Power Demand From US Homes Expected To Fall For a Decade 261
We hear all the time that household energy consumption is rising, both in the U.S. and around the world. That's been true in the big picture for several decades at least, but reader captainkoloth, with his first accepted submission, points to an Associated Press article with some encouraging news on this front: the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years. Take it for what you will, but that conclusion is drawn by the Electric Power Research Institute, "a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."
Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only does it not harm the economy, it helps us all save money because we're paying for less energy, and we're paying less per unit of energy because demand is lower.
Maybe in California, but some parts of the country have seen almost [ksdk.com] yearly [stltoday.com] rate increases [linncountyleader.com], so cutting your energy usage by 30% doesn't help much when they raise rates 30%.
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I wonder if this 'report' takes into account all these sexy new electric/hybrid vehicles that are going to save Earth from greenhouse gases.
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cutting your energy usage by 30% doesn't help much when they raise rates 30%.
You were paying:
[reference power usage in kWh] * [kWh rate]
If your usage is reduced by 30% and the rate raised by 30%, you're now paying:
[reference power usage in kWh] * (1-0.3) * [kWh rate] * (1+0.3) = 0.91 * [reference power usage in kW] * [kWh rate]
See ? It helped by 9% :)
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I'm positive the exact opposite will occur. Again using California as an example, examine their water conservation efforts. First, water utilities actually raised their rates in order to promote "conservation" [latimes.com] (making water unaffordable is not the same as conservation). Then, as the economy tanked AND usage dropped, water utilities raised rates in order to offset decreased revenues [nctimes.com].
I'm all for conservation, but with union strangleholds on these industries, the government in bed with the unions, all on to
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Yeah, its almost like there are human haters out there ???
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones [wikipedia.org]
http://zombietime.com/john_holdren/ [zombietime.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Pianka#Texas_Academy_of_Science_speech [wikipedia.org]
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It won't save money, because the utility companies will just raise rates to compensate for falling revenue.
Supply and demand prevents this from happening without someone gaming the system (which is illegal but did happen in CA 10 years ago).
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
There are minimum expenses, you have to have towers sufficient for at least one transmission line pretty much no matter how little your consumption. But, if you halved the power consumption you should be able to at least cut the transmission capacity by a third, if not a full half. And every line you run has to be maintained and every bit of capacity has to be paid for by somebody.
Ultimately, it tends to be better to have the utilities owned by the local government than a for profit entity because any "profits" can at least be sure of going back into the infrastructure. That's how it's been around here for ages and our price and quality is quite good. Price isn't entirely fair because we do have hydroelectric dams to provide power, but even as we've demolished them the price has still remained lower than most other parts of the country.
The thing which really hurt us was when Enron cheater our utilities out of that money when they went under.
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For residential, a local power company is pretty easy to make work. For light commercial, you can pull it off. Very few utilities have been successful at balancing the residential/light commercial needs against industrial users. The utility companies become just like the government though; trying to enlarge fiefdoms to make it look like they are doing more. LADWP was once a very well run utility, but now they are worse than SCE. Not sure how Silicon Valley Power compares these days, but they used to fa
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Ultimately, it tends to be better to have the utilities owned by the local government than a for profit entity because any "profits" can at least be sure of going back into the infrastructure.
[...]
The thing which really hurt us was when Enron cheater our utilities out of that money when they went under.
The California government was another party to the Enron market manipulation. They created the deeply flawed market rules that led to the California "energy crisis". Then the California government sheltered tens of millions of electricity consumers from the costs of their actions. There seems to be some evidence that Enron bribed the California governor at the time to get that outcome.
So it's interesting that your example contains government involvement in destruction of electricity infrastructure.
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Now if we could just find a way to get rid of (most) fractional horsepower motors.
Make that fixed speed, single phase fractional horsepower motors. Three phase motors are more efficient. And even more system efficiencies can be squeezed out by varying motor speed to match the mechanical load.
As power semiconductor prices come down, small variable frequency drives (VFD) will become common. These take single phase input and produce variable frequency, multiple phase outputs for a motor and provide power factor correction and other efficiency improving functions as well.
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VFD's are the cats meow, but too expensive and complicated for most applications.
PFC's are becoming insanely popular though, especially in heating and air. anything with 90+ AFU in a furnace will have at least a pfc motor, and the really high end stuff (98+AFU) has continuously variable VFD's for the blower motors. the problem with these motors is that they are MUCH more sensitive to power spikes. after replacing my pfc blower motor for the second time i wised up and put a whole house MOV in the electical p
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You do know that most active PFC controllers don't differ significantly from VFDs. Basically, both are a bridge rectifier (sometimes synchronous), a DC link and an inverter stage. The difference between PFC and VFD functions is one of a few algorithms embedded in the driver chips.
The 'expensive' VFDs you refer to are stand alone controllers designed to be adapted to numerous different applications in the field. But when integrated into high production volumes of consumer goods, they can be optimized and th
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VFDs for fractional horsepower motors are cost-effective today. EC motors are another option with generally better efficiency.
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Fractional HP motors are not the problem. Bad motors are a problem. Case in point, the circulation pump on a solar installation used a 1/10th HP pump. The pump drew about 300 watts or about the energy of 1/2 hp. The pump was replaced with a DC brushless motor. A single 60 watt PE panel was placed on the roof. Now when the sun shines on the collector the pump runs. This eliminated the differential thermostat controller and 3/4 of the power use to circulate the water. It removed 100% of the need for utility power to run the pump.
The move was made for two reasons. One was power efficiency. The other was for reliability. The old system would boil over in a power outage. The new one is unaffected by power outages.
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Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Informative)
What a lot of people don't realize about CFL's is that they can have really fucking poor power factors, we are talking in the region of 0.3 for the really cheap ones, so you may only be getting billed for 20W but the power company is feeling the burn of 60.
If by 'burn' you mean transmission losses then yes. If you mean 'burn' as in they have to actually produce 60W to run a 20W CFL then no, power factor does not work that way.
Power factor comes from the fact that CFLs are not a purely resistive load. But energy stored in a capacitor or inductor is not lost. It is returned to the grid. Your utility does need extra equipment to manage apparent vs real power and make their distribution more efficient (mostly eliminating the one downside of low power factor, but that's as far as it goes (and they already have this equipment).
Power factor as a negative of CFLs is a complete red herring, and whoever told you it was a big deal was taking advantage of you in order to slander a fine energy-saving technology. In reality all you can say is that there advantage over incandescents is slightly less great.
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Returned to the grid arbitrarily out of phase, which requires utility companies to employ large PFC installations and / or take the hit with extra generating capacity.
Only to compensate for the extra line loss! Which is important, but small compared to the real power consumed. You can measure watts produced at a generator, volt-amps in the load, and power in the load and see that the power produced by the generator is only slightly more than the real power consumed by the load. Implying that it is more, that CFLs don't save power and use the full volt-amps worth of power even with 0 PFC is pure ignorant bullshit FUD.
But they do have PFC installed.
Suggesting that widespread adoption of low power factor equipment is a non-issue is just another attempt at green-washing with bullshit.
We're just talking about low-power usage lighting when the PF for the home will be dominated by HVAC and large appliances. Acting like the claim that PF is a red herring for CFLs is the same as saying it's a non-issue if your whole house was running a low PF is just a bullshit way to cover for you getting called out on your flagrant ignorance.
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A capacitor isn't a short, and where do you think the energy goes in this situation with no real power consumed?
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CFL power factor depends on the quality of the ballast. Right now the issue is unimportant because the impact of CFL on the overall residential power factor is negligible. However as (if) CFL adoption starts to impact this expect Energy Star to start including power factor in their assessments.
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Informative)
What a lot of people don't realize about CFL's is that they can have really fucking poor power factors, we are talking in the region of 0.3 for the really cheap ones, so you may only be getting billed for 20W but the power company is feeling the burn of 60. Add to that the fact that they are essentially an attempt to cram a LPMV lamp into a really awkward form factor (because for some reason having a strip light in the living room is unthinkable, but having it as a point source and then wrapping a shade round it to diffuse the light is fine) subjectively poor spectrum, mercury content (I know it's not a lot, but if I cant have lead in my solder you can't have mercury in your bulbs) and poor performance in cold weather they are a really a bad solution to an already solved problem.
While it's true that CFL's can have bad power factors, it's not quite as bad for the power companies as it sounds.
First, regardless of the PF, a 20W CFL uses 20W of energy, the power company doesn't have to burn 60W of coal to feed your .3 PF 20W bulb - they only burn 20W of coal.
It is true that they have higher current draw from a CFL due to the 60VA apparent load, but that doesn't really matter since for most homes, lighting energy is dwarfed by other uses, so the power infrastructure to your home is sized to handle your 3000W oven heating element and 7000W tankless water heater. Granted, the low PF can lead to higher resistive losses in wiring, but not nearly enough to erase the gain in efficiency by moving from incandescent to CFL's.
Large commercial installations with hundreds or thousands of lamps do take the power factor into account and size the electrical infrastructure accordingly. Those that are billed by power factor can use power factor correction to correct the power factor (or use high PF lamps), and still save money due to the efficiency of CFL's. Labor costs alone in reduced bulb replacement make CFL's a good deal for business with a lot of lights.
Poor power factors are nothing new - many newer computer power supplies have built-in PFC to give them a decent PF, but older power supplies could dip to around .6.
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My own personal beef with CFL's is that they don't work properly with normal dimmer switches.
While you can get dimmer switches that are especially made for using with CFL's, this can be problematic if the physical switch style you were using before is not that standard, because then you have to replace the cover plate as well, which in turn can necessitate getting new outlets and cover plates for all the electrical connections in the room where they were already matched, and in some cases can even invol
Re:Not a huge surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
I grew up pushing a manual lawnmower every week during summer. It worked just great.
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A two stroke!
But you will get mine when you pull if from my cold dead fingers.
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I get your point though. Too many people will give
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They are encouraging first time submitters. There has been a dearth of timely submissions lately. I'm for it. A bunch of the most prolific submitters like "twitter" have been harassed away, and somebody's got to submit this stuff.
I wonder if declining power requirements of homes have anything to do with declining power needs of computers, the migration to LCD TVs, proliferation of heat pumps and so on - or if it's just a tough economy finally driving folks to adjust the thermostat.
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Probably true (Score:5, Insightful)
If you can't afford to pay the light bill, your electricity consumption is going to decrease sharply.
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That was my first thought as well. I wonder how the housing market would correlate to electricity demand? But it would seem that more empty houses would = a decrease in demand, to me. I bet shipping all our manufacturing overseas cuts demand, as well.
But seriously, if your money is tight and there is no sign of a raise in site, the only way to free up money is to cut your bills. If are hovering around minimum wage, you could almost have the choice of an air conditioner or using fan, and being able to afford
That should be a problem in the US... (Score:2)
This summer, I was on vacation in California/Nevada/etc. basically driving from hotel to hotel... And oh the horrors we saw (energy wise), every single room had it's own air conditioning, but then again I suppose central systems are for communists, right
Many places they were also "bright" enough to put the fridge in a closet without ventilation holes, granted I couldn
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It's BOTH the economy and more efficient products -- but MOSTLY it's the recession.
Consumers aren't the ONLY ones using electricity. However -- why is the COST not going down?
I'll answer that with a RELATED bit of information I came across;
3 Years ago, the amount of refined oil products (like gas and plastics) that was imported was about 3 Billion barrels per day. Now, we export about 1/2 Billion barrels of Gas per day.
The real value of the dollar, the decreasing usage of transportation (as people DON'T go
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You are correct that when the cost of energy rises and ways to conserve become affordable as a result, more investment in energy savings will be made.
I now have a HE washing machine. Almost all incandescent lamps have been replaced with either CF or LED, A PE installation is slowly growing as the cost per watt drops. Insulation has been added. Wall warts are replaced with switch mode instead of transformer type, and I moved to a better insulated home. Sold my old house in the housing bubble to upgrade
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Lights these days should not the major energy expense anymore. I have a fairly large house and all-in-all less than 1kW of lights (LED's and CFL's combined, LED's in areas that are often lit, CFL's in places where nobody ever comes like storage rooms).
My biggest expense ($25/month total) is my computer habit and air conditioning. But air conditioning will get cheaper as I got a 220V system that can single-handedly cool most of the house. The previous 110V systems combined used 1.5x the energy for 75% of the
Headline is wrong then (Score:3)
Power demand is not falling, increase in power demand is falling. Or is it increase in the speed of increase in power demand? Some derivative, anyway.
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Of course, this is trusting the AP article to have accurately reported the information, which is probably unrealis
Re:Headline is wrong then (Score:5, Informative)
Both are right. The rate of demand increase is falling and is expected to go negative in a few years. From the article:
The article is actually pretty detailed and quantitative (at least for the AP). It lists the big drivers as being more efficient lighting and appliances, federal and state efficiency subsidies, and people trying to save money. Over the next couple decades they're projecting ~20-25% reduction in appliance energy use and ~50% reduction in lighting energy use.
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#1 is probably refrigerators. They've increased tremendously in efficiency. #2 is probably air conditioners, same reason (but they are replaced less oft
How to Lie with Statististics (Score:5, Insightful)
The 2 represents a doubling of the sum so far (200%). Now the sum is 3, so the 3 represents a 100% increase. Now the sum is 6, so the 4 represents a 67% increase. Now the sum is 10, so the 5 represents a 50% increase. Now the sum is 15, so the 6 represents a 40% increase. And so on.
Now suppose that these numbers represent electricity usage. Although usage is monotonically increasing, the rate of growth is monotonically decreasing. Other commenters have pointed out that "TFA" says actual usage will go down. But you were right to be concerned. If actual usage is expected to go down, why didn't they say that? Why did they say that the rate of growth is expected to go down?? That phrase is a major red flag to identify someone who's trying to lie with statistics.
Case in point: government spending. (Score:2)
This same trick is what was just pulled in the latest budget agreement between Rebuplicans and Democrats. Their vaunted "decrease in spending" is actually an overall increase: the b
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Obviously (Score:3, Informative)
US energy consumption is falling [typepad.com] even where it concerns oil, that's due to the inflation and thus higher prices in dollar amounts, though measured in gold, the oil is cheapest in history.
September 2009 â" Current (US Population 307,006,550)
Total input to refineries 14,600,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude and products 11,721,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude 9,223,000 Barrels per day
Total Domestic Oil Production 5,444,000 Barrels per day
Gasoline Consumed 8,779,000 Barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed 4,099,000 Barrels per day
September 2004 - 5 years ago (US Population 293,045,739)
Registered vehicles: 243,010,539 Passenger Cars: 136,430,651 Comm Aircraft: 8,186
Total input to refineries 15,254,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude and products 13,438,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude 9,697,000 Barrels per day
Total Domestic Oil Production 5,062,000 Barrels per day
Gasoline Consumed 7,993,000 Barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed
Also here is a graph [realitybase.org] of per-capita consumption.
It's not a surprise that energy consumption is falling in USA, as the population has less and less that it can spend because less and less is produced domestically. Same thing that is applied to oil can be extrapolated to all other forms of energy.
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Re:Obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Of-course, this is consistent with the depression that US and many other Western nations are in.
Depression is huge loss of production capacity - too few people have meaningful goods producing jobs in the market. The way USA is dealing with the loss of production is by abusing the status of its reserve currency, so it's printing dollars to buy consumer goods and the producers also vendor financing this spending.
So there are fewer and fewer jobs, the production capacity is going down (53Billion USD/month trade deficit), the debt is growing because government spending is constantly increasing in absolute numbers. The so called main stream 'economists' are saying that commodity prices do not matter because consumers are not buying commodities, this is completely dismissing the fact that somebody must buy the commodities to build all those consumer goods. Gold is going up only relative to the destroyed currency. Silver is almost a monetary metal itself, and Apple is selling not only in USA (which has no real purchasing power left since it has almost no production capacity left), but it's selling world wide. Of-course at some point the government will come after all of these American companies that are still making money abroad, saying that they must pay more for 'fairness' sake and will force them to liquidate various assets and to pay gigantic taxes on what will be called their "windfall" profits.
Money destruction [slashdot.org] is the same reason HFT [slashdot.org] is up, and bogus government "Job Acts [slashdot.org]" will only worsen the situation, while the crowd will be calling for various misplaced [slashdot.org] solutions that come out of general misunderstanding of what is happening.
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Why don't you read what I linked to on this very issue - my journal [slashdot.org], if you wanted to get your question answered? I have enough [slashdot.org] comments here explaining all of these problems in detail.
Debt is not the cause of recession, debt is a consequence of the broken fiscal policy, which allows government to counterfeit currency. Currency counterfeiting combined with business regulations (and here is what a business regulation looks like [slashdot.org],) combined with taxation of work and with subsidies to preferred monopolies, al
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Printer Ink - More valuable then Gold
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measured in gold, the oil is cheapest in history
Nope. Not even close.
The gold-oil ratio is 1855.40/87.01= approx. 21.3. Visit http://www.incrediblecharts.com/economy/gold_oil_ratio.php [slashdot.org] and scroll down to the gold-oil ratio chart.
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No, you're wrong. ZING!
Total use also includes efficiency. If total use of home heating oil is down, it MAY be due to people keeping their houses not as hot in the winter, or using less hot water. It MAY ALSO be due to people replacing their old oil furnaces and water heaters -- but not decreasing their usage of those devices.
IN REALITY.. it's probably a combination of the two.
I mean, damn. If I start using half as much gas as I used to, it is not absolutely because I am driving half as much as I used
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I'm not even talking about hybrids. You would know if I'm talking about hybrids by the spittle on my mouth -- fucking abominations for dull minds unable to grasp the costs of constructing a thing and the costs of getting rid of a thing.
All cars are becoming more efficient. More horsepower from smaller engines that use less fuel to get a set distance.
Not everyone can buy a new car, and not everyone can afford any car, but enough people are moving from 198x models to 199x models or 20xx models that overall
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Nope! I'm not saying that.
*YOU*, however, were saying that it was *entirely* based on reduced usage. That cannot possibly be true.
I was, and am, simply pointing out other factors that *DO* decrease overall consumption without any decrease in usage.
Both things, as well as I'm sure other factors I have failed to realize yet, have had an impact on overall consumption. Off the top of my head, at least in my area the past few winters have been relatively mild (w/r/t temperature, not precipitation).
Oh, funny t
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No, I won't click it -- because I agree. That is certainly a factor. It's probably the largest single factor, too.. but it's not the only one.
I also had to replace my furnace 2 years ago because the old one quit. At the same time, two of my mom's co-workers were doing the same. A friend had the year previous. A neighbor needs to soon, but is setting money aside for now since it's not immediately necessary.
No one did it because they "could", they only did it because they "had to". Same reason people r
LED TV, New Refrigerator, New Furnace (Score:2, Informative)
We've replaced the broken tube TVs with LCD and now LED TVs. The old refrigerator broke and the new one laps it terms of efficiency. And the new furnace is better than the old one.
These things alone took our bills down 30-40%.
Add some switchable powerstrips for all the phantom draws of those power supplies and it gets even better.
Industry group or not, my experience jibes with their report.
Not overly surprising (Score:2)
There's been a big push for more energy efficiency in the corporate/business sector. This stuff tends to trickle down to the consumer level after a bit, so that's what we're seeing here.
Use of devices is probably increasing, but said devices use a fraction of the power they did even a decade ago, so it makes sense that overall consumption per household would fall.
Think about it; how many of you have washers that are 5 years or older? 10? My washer and drier are over 20 years old. I plan on replacing the
Efficiency is only part of the equation (Score:5, Insightful)
As such, as more people live in the same household per capita energy consumption tends to fall as there are more "economies of scale" in things like refrigeration and heating/cooling.....
Whether or not this will be a long term trend like it is in Italy and Japan still remains a question and is critical to long term residential energy consumption estimates.
Title is misleading (Score:2)
Slashdot's title says the power demand will fall; TFA says the rate of increase will fall, i.e. it'll still go up but more slowly. Please fix.
Parent post is misleading (Score:2)
Assuming they're talking about the "growth rate" declining, in 4 years of 0.5% decline, the growth rate will be 0%, and the remaining 6 years will be negative.
It could far less for more if they would only try (Score:3)
My Georgia electric bill for June to July was 130, for July to August it was 134. I live in an area zoned for tiered rates, meaning as your usage goes up you pay a lot more. All my lights are either CFL (where they aren't easily noticed) or now LED. There are some good deals on packs of three LED bulbs. The only place without either bulb is the master bathroom because we can't find anything acceptable to replace the clear six inch globes. Suggestions are appreciated on that matter. So we simply have half them off unscrewed enough to not light; those above "my" sink. Common electronics in the house include one iMac and a laptop. Throw in a DLP television and a 32 LED in the exercise area and finally a hot water heater. The reason I posted our monthly electric bills, the house is 3900 square feet.
How is it done, well being militant with the heating and AC helps a lot. Since no one is upstairs after 7 the AC goes up to 82+, it is only below 82 from 8PM to 7AM and then its 75 (a slight cave in but hell who cares). The downstairs is 78 during the day mostly because of pets but goes to 82+ at night though it rarely heats up. Ceiling fans grace every room. Laundry and loads of dishes are done as full loads only. Modern dishwashers are more efficient than washing by hand in most cases. Modern washers (both are less than five years old) are the same. Oh, watch the lights. Its not hard to teach turning out the light when your not in the room (though it can lead to some silliness - as in its ONLY YOU in there"). Toss in a light colored shingles and that might help a bit. I would try white as a story mentioned years ago but HOAs are the law in these parts. Outside the only control I have over the elements was planting Chinese Thuja (very fast growing conical pines) to the S/SW to block direct summer sunlight in evening. Even the orientation of the home benefits, most windows are on the North side.
While I doubt every thing we do would work for most, it works for us. Make it a game. That can get everyone on board. That and have something tangible as reward to do with the savings. Like trips, hell even pizza nights paid for being smart work.
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Make it a game. That can get everyone on board. That and have something tangible as reward to do with the savings. Like trips, hell even pizza nights paid for being smart work.
Not a bad idea to do the reward thing. We do most of what you talk about. Where I live we have SmartMeters, but they have not yet given access to the data to customers yet. However, I now work for the local utility and can get my usage after I VPN to work and access the AMI system to see hourly usage.
Once they roll out customer access to the hourly usage then billing will be switching to Time of Use (ToU) billing as well. The irrigation/power utility is a not-for-profit, so the goal isn't to gauge custom
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If you can, replace the light fixture with one that allows for more directional lights (spot lights). There are some globe LED's but they're not as good. I use CFL's there as well.
Hot water heater on electricity? Unless you live in Europe or you generate your own electricity, it's going to be more expensive. You can get one of those more expensive electric water heaters (or add-ons) that use the hot air in your house to heat the water.
As far as the lights go, I put our outside lights on X10 as well as most
Growth falling is not consumption falling (Score:2)
>"From 2000 to 2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."
That means the rate that GROWTH is increasing will slow down. That does not mean absolute power usage is going down. That won't happen until total growth is NEGATIVE.
I am quite sure many people are misreading this to mean it is a reduction in energy use, which it
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>"From 2000 to 2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."
That means the rate that GROWTH is increasing will slow down.
No, I'm pretty sure "demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year" means just that. A decline in demand is negative growth in demand (demand meaning the actual amount of power people draw from the system in a given period of time, not the increase in that amount).
Also from TFA:
Over the next decade, experts expect residential power use to fall, reversing an upward trend that has been almost uninterrupted since Thomas Edison invented the modern light bulb.
Surely when an upward trend in residential power use is reversed, it becomes a downward trend, not just a trend going upwards a little more slowly?
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Yes, it is possible. Of course, anything could happen. But for now it is just slowed growth.
I do think that with better lighting options, better insulation, better efficiency with appliances, higher energy costs, it only makes sense that eventually the average consumption will go down.
Not sure about TOTAL consumption, though. Unfortunately, population continues to increase, which will mean more people having more appliances, more houses, more cars, more of everything. Especially true when you look at to
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Growth has slowed to 2% already, and is expected to hit a negative value such that total demand will decline 0.5% per year.
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Story Title Is Wrong (and Stupid) (Score:2)
When the rate of growth of a value declines, that value doesn't fall. It continues to rise. When the rate declines slightly, it continues to rise nearly as fast as it did before. It doesn't fall.
How stupid are the people writing these headlines? These are the people
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the rate of growth [...] is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years.
Yeah! Classic use of selective editing! The statement in the summary is actually:
the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years
Since you're so smart I don't have to explain that this means that first the rate of growth will decline but remain positive, then become negative, causing the value to fall. As described in TFA.
But really, props, that was classic.
Legalizing pot would bring it down too (Score:3)
I heard one estimate that 3% of PG & E's power goes towards indoor grows. There would probably be a lot less indoor growing if it were legal.
Another factor is the ongoing housing mess. Poor people conserve electricity in a variety of ways: Moving back home with the folks, not keeping the lights on in the investment house that they plan to flip (it's decaying instead), and not providing jobs for illegal immigrants who are either moving back or enterring at lower rates.
Then of course there's the CFLs and other devices that do the same thing with less energy.
"If present trends continue" is one of those phrases that will come back to haunt you. If the economy picks up and kids move out of the house, hire illegals to do their outside gardening, use growlights for their indoor gardening, and drive a spiffy new electric car to work then we'll be back to talking about how the grid can't handle it.
Regarding the predictions of experts. (Score:2)
This presentation is pretty enlightening.
part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9cReuRThxY [youtube.com]
part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3V-TCpX40c [youtube.com]
part 3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNk1S0w8q-Y [youtube.com]
part 4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxg33Swcz5A [youtube.com]
The experts' guesses are compared to "random darts thrown by monkeys". Guess who is more accurate....
Doing my part, off the grid since 1980 (Score:3)
The system has and does support a computer lab (about 10 machines back when I ran a consultancy here), a machine shop - big tools, welders, and now a physics lab in addition to all the usual home entertainment stuff and lighting -- mostly CCFL, but other types too (even good old halogens for reading and the stereo microscope where they rule). Freezer in an unheated room, freezes two liter bottles of water to put in coolers used as refrigerators in the houses. Saves a ton. In fact, nearly all we do could be done in an on-grid house, whereupon you'd find out why they are called the power company -- they find a way to increase all the other non-electricity charges till you pay the same anyway -- same thing as is called Cramming when the phone companies do it.
As I started with bare land, and built on that, I found out something really interesting. In most counties, including mine, the county has delegated the issuance and enforcement of building permits to guess who, the aptly named "power company". Ha! So all four of my dwellings needed no permits, and are "barns" insofar as taxes go. Now, think how much money that saves yearly -- and now recalculate the payoff time for solar. Laughing all the way to the bank on that one!
More on my forums, link below.
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LEDs. They don't strobe (neither does modern CFLs but never mind), you can get them in a range of tones from whitish neutral to mimicking incandescents, and they're getting cheap enough that changing to them as old bulbs burn out is perfectly feasible.
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The last white LED bulb I saw was very blue, which was very harsh on my eyes. How have they managed to get round that?
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By changing the color temperature of the light they produce.
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So why do you buy "white" LED bulbs? Buy the warm-toned ones. Or the ones where you can adjust the color temperature yourself.
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Because "white" should be the same color as daylight.
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Indeed. I have some 'daylight', 5500K CFLs, and they are ridiculously blue compared to incandescent.
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As for CFLs not strobing... everyone says that they flicker at 22 kHz or something ridiculous, but they give me instant seizures anyway, so I'm not quite convinced.
Have you been blind tested for this? I.e. have you been subjected to both CFLs and other forms of illumination at the same color temperature without knowing beforehand which is which (and for double blind testing, the person flicking the switch not knowing either), and you get instant seizures from CFL only?
That would be very interesting, if so.
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I'm sure he is lying because if it were true he would be unable to enter 99% of buildings or use an LCD monitor/tv. If anyone was like that it would be a well known medical condition.
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I am pretty sure he's not lying, but firmly believes to a point of certainty what he says. A blind test would undoubtedly be an eye opener for him, if he's only willing to have one arranged. But I fear his conviction might be so deep that he considers it a waste of time which will only cause him more seizures.
Insert appropriate Schiller and Heinlein quotes.
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It's probably because they're crap and while they nominally operate at 22kHz, the 60Hz leaks in as well.
Halogens are a better bet for less-crappy lighting, and are still legal. And their long life claims are less dubious.
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On the other hand, winter time use of incandescent bulbs in the North should be encouraged. A not insignificant part of the electricity on the grid is provided by "clean" or renewable sources, while your typical oil heater most certainly isn't. Not to mention nasty and non-renewable stuff like mercury in the cold lights when you inevitably dispose of dead ones.
There are certainly more factors than just comparing wattage.
But if you really want to reduce wattage, get rid of that hot air clothes dryer that p
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The backlights in them often do.
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Exactly, just like telepathy.
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There is no incandescent light ban, despite what Joe Barton (who co-sponsored the "ban" in the first place) would like you to believe. There is only a mandate for lights to become more efficient -- there is nothing in the law mandating that a particular lighting technology be phased in or out. In the end, it is likely a moot point anyway as market forces (partly as a result of European regulations, which the US Congress can do nothing about)
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Of course, there's the fact that CFL efficiency is directly related to the cleanliness of the power grid it's drawing from and when put on the standard dirty grid CFL life isn't any longer than incandescent, and many times shorter.
Incandescent lights NOT banned (Score:3)
Where are these bulbs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even today's 'high efficiency' halogen lights only produce about 10 lumens per watt. By 2020, all general purpose lights must produce 45 lumens per watt. This effectivly bans all current forms of incandescent lights.
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This will cause utilities everywhere to raise rates so that they can cover fixed costs
To anyone thinking the above poster might need to adjust their tinfoil hat: This is not theoretical [lasvegassun.com]. Nor is it isolated [blogspot.com]. Nor is it even particularly new [sun-sentinel.com].
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I am surprised that the utilities have not worked closely with USPS to get them electric trucks.
They're trying it. [washingtonpost.com] Buses too. Trains [railwaygazette.com] are [technologyreview.com] being looked at for storage. There's a huge amount of different pilots being looked at around the world with some really cool ideas. BOMA [prnewswire.com] doing large scale DR in Chicago. And on and on.