San Fran Chronicle

Joe Garofoli and Benjamin Pimentel, Chronicle Staff Writers Tuesday, April 3, 2001

It's not feng shui-friendly or the least bit romantic, but the energy-starved Dorantes family has put an alternative fuel source in their boudoir: an RV battery.

It's there to power the 27-inch TV, while another battery is juicing a second television set in the living room.

As California's energy crisis has swelled, recharging the batteries has become a daily ritual for Rick Dorantes. Every morning during his commute from the family's Crockett home to San Rafael, he tucks a battery or two in the trunk of his 1973 Chevy Malibu, where they are jury-rigged to the car's alternator. After a few days of gently goosing the batteries, Dorantes swaps them for the ones inside the house.

His next step will be keeping the batteries in the car and running a line directly into the house. "But I wouldn't recommend this to anybody," said the longtime truck mechanic.

He and his wife, Karen Dorantes, are like many Californians contorting their lives in an effort to squeeze another watt out of their energy bill -- and frustrated at the results. Especially after hearing last week that consumers would get hit with an average 40 percent jump in monthly power costs.

Many are tired of stumbling through chilly, darkened rooms and glancing futilely at unplugged clocks. They say they've conserved as much as they can, and don't know what more they can turn off to save the 20 percent needed to snag a rebate promised by Gov. Gray Davis.

Under the plan, any customer who uses 20 percent less power between June 1 and Sept. 1 compared with last year would be eligible for a rebate on a future bill.

Berkeley resident Esther Fulsaas spoke for many who are bird-dogging every "on" switch when she said, "I have always saved water and energy, and think this proposal only favors those who weren't saving all along."

Many are finding you can conserve only so much by unplugging "leaky" appliances and air-drying their jeans. A few are wondering how much more they can compromise their standard of living before moving somewhere with a more reliable power source. "It's like we're living in the Ukraine," said Karen Dorantes.

Even after buying fluorescent bulbs, blow-drying her hair through car vents, barbecuing incessantly and sidestepping laundry piled up between once-a-week washings, Karen Dorantes predicts, "We'll be getting half the energy at the same price as before."

She's not alone in the cold. Carla Sarvis, a 51-year-old grant writer for a San Francisco dance company, said her family hadn't had the heat on all winter.

"It was 50 degrees in the house. I had to wear sweatpants to bed," said Sarvis, who lives with her husband and teenage son in a two-bedroom flat on 20th Street in San Francisco. "You could clearly see your breath in the house -- like you were smoking."

It was somewhat worth the pain. This winter's bill averaged about $80 a month, compared with about $120 for the previous winter.

"I would love to tell PG&E what I think, but this is a family newspaper," she said.

Yet Sarvis is willing to reshape more of her life to save power. She'll even cut back on cooking, which she loves. She doesn't heat up bread anymore, and thinks the family will barbecue more outside, even though she said, "I don't like the taste of the grill."

"This whole thing is so disruptive to someone's culture and lifestyle," she said. "There's only so much I can do. My child has to do his homework by light."

While some curse the darkness, new San Franciscan Beth Cundiff curses her timing. She moved from Chicago to the Bay Area in September -- right as the energy crisis hit.

In Chicago, she would wear a tank top inside most of the winter, thanks to a landlord who cranked up the heat in her apartment building. When she got to sunny California, Cundiff had to turn off the heat in her two-bedroom Laurel Heights apartment and wear a sweater inside all winter.

Her first purchases upon moving to a neighborhood bordering San Francisco's fog belt were items she never bought while living in the Midwestern tundra: a comforter, flannel sheets and a blanket. A pain, but it helped to cut her $117 bill from two months ago in half last month.

"If I didn't love my job so much, and the area, yeah, I'd think about moving," said the 30-year-old corporate communications director. "You've got to stop and think when my PG&E bill is almost as much as my parents', and they live in this big house in Michigan."

Others are installing more than flannel to beat the chill.

Albany architects David Arkin and his wife, Anni Tilt, are turning to new technology to boost their energy supply. They've already cut back on consumption, replacing 100-watt incandescent lights with 18-watt fluorescent bulbs. They also replaced their refrigerator and washer with more energy-efficient models.

"I think we're running as lean as we can in terms of electricity usage," Arkin said. "We really need to augment the supply."

To do this, they've begun harnessing solar power by installing photovoltaic panels on their roof and a wind generator.

"The great thing about solar generation is it's producing the most electricity during the time our state needs it the most -- on sunny afternoons," said Arkin who thinks his family probably will be able to cash in on the 20 percent rebate.

Ted Lesher, a computer programmer living in Atwater in Merced County, worried about the guesswork involved in finding out how to save 20 percent on his bill. So he bought a power meter, and has spent the past months monitoring the energy consumption of his refrigerator, computer and other appliances in the five-bedroom home he lives in with his wife and two sons.

They unplugged a freezer, which he found was an energy hog, cut back on their use of a pool pump and turned off the computer after finding that it sucks about 80 watts even in sleep mode.

Lesher's vigilance has started to pay off. His bill dropped from $150 in January to $120 in February. He estimates that it will be about $100 for March, and he's confident that he'll be able to hit the 20 percent rebate target.

But William Friel doubts that his bill will ever come down. He and his wife are confined to wheelchairs in their two-story Richmond District home and rarely leave the house. Plus, the 78-year-old retired newspaperman is an incorrigible night owl, reading or watching TV until he turns in around 2 a.m.

Despite cutting his daily TV viewing to 2 1/2 hours, his PG&E bill soared to $420 last month. Living in the heart of one of San Francisco's most sun-deprived neighborhoods, Friel doesn't anticipate dropping the thermostat this summer much below its longtime perch of 65 degrees.

"When you're doing all you can do now," Friel said, "what do you do then?"

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

Answers

you use that computer to do a little research on the jillion ways of conserving that are not even mentioned here. These people are not accustomed to thinking out of the box and it will take some education on their parts to get there. The archives of the old Y2k forum could be worth a fortune to such people.

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001

For plenty of suggestions for conserving electricity and natural gas, see Energy Conservation News and Resources ,

Robert Waldrop, the printable flyer guy

-- Anonymous, April 04, 2001

"I have always saved water and energy, and think this proposal only favors those who weren't saving all along." I can relate to those feelings with respect to my state's recycling initiatives. They calculated disposed waste (sent to the landfill or incinerator) as of a certain date and set that as the baseline. Any source reduction or yard waste composting I did prior to that time didn't count.

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001