Three Bay Area Residents Living Off the Grid - February 2001

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[Video: Home with large back sliding door and windows with solar panel on roof, cut to roof with solar panel and pan to chimney, cut to close-up of solar panel]

KTVU 2 News Anchor, Diane Dwyer (Voiceover}: And on Segment 2, look at how some people are conserving energy and saving a whole lot of money these days. And they say you can do it too. Those stories and all the news on the Sunday night, February 11th, 2001.

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[Video: Sequence of animated blue-purplish graphics of Golden Gate Bridge at night with flash of Fox 2 logo and swiping to blurred red Golden Gate Bridge spinning parallel with words ‘The Ten O’Clock News’]

Announcer (Voice over): And now the award-winning 10:00 O'clock News on Fox 2, the number one prime time newscast in the country.

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[Video: Anchor Dwyer dissolve to woman and daughter doing laundry at home]

Anchor, Dwyer: Segment 2 is next tonight. Coming up, we'll see the lengths some people go to wean themselves from PG&E and its expensive energy.

[Video: Fade to black]

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[Video: Dwyer with square graphic over her shoulder titled “Segment Two”]

Anchor, Dwyer: With the price of electricity and natural gas skyrocketing, many people probably wish they could find a way to avoid those high bills. Well, some people have already come up with a way to do just that. In tonight's Segment 2, Bob McKenzie has the story of three Bay Area families who are living off the grid.

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[Video: A pair of hands on corner of cabinet panning up to a man motioning to his sink and then placing his hands on white plastic tubs on countertop]

Homeowner: This is where the dishwasher was.

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[Video: Cut to man with glasses opening his refrigerator; Cut to woman walking alongside a solar panel installation of five panels on roof; Cut to woman preparing laundry; White pick-up truck and then to close-up truck bed with red lettering ‘Solar charged electric vehicle’]

KTVU 2 Reporter, Bob McKenzie (voiceover): Those steeply climbing utility bills getting you down, they don't bother Frank Schiavo. Want to stop handing over large denomination bills to PG&E? Aaron Wellendorf runs his house on pennies a day. Or maybe you want to be easier on the environment like Dixie May, who gets her electricity from a roof. All these people to one degree or another are off the grid under their own power.

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[Video: Dixie May walking through her backyard garden pointing out rabbits; cut to close up of black and white rabbit to gray rabbit]

San Francisco Homeowner, Dixie May: Oh, well we still have one little rabbit here and another rabbit up there.

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[VIDEO: May in her house turning on lights]

Reporter, McKenzie (voiceover): Dixie May, of San Francisco, has live rabbits in her garden for the same reason she has solar panels on her roof because she and her husband, Stan, think freedom and conservation go together. The solar energy runs all the lights and kitchen appliances.

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May: We’re basically self-sustaining.

Reporter, McKenzie: Do you save money?

May: Actually, originally, we did it because of ecological reasons. We really believe in saving the environment and having alternative choices.

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[VIDEO: McKenzie walking with homeowner who is showing what he’s done to the exterior of his house]

Reporter, McKenzie: Frank Schiavo of San Jose takes the same idea a lot further. Just to start with, he decided the walls of his stucco house with an insulation rating of R11 weren’t good enough.

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[VIDEO: Shiavo pointing to wall of house covered with wood shingles explaining to McKenzie while camera pans up to show shingled walls up to the roof; Cut to front door of house]

San Jose State Instructor, Homeowner, Frank Schiavo: And I added rigid insulation and then horizontal strips of wood and then the shingle. So this gives the shingle, air gap, extra insulation and then the insulated wall. So now this wall is about an R20, which means it has twice the ability to keep out the summer heat and keeping the winter warm.

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[VIDEO: White roof of Shiavo’s home with solar installation for four panels; Cut to back of home with two sliding doors on each end of home with top to bottom large windows in between; Cut to roof of camera panning a closer view of solar panels]

Reporter, McKenzie: He added double glass windows, of course, and a smooth white roof that reflects away sunlight, keeping the house cooler in summer, the solar panels collect enough power to supply all his daytime use of electricity and keep his utility bills under $20.00 a month even in winter, and he says PG&E has to pay him.

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Schiavo: Most of the day my house is giving the electricity to PG&E and at night when I come home from my teaching job, when I use lights then I'd buy back some electricity. The overall effect is that I make more than I use so once a year they have to send me a check.

[VIDEO: Shiavo and McKenzie inside back of home with large windows and sliding doors; cut to bricks on floor; Cut to walls and panning to Schiavo talking to McKenzie

Reporter, McKenzie: Schiavo, who teaches environmental sciences at San Jose State, showed me the passive solar room he built on the south side of the house. The windows in the room allow sunlight to fall on the brick floor, and the warm bricks pass on the heat.

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Schiavo: So my house, all the sheetrock and the air, everything is going to get warmed up. By this, air that's just passively rising off the bricks, sort of like heat off the campfire. It's just works.

Reporter, McKenzie: That works for you in the winter. Doesn’t it make it hot in the summer?

Schiavo: I knew that question was going to come up.

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[VIDEO: Shiavo bends down to touch the brick floor and McKenzie follows after; Cut to glare of sun with blue sky and pan down to large wall of windows down to brick wall]

Reporter, McKenzie: The answer, he said, is that the summer sun is higher than the winter sun, so the room is mostly in the shade then, and he opens up the glass to let the breeze in.

Schiavo: So there's two ways you run this for six months. You keep the room closed and produce heat and warmth, and then for six months you open the doors and let it stay in the shade and you let it be a porch.

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[VIDEO: Shiavo in kitchen pulls out a rolling cabinet; cut to fluorescent lightbulbs on ceiling]

Reporter, McKenzie: Schiavo also replaced his dishwasher with a rolling cabinet, and he washes his dishes by hand and plastic tubs. He also uses fluorescent light bulbs in all lamps.

Schiavo: These light bulbs all earned me $90.00 over their lifetime. Each light bulb earns me $90.00.

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[VIDEO: Aaron Wellendorf walking towards camera between his home and wood stilts supporting solar panels, he pauses and looks up at what he’s built; Cut to panning up to a view of under the solar panels and the wood beams support them; Cut to utility pole in their backyard to a solar photovoltaic box]

Reporter, McKenzie: If you think Schiavo is determined to get off the grid, meet Aaron Wellendorf. He built a huge solar collection rig in the backyard of his Concord home. It supplies power for all his needs with plenty left over to feedback into the system. When a recent power outage hit, he wasn't even aware of it.

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Solar Engineer and Concord Resident, Aaron Wellendorf: And I’m out there drilling and sawing with my, my carpentry tools, and I’m building a project and the rest of the neighborhood’s quiet, and not even knowing that there's a power failure.

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[VIDEO: Solar power storage battery, cut to solar inverters; Cut to Wellendorf’s wife and young daughter inside home preparing to do laundry; cut to top of washing machine with rectangular opening rather than circular]

Reporter, McKenzie: Battery stored the power collected by the solar panels, then an inverter transforms the batteries direct current into household AC. Wellendorf and his wife Karen have a new high tech washing machine that washes horizontally rather than with vertical torque. He says they can do 5 full loads in this machine using about two and a half cents worth of electricity.

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[VIDEO: Wellendorf standing next to washing machine]

Wellendorf: And this actually fills up with just a few gallons of water and it turns the clothes through the water.

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[VIDEO: Wellendorf standing next to washing machine]

Reporter, McKenzie: Even the fridge saves power by borrowing a trick from old-time refrigerator.

Wellendorf: The pressures are on the top, so the heat goes up, away from the internal rather than normal refrigerators have the all the motors and stuff in the bottom and then the heat rises up back into the refrigerator.

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[VIDEO: General Electric meter]

Reporter, McKenzie: Wellendorf says appliances that are turned off but aren't really off are a constant drain on power.

Wellendorf: Anything with remote control stays on all the time, waiting for you to push the button and turn it completely on. So, our television set when we're done, we just unplug it.

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[VIDEO: Wellendorf opens up the hood of his white pick up truck while camera view moves in to Wellendorf and pans down to multiple auto batteries rather than a motor]

Reporter, McKenzie: He even has a battery powered pickup truck.

Wellendorf: My goal was to be someday completely off the utility grid.

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[VIDEO: McKenzie with backdrop of Golden Gate Bridge with camera zooming out to show him on Dixie May’s roof and standing next to a solar panel installation]

Reporter, McKenzie: : Besides the money they save and what they do for the environment, all of these folks experience that deep down joy we all feel when we beat the system. In San Francisco, Bob McKenzie for the 10:00 O'clock News.

[VIDEO: Fade to black]