My Electric Bills in Journal Article Format (Of Course)

Introduction
     It has been more than 8 months since I moved into my own apartment for the first time.  I hate getting superfluous postal mail, so I signed up for electronic billing through Indianapolis Power and Light (IPL) at the first opportunity when I moved back into Indianapolis from nearby Greenwood, IN.  I was on a mission with my energy consumption which was fueled by a few of my character traits:  the incredibly cheap and practical aspect that makes me seek to consolidate and reduce whenever possible, the scientist in me who likes to run "experiments" then collect and analyze "data," my major professional passion for ecology and environmentalism, and my side interest in energy efficiency.
     In this exercise I've managed to touch on all of these aspects of my personality.  I've provided some descriptive graphs to let you into my world a little bit, and from them you'll see both my tendencies to penny-pinch and to lean toward less environmentally-exhausting lifestyle changes (particularly practical/inexpensive/easy ones).  Even if we're able to incorporate less harmful energy sources - e.g. renewable wind energy rather than the vast majority of electricity generated by burning coal in Indiana - I think it's a no-brainer that we should seek to reduce our energy consumption drastically as well.
     Among my major goals were to reduce my energy consumption (both compared to my previous living arrangements and on a month by month basis moving forward) and in turn reduce my energy bill.  I wanted to take at least some baby steps toward a cleaner energy source, and enrolling in the Green Power Option (a whole $0.00100/kWh = it costs me a quarter a month, give or take) was a very affordable step on the dream path that ends with off-the-grid solar/wind energy in my home.

Methods
     The pdf files of all of my bills were accessible online via my IPL account (they keep something like your last 12 or 13 bills on file there), and I collected the following values each month: bill date, bill amount ($), kWh of energy used, number of days in billing cycle, and cost of my 100% opt-in for renewable energy preference.
     A straightforward calculation was done to normalize the data, as it became skewed by variations in the number of days per billing cycle, which ranged from 27 to 34 days: 

Daily Energy Use (in kWh/day) = (Total consumption in billing cycle)/(Number of days in billing cycle)

     By dividing the amount of energy consumed (in kWh) over a billing cycle by the number of days counted in that billing cycle, I could compare my energy consumption month by month in terms of energy consumption per day.

Results

Figure 1 - Summary of data obtained from my last 8 energy bills.

Left: The y-axis (vertical) is multi-purpose here, representing the cost of my monthly bills (red squares and line) in US dollars, the cost of the IPL Green power pro-rate on those bills (green triangles and line) in US dollars, and the amount of energy consumption metered for my apartment (blue diamonds and line) in kilowatt-hours per day.  I've met my goal of generally trending downward in consumption and cost, but the amount of money going toward green energy is difficult to determine here, except that it shows that it's a small fraction of the cost and it amounts to just pennies a month.

Right:  Because the green energy pro-rate is hardly detectable in the figure at left, I made another just to show how much is actually going toward it.  Here the y-axis is US dollars, and therefore it is clear that since my first payment into the Green Energy Initiative (27 cents in July 2011), my cost here has declined right along with the consumption and monthly balances.

Discussion
     There are a couple of things I'd like to draw out of the above results.  First, recall that among my goals were reducing both my energy use and the amount I pay.  Despite a slight increase in my most recent statement, the general trend is certainly downward with respect to my daily energy usage (blue diamonds in the Figure).  I paid a four-month high for my energy last month, but this was due to an unusually long billing cycle.  Otherwise, my downward trend is satisfactory.  And believe me, people tend to be inspired (or at least jealous) when you say that your energy bill is consistently under $30. 
     We're nearing February - the month during which almost all the bad storms I recall from the last 5 years have occurred - but so far my furnace hasn't run all winter.  It has been unseasonably warm at times, but even the cold temperatures have been manageable with a sweatshirt or extra blanket.  Not surprisingly, my high months were July and August - air conditioner season - but note that I paid only a little more those months and not double and triple like some folks do to stay comfortable.  Believe me, if you'll re-evaluate your comfortable temperature (think of it particularly in relation to how much it will cost you) you may agree that using the A/C sparingly (and for only an hour at a time) is enough supplement to box fans and basketball shorts for the reward of a reasonable and predictable energy bill at the end of the month.  Now that it's late January, I don't long for any of the cooling energy I didn't use last summer.
     The other thing on my mind, and it may be clear from the Figure (especially at left), is the fraction-of-a-fraction of my bill that I'm charged extra to be enrolled in the Green Power Option.  On one hand, this is great for me because it's both a predictable and affordable surcharge.  On the other hand, I can afford more (albeit not a lot more) than a quarter a month for something I care about as a consumer, yet I have maximized my possible level of enrollment in the program.  I know that IPL takes pride in having such a low cost to participate, but I wonder if there are ways to better include the people who want to do more.  I'm certain that, particularly if IPL were to provide a clear and itemized sales pitch to interested customers, they could convince many of us to opt-in for more than the 100% maximum.  I say keep the rate the same in order to generate new interest, but if the company takes further steps toward showing a commitment to renewable energy then customers should be happy to go beyond 100% participation.  In fact, let someone like me pay 400% if I choose, since my bill is already low.  This way I would still pay less than $1/month extra yet the process might be sped along as my involvement essentially "sponsors" 1-3 additional consumers.  Plus, any more research and presentation IPL does to expand the opportunities provided by their Green Power Option, the more likely they'll be to find new participants as well.

Conclusion

     I hope any interested reader takes from this snapshot of my energy consumption that cost and energy-saving steps do pay off: less A/C and heat, fans and blankets as necessary, unplugging appliances when not in use.  I didn't install a programmable thermostat in my apartment, but investments in devices like this or in power strips to consolidate and shut off energy drawn from outlets can have great returns without the level of diligence necessary to monitor everything like I have had to do. 

     To any IPL customers who happen to stumble upon this, I hope you'll be interested in the Green Power Option, enroll with me and follow its development.  I'd love to discuss the possibilities for the program to go further as well as alternative ways to support renewable energy.  If you live in Indiana, remember that almost all of our electricity is derived from coal burning, so it is going to take some bottom-up efforts from the public to help push renewable energy in Indiana toward viability and then competitiveness.  I find inspiration when I drive by the mountain of coal to be burned at the power plant on South Harding Street here in Indianapolis, or when I see a monthly bill that was a half-dollar less than the one before.  I hope our city as a whole is inspired to lay down a cleaner energy grid for the future, but if we're not inspired we should at least choose to be responsible.

Suggested Reading

Green Power Option through IPL

Living Like Ed by Ed Begley, Jr. - Ed's a Hollywood actor who has long been on the cutting edge of environmental activism and "green" living, and this book really hit the spot when I first developed my interests in energy efficiency.  He is incredibly clear, helpful, and practical and this book is suitable for folks of all income and interest levels.

E! True Hollywood Story: Planarians

Above:  The cruel price of fame for a young, famous and fast-living Planarian.  Trading in microscope lights for camera flashbulbs, constant scrutiny and pressures to be a role model mixed with the high highs of success make for a bumpy ride for the celebrity.  Not actually sure why I drew this but it's somehow better than finding a license-free pic of a flatworm.

Phylum = Platyhelminthes (phylogeny)
Layered tissues x3 (triploblasty) - endoderm, mesoderm, endoderm
Acoelomate - no body cavity
Nuclei abound - syncytial tegument
Anatomy of digestion = mouth/pharynx/gastrovascular cavity
Representative genus = Dugesia
Intestinal cavity w/ diverticula
Aquatic, free-living carnivores
Not to be confused with segmented flatworms (e.g. tapeworms)
Sense w/ auricles and eyespots

In the freshman biology lab I teach, I stress the importance of organization and study skills as much as I push the course material to my students.  The reason being that 100-level courses (at least in my experience) can actually be the most difficult to prepare for, given the enormous range of information they often cover.  I was toying around with different ways to present information and put myself to the challenge of creating a mnemonic.  In the first week of lab, we covered a few protists as well as cnidarians and flatworms.  Planarians (a common name for organisms found in Class Turbellaria of the flatworm Phylum Paltyhelminthes) were the most reasonable to work with, but I obviously had to take some liberties with wording.

Playing off the letters P-L-A-N-A-R-I-A-N-S, I managed to squeeze into an impractically complicated device most of the distinctive features that the students are expected to know about the Turbellarians (and, often, Platyhelminthes in general).  Certainly not all, and it doesn't begin to help with drawings, microscope slides, etc.  For the record, the same exercise feels doable with CNIDARIANS but it'd take a more experienced scientist than me to solve the PLATYHELMINTHES puzzle. 

I might use this space to check in with my teaching assignment semi-regularly this semester.  It's a handy opportunity for me to review, plus I think it's an interesting way for non-science majors to see what they're missing (in a relatively enjoyable way) and for biologists like me to look back and see a snippet of the incredible amount of information we learned in the average week/lab/semester, even very early in our undergraduate careers.  It's definitely easier to appreciate in retrospect and from the point-of-view of exam-writer instead of exam-taker.

Impromptu Sightseeing

There are plenty of swirling ideas that aren't coming together enough for even a blog post at the moment.  The first week of school is a busy, busy time, and the possibility of it being the last first week of school I ever have gives me mixed feelings.

Anyway, we did knock out an expiring Groupon over some chili downtown tonight, and we used the extra hour left on the parking meter to walk off the dinner and explore areas of downtown that I'd never seen in great detail.  Hannah and I made a ton of great discoveries, but I'll let the burden of the blog post be carried by what was probably my favorite find.

I need to make it a point to explore downtown Indy on foot more often.  There were some pleasant surprises on a quick post-dinner stroll earlier tonight, including the former home of the Indiana State Museum on the northwest corner of Alabama and Ohio Streets.  Awesome eagle statues, lighting, architecture and doors.  I tried to get pictured with that last feature, but I think a return trip in the daylight will make that task more successful.

Review by Haiku: Religious Theorists

Among his "facts," Freud borrowed Ernst Sellin's discovery that that "the Jews, who even according to the Bible were stubborn and unruly towards their law-giver and leader [Moses], rebelled at last, killed him and threw off the imposed Aton religion as the Egyptians had done before them" (Freud's Moses and Monotheism, 98).

Seeing the desperate need for a short creative exercise after some lengthy posts, I've decided to give brief (Haiku) summaries of a few of the more interesting religious theorists I read last semester and their ways of defining "religion" - this is how I intend to remember them, anyway.

Durkheim seemed to think

religion's social but the

people aren't aware

Freud's myths meant to show

religion is neurosis

and Jews killed Moses

Otto's numinous

faked words like mysterium

tremendum, the hell?

Bruce Lincoln's four themes

are "discopraccomminst" if

they're slapped together

The scary thing is I managed to write somewhat coherent, full-on essays describing all four of these theorists.

Further Reading
  The copy of Moses and Monotheism from which I pulled the quote is available in electronic form: http://www.ebooks-for-all.com/bookmarks/detail/Moses-And-Monotheism/onecat/0.html 

Photo Credit
   http://www.wpclipart.com

Fear Should Be Afraid This Year

So far I'm having a reasonable amount of success with my new approach to 2012.  Maybe you could call it a resolution, but really what I have is a stubborn refusal to succumb to the negative forces that I have identified as my greatest enemies from 2011.  We all have negativity that we're stuck dealing with, whether our responses are to acquiesce to it as it builds or search and destroy it.  With the flip of the calendar year, I have set to make the transition from the former to the latter.

My major negative forces in 2011 - Fear, Diffidence and Excessive Consideration - all thread together to form the itchiest, most aggravating fabric of the personality that I happen to wear. 
 
Fear has always had a grip on me, big time.  It's fear which has dictated a substantial proportion of my actions, particularly crippling fears of confrontation and failure.  I can be a totally neurotic mess, particularly over the three-headed monster of school (research/class/teaching), and as any one of those demanding mouths is fed the other two become hungrier and thus more aggressive.  The aspect of my school most ignored has been research, which goes fine but has been starved for attention in comparison with the other two.  I fear the most imminent deadline at any given time.  In 2012, the research finally is the major deadline.  Good for it.  But I will stubbornly refuse to fear it.  In some very real ways I need a successful semester of research, but I've realized in many ways I just don't.  I've seen people whose whole livelihoods are seemingly built upon their research.  But since I have no desire to place a similarly astronomical level of priority on the research in the long run, I fail to see the sense in fearing for all my life as if it is defined solely by the research for a Masters thesis.  I can complete my research and do exemplary work without giving it such power, and in 2012 I will do just that.

In a similar vein, the same fear of which I speak has had tremendous shaping effects on how I regarded myself and others in 2011.  I noticed improvements on which I hope to build this year, but as a whole I treated my own health and feelings with incredible Diffidence and operated with Excessive Consideration in my dealings with undeserving situations and people.  In either case, I was the major loser because of my backwards priorities.  By having blatant disregard for my own physical and mental well-being, I was a total crowd-pleaser in 2011.  I convinced myself that I was out of line when I felt compelled to do anything but shut my mouth, work myself to exhaustion, break every rule of sound nutrition and kiss ass as necessary.  I valued my own feelings and warning signs less than always saying yes, chasing inconsequential gradebook points in inconsequential classes, and acting like I wasn't miserable for it.  My major concerns and considerations were plenty selfish, but they were paid to external factors.  Rather than face the consequences of having any degree of self-respect and autonomy in the face of demanding factors and people, I subjugated myself and was prompt, polite, thorough, and downright helpful to faults.  In 2012, I won't abandon good qualities like some of these listed, but they will be placed back at reasonable rates of exchange with my personal health and self-respect.  If I have to be less accommodating to others in order to look at myself in the mirror, then it's a decision that I can (and others will have to) finally respect.

In 2012, I'm going to inflect not only on years past but also to uncover my true feelings as life unfolds.  Where before it has been easier just not to ask, I will be responsible for answering to and achieving balance that incorporates my previously suppressed drives for better physical and mental health.  I'll continue to fear some things, I can't become superhuman, but I can level out my responses to fear by not defaulting to diffident and excessively considerate actions.   

Ultimately, I know I'm unique neither in my particular set of hindrances nor in the fact that I have room to improve this year.  What I hope someone who reads a brief analysis like the preceding is able to take away is the confidence and excitement to identify, describe, and devise solutions to problems of their own.  Fear, especially, is a powerful thing, but it's not everything, and I hope folks really take the opportunity that 2012 provides to reflect, inflect, and change their undesired aspects.  In my own case, the battle feels demystified and increasingly well-in-hand now that I've acknowledged my most debilitating problems rather than pretending I never had them.

Happy New Year