Fight the Power

PLAYER 1: Christopher Keyes, editor, Outside. Square footage: 2,700. Human occupants: 3. Other: 1 dog, 1 cat.

PLAYER 2: Grayson Schaffer, associate editor, Outside. Square footage: 1,250 (house) + 250 (guesthouse). Human occupants: 3. Other: 1 dog, 16 chickens.

THE GAME: Electricity generated from fossil fuels is the single largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S. What if two average Americans had their electricity monitored and were forced to reveal their correspondence about the experience—and their results—to millions of readers?

THE INTERFACE: Both players were outfitted with a PowerView home energy monitor (from $800; inpowersystems.com), created by Carbondale, Colorado, solar-energy provider Anson Fogel, 35, and sold through his company, InPower. Once hooked up to a household's electrical breaker, the PowerView uploads data to a server via Wi-Fi, allowing you to watch your electricity usage in real time on your home computer and chart it on InPower's Web-based "dashboard."

On Wednesday, MAY 7, Christopher Keyes wrote:
Chicken Boy,
I have to admit I'm pretty relieved this morning. The monitor has been live for two days, and after a couple of nights lying awake in panic that I'd be exposed as a Class VI energy hog, I've finally worked up the courage to check the dashboard. In the last 24 hours, we [Chris, his wife, Christian, and their five-month-old daughter, Olive] have burned through a mere 9 kilowatt-hours. I still can't tell you what a kilowatt-hour is, but I can tell you this: We're using a fraction of the 30.25 kWh the average American household uses per day. My relief was compounded when I checked out the data on your site. Whoa! I don't want to talk trash—actually, yes I do—but I'm crushing you. Or, rather, your carbon footprint is crushing mine. In the same 24 hours, you've sucked up 17 kWh of juice. What's going on over there, Bigfoot?

On Friday, MAY 9, Grayson Schaffer wrote:
El Jefe,
Is this going to be one of those sanctimonious "My Prius is greener than your Civic" squabbles? Even at 17 kWh per day, I'm still using only slightly more than half the juice of the average household. And that includes my roommate, Tom; the crazy Australian raft guide living out in the guest casita; my chocolate Lab puppy, Danger Dog; ten delicate young tomato plants; and 16 chickens—Tom's birds, not mine, thank you very much. It's those last two that are drawing the most energy. The chicks require a 24-hour heat lamp, and because we're still getting frost, I've had to keep a space heater going all night in the greenhouse. A kilowatt-hour, FYI, is the energy it takes to run ten 100-watt lightbulbs for an hour. A gallon of unleaded gas contains the same amount of energy as 36.4 kWh. If you'd read your bill, you'd know that kilowatt-hours in Santa Fe cost 8¢—that's about $1.36 per day to power my house. By mid-June, when I'm not having to pay Whole Foods prices for arugula, it's all going back into my pocket, anyway. What are you doing with your electrons? When Anson was installing my system, he mentioned being pretty impressed by how clean you keep your place. He kept saying, "It looks like they wear a shirt for an hour before washing it."

On Tuesday, MAY 20, Christopher Keyes wrote:
We prefer to call ourselves minimalists, not neat freaks. Do I sound defensive? Maybe it's because that last jab hit a little too close to home.
Two things I've discovered so far:
1. Our electric dryer is a ridiculous energy zapper.
2. Olive goes through an insane number of onesies (consider yourself lucky if you needed to look upthat word).

Seriously, when I logged on from work midmorning on day three, the energy dashboard showed a spike in usage that looked so conspicuous, I was worried Christian had set up a hydroponic ganja closet. Turns out she just turned the dryer on, but it looked more like a cardiac event on an EKG: The graph jumped from around 210 to 850 watts. I soon discovered that a single hourlong load in the Maytag can double the amount of energy we use in a day. I don't even want to tell you what Sunday looks like. Unless I wash my clothes less often (see painful observation from Anson you provide) or talk to my sleep-deprived, overworked wife about hanging Olive's clothes out to dry (don't think I want to go there), switching to a slightly more efficient gas-powered dryer seems like the only option. But then, what would happen to my old dryer? Wouldn't the fact that someone else was using it and sapping more power send me into some kind of green-karma tailspin?

Let me guess, you back-to-the-landers have a rotating clothesline full of wet tie-dyes next to the chicken shack, right?