| 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).
( cut for brevity )
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.
|
|
|
| Thoughts on the Gasoline Shortage |
[Sep. 1st, 2005|03:13 pm] |
From the scuttlebutt here at the Deparment of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) it sounds like gas prices are probably going to hit $4 over the weekend (probably $4.75 in CA) and people are already starting to see lines at the gas stations.
Similarly, they will probably start rationing diesel fuel for trucks (and I presume buses).
From what I've heard, our national reserves (storage capacity) is generally about 2 weeks of gasoline at normal consumption. A panic could easily cut that in half, and I'm not sure how that's affected by the current hurricane situation - some of that might not even be available due to refineries being offline.
So, some tips:
1) Always keep your gas tank AT LEAST half full. You never know if they'll be out of gas the next day for a day or three. Do this on all of your cars and you'll have taken advantage of the largest storage tank the US has: everyone's cars.
2) Prevent taking multiple short trips: try to combine your errand running (or whatever) into one trip.
3) Drive slower.
4) Walk or bike to the store that's only half a mile away. You need the exercise.
5) Consider integrating walking, biking, or public transportation (!!!) into your commute.
Cheers!
t |
|
|
