| Earth Hour |
[Mar. 29th, 2008|02:24 pm] |
Tonight is Earth Hour, where you're supposed to turn off your lights from 8-9pm localtime.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jedipussytricks writes:
Subject: I don't get it.
What is Earth Hour supposed to accomplish?
My response:
I believe the main thrust of Earth Hour is:
a) to show how easy it is to just turn off lights you're not using,
b) to show how little actions can make a small difference, and
c) the reduction of carbon emissions (although I think this is a relatively new angle).
One of the first "Earth Hour" type activities was in Thailand where the Prime Minister asked people to turn their lights off - or more specifically, lights that they weren't actually using, like having the light on in the kitchen when you're in the living room - for an hour. He went on TV during this time and showed how much the load on the grid was reduced (i.e. demand) and the cumulative effect was greater than the power produced by one of their large power plants. Huge.
The context for this was that with an improving standard of living in Thailand, and amongst other things, many more air conditioners, the demand had increased to the point where they were looking at building another power plant. This was an attempt at teaching awareness and showing that little actions could make a big difference. I don't have time to do the research now, but I think that's one of the things that spawned the Earth Hour movement.
Something similar happened in California during the energy crisis: people were asked to turn UP their thermostats during the day when they weren't home to reduce the demand on the grid (less aircon), and to turn off their computers and lights and such. The alternative was to face rolling brown-outs. Throughout all of this though, I don't recall a "cause and effect" demonstration that "Look! Everyone turned their lights out during the day, and this meant we didn't have to do a blackout! Thanks guys!" I'm not sure if such an exercise would have proven useful, or if people would have just jumped right back into bad habits once the threat was gone again, but... *shrug*
Anyway, yeah, I think without comprehensive reporting on "What was accomplished", Earth Hour is pretty useless. That said, Sydney's Earth Hour shaved almost 30 MW off the load last night. That's not huge, but it is worth recognizing that above a certain "base" load1, the power plants that are "deployed" to meet the increasing load tend to get more expensive (which may or may not mean dirtier). I.e. If the load on the grid is 100 MW and it bumps up to 120 MW, they'll fire up a 30 MW power plant to meet that "peak load" (the plant is called a "peaker"). In california, most of the peakers are Natural gas plants, which are clean2 but expensive (natural gas is expensive) but in other places they'll fire up old coal plants (dirty, and expensive because they're inefficient or falling apart and can't be run 100% of the time).
So, reducing peak loads DOES actually make a difference, but it's pretty obfuscated. *shrug*
HTH.
1 there is always a base load of X MW because the traffic lights and water system pumps are always on, plus whatever incidentals - this is the minimum total load the grid sees and called the "base load".
2 One might ask: why not build more Natural Gas power plants for peak loads for the rest of the country, given that they're clean. This is something that is currently being evaluated by a lot of states, but there are some problems associated with doing this: (a) the natural gas supply curve follows the oil supply curve, meaning, we'll be hitting peak natural gas at some point soon-ish if we're not careful, (b) we're currently importing a lot of natural gas and this would dramatically increase our imports, and (c) many think that the cost of natural gas is going to double in the next year or so from $6-8/MMBtu to ~$16/MMBtu. If this happens, a lot of people are going to find it hard to make ends meet, and, it's going to result in a higher cost of electricity which will effect the economy. Short answer: Natural Gas is not a silver bullet for all of our problems.
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| Comments: |
Your post moved me to turn off my living room tracklights and tie back the curtain instead, so win++;
A few notes on CA:
* Recall that there was no actual energy crisis, but rather Enron manipulating the market and lying in order to boost their profits.
* President Bush went around saying "you can't conserve your way out of a crisis!" and refused to consider even simple measures like federal government buildings using energy-saving bulbs.
* There was no wide-scale effort to encourage Californians to cut back, though some citizens undoubtedly did so on their own.
Agreed on the Bush-ishm, but a couple of points on the others:
Recall that there was no actual energy crisis...
There was a drought in Pacific NW states. This reduced the availability of Hydro power to provide base load capacity (at the bottom dollar rate that CA buys hydro at). So, this decreased the capacity margin (delta between generating capacity and demand). There was still enough total generating capacity available, but the margin was dramatically decreased, which was worrisome. However, you are correct: it didn't become a crisis until Enron (etc.) started threatening to close down other base-load generators at critical times, further reducing the capacity margin. This was done so that CA would have to buy electricity on the spot market and was done specifically to game the system and rape consumers.
Arguably, the "crisis" was the fact that while enough energy was available, margins were way down and the state wouldn't pay spot prices (which they couldn't afford on whatever level) and this caused not enough energy to be available at the price they were willing to pay. Not wanting to pay for the power at that price is completely reasonable, but it was deregulation that got them into this pickle in the first place.
There was no wide-scale effort to encourage Californians to cut back...
I distinctly remember hearing "Residents are encouraged to cut back their energy use by doing the following..." from the news media (which IIRC was passing on the message from the Gov't), but perhaps that was just on NPR in SoCal. But it also depends what you mean by "wide-scale effort to encourage...": I think threatening rolling black-outs to maintain a margin between demand and production a pretty big incentive, which is essentially what FERC was doing by saying "yes, there's more power available but we're not going to buy it on the spot-market for that high a price, so you best conserve or there will be black outs" an incentive to conserve.
Listen Mr. Footnotes, the earth is dead to me. Nice work though.
Since moving to the beautiful San Fernando Valley my electricity usage skyrocketed. For the first time in my life I have had to use air conditioning to create a livable environment. I hate it.
My favorite thing about some douches that change over to CFL is that they throw away a perfectly good bulb. It's like petting and kicking your dog at the same time.
One thing is certain, my home will be energy efficient when I remodel. I am going to add motion sensor timed light switches for a certain someone who leaves the lights on. I am not sure how well they work with dogs.
i keep my good bulbs and use them where i don't use CFLs (i.e.: in the bathroom or a dimmable switch [although i do have dimmable CFLs now]).
i also spray paint them and use them for parties and crap.
i turned all my lights off, my fridge, and all other energy-sucking items. i don't think it will make a difference, but it's interesting to see how i easily can get along without.
My favorite thing about some douches that change over to CFL is that they throw away a perfectly good bulb. It's like petting and kicking your dog at the same time.Yeah, I told morleyroarly when I installed the CFLs: I'm saving the old bulbs and taking the CFLs with us if we ever move! I think I've repurposed most of the old bulbs by now though, either in my drop-light in the garage, or lamps that don't get used but a couple of times a year (in the guest room, for example). But yeah, post about your progress when you remodel...i'm curious to see what "energy efficiency" steps you take. | |
