Good job on your list Kalhoun. Just wanted to mention, for the record, that even two showers would probably use less hot water than one bath.
I said coal was cheaper than gas.
So I agree 100% with what you are saying. Lower NPHR is essentially lower cost. BTW, last I checked Henry Hub was trading at about $9.00/MBtu. Either way flattening the load curve will allow a utility to use more efficient resources, generally, whether it is gas or coal or whatever. Note they are not necessarily cleaner, I understand that. You would agree, I assume, that a kWh consumed at four in the morning is going to be produced at lower cost than a kWh consumed and produced at four in the afternoon.
Unfortunately my loose language was not very clear. I meant, “Not all gas burning generation is created equal.” Obviously, they have many different heat rates as well as how clean they burn. Not so much for UNA, but for anybody else that hasn’t been bored into unconsciousness by this. Just like newer cars tend to be more fuel efficient and run cleaner than older cars, the same is true of natural gas generation (and coal generation for that matter).
Here’s where our difference is - that only applies if the fuel is the same. You had said this:
“To me efficient is cheaper, not cleaner.”
in reference to me saying
“The electric company will NOT “use the most efficient resources first”, they will use the cheapest resources that fit within their fuel supply and emissions strategy first.”
If you were talking only about the utility using the most efficient resources within a given fuel type, well, I agree with you in most cases, but even that may not be true for all. Coal cost is so variable, and SO2/NOx emissions limits so tight in some markets, that sometimes the first to be dispatched is actually more expensive than the cheapest resource. Sometimes the least efficient power plant of all is dispatched first because it burns the cheapest coal (coal making up 50-85% of the total busbar cost).
Sure, but what I was looking at are deliveries under existing contracts mainly. Few of my clients purchase spot gas. You know, one of my clients in September actually was running some of his GTs off of diesel, natural gas was so expensive…
Almost always, yes.
Sorry to be a bother. We should discuss supply-side electric strategies in another thread I reckon.
My wife’s grandfather has a ‘holding tank’ in his basement. (I’ve never seen it, but from what I understand…) It’s a big tank, the size of his water heater that is between the main water supply and the water heater. The idea is that water that enters the heater will be at the ambient temprature instead of as cold as it is when in comes into the house. I don’t know that I would go out and buy a separate tank, but if one water heater dies, I could see putting the new one inline with the old one and maybe stripping the insulation out of the old one.
Oh, and an energy saving idea with the water heater that I’ve heard of is to put a trap on it. That is, on the outlet pipe, a section of pipe that comes off it, goes down, back up and then reconnects. This way when no water is moving the hot water can only rise as high as the trap instead of all the way up to the next high point in the plumbing. The higher the heat can rise the more pipe it has to act as a heat sink.
(Does that make sense)
Unfortunately, they won’t fit in all lamps. I have some lamps in my living room where the shades are too low for one of those spiral-shaped fluorescent bulbs to fit under them.
True, but this means that the hot water pipe only contains hot water up to this trap. The rest of the pipe going to the shower, etc. has only lukewarm water, as it eventually will cool to the house temperature. (That heat isn’t wasted, it radiates into the house, so reducing the amount of fuel used by the furnace. Or, in summer, increasing the work for the air conditioner.)
The result of this is that the water isn’t hot when the user first turns it on, so they let it run longer to get the hot water from that trap to their shower. And usually it’s wasted, as they ‘let it run’ right out the drain. Meanwhile cold water is being drawn into the water heater to be heated.
So this can cause dissatisfaction in the residents: “hot water takes too long to get hot”. (There have been several threads about this on the SDMB over the years.) Which may result in them doing things like turning the water heater temp up, thus negating the savings.
Also, I wonder about your wife’s grandfathers technique of having a big holding tank before the water heater. The water in that tank will be warmed (up to room temp, if left long enough). But this will be done by absorbing heat from within the house, which was generated by running the furnace. So you are effectively using the furnace to warm the water in that tank. Is this indirect heating via the furnace more efficient than the water heater? I would wonder about that.
Or wash the dishes by hand and retire the dishwasher. Hang your clothes out to dry and retire the clothes dryer.
Also, use a manual typewriter, send letter via the USPS instead by email, read a book instead of watching TV, get a hand crank record player, and candles, lots of candles. 
Generally, the studies I’ve seen indicate that washing dishes by hand takes more energy than running a dishwasher.
A dishwasher cycle uses less hot water than hand washing. This is based on washing dishes the way most people do it (rinsing them under running hot water). And assumes that you only run the dishwasher with a full load, and don’t use the heated drying cycle.
You can make hand washing more efficient than a dishwasher, if you’re willing to work at it. But most people don’t.
I had this set up for a few years. I was given a 20 gallon hot water heater. I hooked it up in line to my 40 gallon. Since the water coming out of the ground is just above freezing here, the water from the 20 would feed the 40. It was a pre-heater (ambient temp of the house). And If I needed a lot of hot water, I would just plug it in.
Not sure how well it worked in the long run. But it seemed like a good idea, my mechanical room looked like the engine room of a U-boat.
It seems like it’s just the opposite side of arguments for turning down the temp of the water heater. If the water heater temp is high, you are in essence using the water heater to heat the house. Obviously bad if you’re running the AC or leaving windows open, but in the winter when the heater is running anyway, it seems like it’s a wash.
Water in the holding tank is moderating the temperature in the house. Either removing or adding heat from the tank causes the heat or AC to run longer and stay off longer, saving the energy it takes to run the fan and start motors.
Whether or not this is noticable is a wash. 
Re: the original problem (setting the water heater thermostat high to avoid running out of hot water), adding a timer to the water heater will help offset the energy losses from the higher setpoint. Simply turn it off when you don’t need it. For most water heaters, it only takes about 30 minutes to generate enough hot water for a shower or load of laundry and people tend to use hot water at near the same times every day.
It’s also a good idea to unplug any sensitive electronics when you’re not using them–especially in the midwest. There was a lightning strike on a power line that caused a big surge and fried one of my computers. sigh
I was going to mention motorcycles/scooters, but I wasn’t sure if they would be considered something “easy” in the spirit of the OP. Riding is definitely a skill which may be non-trivial to learn depending on your ability and licensing requirements of your area. Some climates preclude all but the most die-hard from riding much of the year also. There is one easy way motorbikes can help. In America, the vast majority of motorcyclists are recreational weekend riders. These riders, who already have a bike in the garage and the necessary skills and permits to operate them, could help by riding to work even just a few days a week.
There is no doubt that motorbikes have a much lower environmental impact than cars. Scooters even more so than motorcycles, but they’re more limited in capability. Not only for the fuel savings, but also a lesser impact on the transportation infrastructure as a whole. A 400 lb. bike takes less of a toll on the road surface than a 4,000 lb. car. They take up less space than a car (you can easily fit 4 in a parking space meant for one car), and can alleviate traffic congestion by splitting lanes (where legal). They are simpler machines with fewer contaminants (no A/C means no leaking refrigerants, smaller crankcase and brakes mean less oil and hydraulic fluid, and an air-cooled bike does away with the need for antifreeze), and with fewer parts to wear out the entire maintanance support infrastructure is smaller also.
It’s a 2 foot linear fixture.
Replaced the ballast. Then 10 months later, replaced the entire fixture when I broke one of the plastic parts that held the tube in place when changing the tube again. After I changed the tube again, some ten months later, someone suggested that I was turning the light on and off too much.
So I trained myself not to shut the light off when done using the kitchenette area (which took a while – habits die hard) and just shut it off when I’m going to be out of the house for a while. This was two years ago and I haven’t had to replace a tube since.