It's easy being green

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

As people keep asking me questions about my electric car, I figured I'd catch readers up. First, I had my first full electric bill with the car charging off my NV Energy account. My monthly power use went down a little bit in comparison to last year.

At first I couldn't figure out what the difference was. Finally, it occurred to me that the difference was I bought a new high efficiency washer and dryer about last February. Difficult to believe, but that's the only thing I can pin down. Is it possible the old appliances were costing me more a month than the new ones plus the car?

Since winter snow time is coming up, people keep asking me which wheels supply the power on my Nissan Leaf. It turns out the car is a front-wheel drive (under the motor). It's supposed to snow on Thursday, so I'll see how it goes. I'm actually more worried about Hunter, who's driving my old Jeep, which has all-wheel drive.

Finally, today was my first day parking at Harrah's Reno. They've installed a new electric vehicle parking lot on the corner of Center Street and East Commercial Row, about four blocks from my office. They have a service called “ChargePoint,” which uses 240-volt charging stations. That means, if the car is completely empty, my car will be fully charged in about four hours. So I park it on the way to work and pick it up at lunchtime. I was a little bit nervous about parking there, since I'm not a guest of the hotel, but the man I spoke to in the lot told me, “That's what they're here for.” Fine. Cool even. Free fuel.

I really like that casinos in town have taken to greening up. Biodiesel at Eldorado, geothermal at Peppermill (and while I'm on the topic, seems like the Peppermill should have some of those 880 volt stations, since they're powering from the Earth's own hot water), and now electric vehicles at Harrahs. Next thing you know, they'll be putting pedals with generators on the chairs at the blackjack tables.