply chain realities.  Our HVAC contractor advised us to wait a year unless we really needed to switch.  Selection and price are not in your favor right now if you are looking to upgrade your home’s internals.  At least lumber futures are coming down.

First Quarter Progress on My 2021 Personal Goals

Three months into another coronavirus year and it is time to take stock of how I am doing against my personal goals.  Check out the progress below:

1. Read 60 books—24 books down.
2. Ride 3,000 miles on my bicycle—38.77 miles so far.  Obviously, this is a weather and seasonally dependent goal.
3. Ride 3 “new to me” trails—Nothing to report so far.
4. Local, direct, and packaging free beer—Save for my impulse purchase of a case of Costco Kirkland Signature beer I was keeping it local in 2021.
5. No new car in 2021—Fail.  After nine months of reduced car ownership the reality of kids’ activities putting us in two different states at the same time set in.  Combined with a killer deal on the Subaru Outback my wife wanted put us back into the car ownership column.  We tried.
6. Less lawn, more life—Stay tuned.
7. Deeper decarbonization—The first three months have been interesting.  Our household electricity usage seems to be running ahead of the prior year, which is not surprising given that the first quarter of 2020 was not impacted by coronavirus.  Add in a wicked cold snap in February 2021 and a person ends up in a different spot.  We ended the quarter about 641 kWh “in the red” versus 346 kWh “in the red” for the same period the prior year.  Looking to turn net positive in April.  On the good side, my wife and I worked 59 days from home saving ~2,259 miles of commuting and thereby avoiding 3,012 pounds of CO2 emissions.

Other than our epic fail of not buying a new car in 2021, I would venture to say that we are doing pretty well so far.

2021 Personal Goals

It is that time of year again when I think about goals for the forthcoming new year after reflecting back on my success or failure of the prior year.

2020 was…well…2020.  There is not much more that can be said about a year that saw coronavirus upend nearly everything we did on a daily basis.  Granted, the pandemic did help me succeed in some of my goals given the nature of limited options for activity.  Exercise was about the only thing keeping me sane in 2020.

With the pandemic still a part of our lives in 2021 until the various vaccines can be rolled out to a significant enough percentage of the population my goals for the year are going to take into account a more limited scope.  Granted, I never really set goals that are crazy in scope but I am not going to worry about things like commuting to work since that is out of the question at my employer until at least the summer.

Here goes:

1. Read 60 books—I blew past my goal of 50 books in 2020 and that included a period of time where I could not access the libraries in my area due to coronavirus.  That was also the same period of time when I would just spend inordinate amounts of time doomscrolling.
2. Ride 3,000 miles on my bicycle—My goal last year was 2,500 miles and I went past 3,500 miles.  I doubt that 2021 will allow as many opportunities to ride.  Splitting the difference and making the goal 3,000 miles seems reasonable.
3. Ride 3 “new to me” trails—One of my favorite goals from last year that really forced me to think about getting out of my comfort zone.  So, I added another trail experience to the goal.  There are some interesting trails near me that I have never experienced and 2021 is going to be the year.
4. Local, direct, and packaging free beer—This is a repeat of last year’s goal, but I am hopeful that with coronavirus on the wane I can improve on 2020.
5. No new car in 2020—This is going to be the hard one if we start having to commute to work or if children’s activities pick up in the latter half of the year.  We sold our Subaru Outback in June to my brother-in-law and used our Nissan Leaf as a primary daily driver.  I would like to go the entire year without replacement for the Subaru given the cost of a new car and the hope that a new model year will bring more fully electric options.  I never want to buy another ICE vehicle again.
6. Less lawn, more life—It’s been a process over the past few years, but some of the progress I made in 2020 really sets me up well in 2021 to take out some big swaths of lawn.  I am thinking some more trees.  I am always thinking about trees.
7. Deeper decarbonization—This is a goal I struggled with in 2020 because my plan for deeper decarbonization involved replacing out gas fired water heater with an air source heat pump water heater.  Coronavirus got in the way and we did not really think about replacing the water heater.  Granted, we drove a lot less in 2020 so I guess we succeeded on some level.  I do not know what my plan for 2021 is right now, but I need to make progress down the path of deeper decarbonization.

These goals are somewhat repetitive when compared with last year, but there is something satisfying with building upon progress year-over-year.

November 2020 Solar PV Production and EV Efficiency

November is really the first month during the fall/winter season where the sun seems to lose some of its potency.  The light is flatter and the intensity is less.  It shows when you see solar PV production figures:

Production of ~374 kWh for a month is not bad and it beat my previous November totals by a good measure owing to the additional eight panels that I had installed.  Overall, my household ended the month ~171 kWh “in the red.”  Considering that we are spending every day at home working, our kids are spending every day at home attending virtual school, we are cooking every meal at home, and almost all of our driving is done in an EV that does not seem so bad.  It also makes me wonder about installing some more solar panels so that I can be net positive even in the winter months.  Maybe with all the money we have saved by selling the Subaru Outback in June…

For the calendar year 2020 my household is currently ~1,436 kWh “in the black” or net positive.  Even if December were a horrible month for solar production it is likely that we will end the year significantly net positive in terms of electricity.  I believe that this goes to show that it does not take a major change in lifestyle to live a significantly lower carbon intensity way.  Granted, our household is much more conscious of the impacts of our daily decisions but it is not like this is a perverse episode of Living with Ed.

For the month of November we drove the Nissan Leaf ~523 miles at an average efficiency of 5.2 miles per kWh.  Maybe I am just a very conservative driver who borders on hypermiling, but I get a chuckle out of people talking about getting 4 miles per kWh in their more modern EVs.

For the year so far we have driven just over 5,600 miles in the Leaf which is just more than a 29% decrease in mileage versus 2019.  However, this mileage total represents almost all of our household driving as we sold our Subaru in June.  Before, we might take the Subaru to Iowa City for my daughter’s medical appointments.  Not anymore.  Especially now that UIHC has several ChargePoint stations in their parking ramps.

All in all, driving the Leaf has allowed us to avoid ~6,462 pounds of CO2 being emitted compared to driving our full size truck assuming we pull all of the electricity for the Leaf from the grid at an average carbon intensity for our region.  For most of the year we have been putting electrons in the Leaf from our solar panels because I tried to time charging to periods of high production in the late afternoon.  Until such a time when I have a more advanced EV or charger that allows me to time charging automatically I am stuck doing things old school.  Nothing like waiting for the meter to spin backwards before plugging in.

October Solar Production and EV Efficiency

Is there something happening this week that has everyone’s attention?  Oh right, the fate of the Western world might hinge on what voters in a few states decide.  Nothing quite like staring the end of the world as we know it in the face.

The production from my solar photovoltaic array in October was good:

Unlike the prior two months when a derecho knocked out production in August and a roof replacement knocked out production in September, October was a full month of productive days.  It just so happens that those days are less intense when it comes to the sun.

Regardless, I ended the month ~2 kWh “in the red” in terms of production versus consumption.  So close to net zero for the month.  So close.

For the year, however, my household is “in the black” ~1,591 kWh.  Given how past years have gone my household should end up net positive in terms of solar electricity production for the year by quite a bit.  That is assuming I do not do anything stupid like leave a garage heater on for a couple of days when the temperature is below freezing.

In terms of EV numbers, we drove 557 miles at an average efficiency of 5.5 miles per kWh.  This is down from 5.8 miles per kWh in September and 6.1 miles per kWh in August.  It really shows you just how much of a difference running a heater—my Nissan Leaf has the capacitive heater as opposed to the heat pump—can make in terms of efficiency.  I would be curious to see if a heat pump would make that much difference, but I am not about to head out an buy a new EV.

Compared to driving my truck, we saved ~641 lbs of CO2 assuming that all of my EV’s electricity was pulled from the grid at an average carbon intensity.  For the year, we have saved ~5,866 lbs of CO2 from being emitted using the same metric.  In total, since early January 2019 we have saved ~14,985 lbs of CO2 from being emitted by driving the Nissan Leaf.

Even crazier is the impact that coronavirus and the subsequent changes in daily life have made to our driving.  For the year so far we are down ~36% in terms of miles in the Nissan Leaf, but this does not tell the whole story because that car is now the primary driver for two people in my household.  This summer we sold my wife’s Subaru Outback since it was collecting dust and costing us insurance money each month.  All of those miles have been shunted to the Nissan Leaf and we are still down more than a third.

As of today, we have worked from home for 138 working days.  This represents almost 5,500 miles and ~7,322 lbs of CO2 saved by not commuting.  I do not know what the final accounting for the year will look like in terms of decarbonizing but I have to believe it will be a big one for my household.

Stay safe out there and please make sure to vote.

An Analysis of Lawn Mower Battery Life

To power my Ryobi 40V cordless electric mower I purchased two additional batteries.  These batteries are made by a company called GERIT BATT and are 6 AH models.  Currently, on Amazon these batteries are available for ~$80which is what I think that I paid for each earlier in the year.

The mower came with a Ryobi branded 4 AH battery and charger.  Thus far it appears that the charger has no problem juicing the off brand batteries, which is a complaint that I read about from some reviewers.  I will note that if I pull the battery off the charger when it claims to be full it runs for a shorter period of time compared to when I leave the battery on for some time after a full charge indication.  Maybe there is some trickle charging going on or a quirk in the firmware of the charger.  I do not know.

Below is a table showing all of my mowing this season and the times each battery lasted while mowing.  I have been recording these results over the course of the lawn mowing season because I have found very little concrete analysis of battery life in cordless electric mowers.  Batteries A and B are the GERIT BATT models while Battery R is the included Ryobi battery:

	Battery A	Battery B	Battery R
May 1	32	To complete	NA
May 8	34	To complete	NA
May 17	To complete	32	NA
May 22	40	To complete	NA
May 27	To complete	25:28	NA
June 1	18:03	21:37	17:38
June 5	26:42	24:15	To complete
June 8	To complete	38:51	NA
June 12	No time	No time	NA
June 21	To complete	37:25	NA
June 26	41:57	To complete	NA
July 2	39:44	To complete	NA
July 8	To complete	48:16	NA
July 13	45:02	To complete	NA
July 20	41:51	To complete	NA
July 28	37:05	To complate	NA
August 14	To complete	36:23	NA
August 28	To complete	39:04	NA

After the first mowing I stopped using the self-propel feature of the mower believing it to use more electricity from the batteries than it was worth.  The mower is quite light and my yard is not steep enough to really justify the extra juice.  Plus, if I consider it a workout it’s better to make it more difficult.  Right?

The biggest change in battery duration seems to be the dampness of the grass rather than the length.  Early in the season we had a lot of spread out rain that kept everything fairly moist.  Even mowing late in the day it would still be damp.  Compared with later in the season when I let the grass grow long as the rain quit and the temperatures rose, mowing damp grass was just an energy suck.  Check out June 1.  It was like mowing through wet concrete.

You can see that the last month was a hot and dry period of time.  I have really only mowed the lawn to even out some spots that grow long while large swaths of my yard stay at about 4-5” of grass height.

Regardless, it seems like mid-30 minute duration is consistent with some deviation to the high or low side dependent upon local conditions.  Given that my yard is about two-thirds of an acre in size I would imagine that most suburban lots—about one quarter of an acre in size—could get buy with one 6 AH battery.  The possibility of large emission reduction from replacing small engines with electric motors is gigantic.

Note: I bought the two GERIT BATT batteries with my own money from Amazon.com.  I have received nothing in compensation for writing about or linking to the batteries.

August 2020 Solar Production and EV Driving…We Got “Derecho’ed”

Well, we got hit by the derecho in the first half of the month and you can see how that impacted solar production:

The power was out at our house from Monday at about noon until sometime Thursday night with intermittent outages through the following weekend as power crews cut in dark neighborhoods.  The bad thing was that it was sunny out for those days, so my PV system lost out on a good amount of production.  The good thing was that it was somehow not hot and humid—in Iowa in August which is almost unheard of—so we did not roast or braise or slow cook.

For the month my PV system produced ~971 kWh of electricity, which would have been well over 1 MWh if we had not lost those days to the derecho.  In terms of production versus consumption, my household ended the month “up” ~305 kWh.  For the year so far my household is “up” ~1,653 kWh.

Even better, August 2020 represented the month when I went net positive since the replacement of my meter two or so years back.  Without warning, my electric company replaced my bi-directional meter with a newer “smart” meter.  I had lost track of my solar production versus household consumption at that time and followed with a few months where my consumption ran high.  Buying an EV and running a space heater in a garage to finish some projects in the dead of winter is no good for your electric bill.  However, my household is now net positive and looking to crush things going forward.  Since February we have been net positive and September is always a good month for excess production because the HVAC requirements are low.  We usually try to get into November before turning the heat on and the AC is off for the year already.

In terms of driving, we drove the Nissan Leaf ~572 miles at an average efficiency of 6.1 miles per kWh or 93.8 kWh total.  Amazingly, the monthly tally for driving was actually up ~8% year-over-year compared to 2019.  Considering we were out of the country for 10 days last August that make sense.  Also worth remembering is that the monthly total now represents almost all of our household driving since we sold my wife’s Subaru in June.

The monthly total for driving works out to an estimated CO2 savings of ~669 pounds compared to my truck assuming that I charge the Nissan Leaf from the grid at an average carbon intensity for my service region.  As noted above, my household is actually running net positive in terms of emission free electricity production—inclusive of all EV charging—so the CO2 savings is greater.  I have been trying to time my EV charging to the time of day when my solar array is pushing out the most electrons so that I am driving on power from the funky yellow sun.

It is crazy to think about but for the year I have ridden my bike more than I have driven my car.  That is 2020 for you.  Stay safe out there.