Earth Hour headache for power suppliers

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It would be really funny if an Earth Hour triggered cascading blackouts (preferably not on the eastern seabord of Australia, given that that's where I live).

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else
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**Clearly, your sense of humour is different to the rest of us. I certainly don't find such an event the least bit amusing. Fortunately, like most media crap, there were no problems.
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Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

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This whole earth hour thing is a pure media beef up anyway. Wow lets turn our lights off to save the world.. Don't worry about all the PC's that are left running in every office,shop and workplace, drawing up to 500 watts each, The amount of power that McDonalds alone draw with their massive hotplates running 7 days a week and now 24 hours every day. Lets all turn off our lights, and save the world, and DO NOTHING else because we now all feel we have done our bit reducing the power consumption by 200 watts to our house for 60 minutes .

Reply to
Allan

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You miss the entire point of earth hour. It's all about increasing awareness of energy conservation.

Dave.

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Reply to
David L. Jones

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**It's SYMBOLIC. It's not a real attempt to do anything. It draws attention to the very real problems faced by our civilisation.
**Dunno what kind of PC you use, or are familiar with, but the figure (for a, say, Core 2 Duo + LCD screen), the figure is far closer to 50 ~ 100 Watts in standby. In use, you can add around 20 ~ 30 Watts.
**One could argue that the economy of prividing food via fast food outlets is a far better use of energy than thousands of housholds using their own stoves and ovens. Of course, the issue of obesity, heart disease and cancer (all linked to fast food consumption) is a bigger issue.
**Again: It's SYMBOLIC. Far better would be for people to stop using their air conditioners, pool pumps and all the other stuff that consumes lots of power. Stuff like: Concrete manufacture, aluminium smelting, steel making, etc. IOW: Consumerism is the real problem.
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Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

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Not amusing that those who wanted to reduce power consumption for an hour end up reducing it for a day? Oh well, different things amuse different people I suppose.

In fact, regardless of our senses of humour, it seems unlikely anything would happen, unless enthusiasm for Earth Hour were much greater than it actually is. A snapshot of the 5 minute demand graph for NSW at the relevent time is here

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It's taken from

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which changes with time.

Bearing in mind that the time axis is standard time, and that we're currently in summer time, it's hard to see any impact of Earth Hour. Certainly variations of a similar magnitude are seen at other times of day.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

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**Your words: "It would be really funny if an Earth Hour triggered cascading blackouts....."

I do not share your sense of humour. Such an event would be catastrophic and would almost certainly lead to the deaths of people.

**Which is pretty much what I said elsewhere. It is a symbolic act.
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Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

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Mostly symbolic of ignorance when people light candles instead, thus increasing their CO2 output, compared with what they'd have output using ordinary lighting, and turn off things like refrigerators, which will simply consume the unconsumed energy when they're turned back on.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

If it was so symbolic they wouldn't ask us to turn off things at a specific time on a specific date. Better for them to say, turn your lights off for 1 hour every night; you choose the time.

Nick.

Reply to
Nick Andrew

Wrong. the whole point is to make it a big fun event that people (and the media) can get behind, that's what helps builds awareness in peoples minds. To do that you have to have a specific date and time, and not make it too often that people bore of it. Look how much media coverage it gets, it's massive. You'd get zero media coverage or interest if there was no specific date or time.

No way, because then you are simply telling people to do something, it would almost certainly be a complete failure. People will switch off (no pun intended) to stuff like that unless there is some compelling reason to do it. Symbolic/awareness programs are entirely different to programs designed to get immediate measureable results. To get immediate practical results usually requires either laws and penalties (works in Shanghai for example), or incentives. Without those you have to rely upon changing peoples mindsets over time.

Sydney Water for example have had good success in reducing overall water consumption through various awareness programs, and Earth Hour is doing a similar thing for power consumption.

Dave.

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Reply to
David L. Jones

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Nuh. Nothing that a good operator couldn't handle. He'd have to put his coffee and sports mag down for a bit.

Reply to
Bruce Varley

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**Do they? Who did? I didn't.

compared with what they'd have output

**Of course.
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Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

It's failed miserably then! Frankly I will only take notice when they do something about the REAL problem, global over-population.

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

With all the publicity it gets, it can hardly be called a failure. It's actually quite a brilliant and successful idea as far as awareness plans go.

Yes, the root of most of the world's future (and current) problems (religion aside).

Dave.

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Reply to
David L. Jones

Watts

Dunno what kind of PC you use, but *in use* there are *very few* desktop PC's that draw LESS than 70-130 Watts! Some CPU's alone can draw more than that! And some PSU's waste nearly that much!

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

Most people turn them off for 5 or 6 hours every night already!

MrT.

Reply to
Mr.T

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Well, presumably you know better. But a lot of people don't, which means they're protesting about an issue they have little or no understanding of.

BTW, one can certainly buy 'green' electricity for less than the cost the candles, but try to charge people the cost of candles for the power they'd be using outside Earth Hour, and they'd definitely be protesting even louder.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

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That view seems well supported by the graph I posted. The media article referred to dispatching increased frequency control sevices, and running the voltage at the lower end of its permitted range. I can only assume the AEMO were preparing for a much larger popular support for Earth Hour than it actually got. Maybe in future years they'll just ignore it.

Sylvia.

Reply to
Sylvia Else

**A Core 2 Duo will use as little as 5 Watts, if not doing all that much. Certainly power consumption will rise substantially, when rendering graphics or playing games, but not if it's just sitting around in an office at night. Support electronics (not high end graphics, of course) will typically consume another 20 Watts and a hard drive will use less than 10 Watts. Figure on around 2 Watts for the monitor and another 20 Watts for power supply inefficiency.
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Trevor Wilson
www.rageaudio.com.au
Reply to
Trevor Wilson

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Coal fired turbines take about 72 hours to ramp up / down. They normally run at an average = to market demand, during peak times the operators of the power stations (hello Macquarie Generation) wait for the price of power on the national grid to rise a little bit then they switch on the Gas powered turbines and make a half a mil and then switch em back off as the peak subsides.

Reply to
Adam Anderson

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