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.
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.
-- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au
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 .
You miss the entire point of earth hour. It's all about increasing awareness of energy conservation.
Dave.
-- --------------------------------------------- Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast:
-- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au
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
It's taken from
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.
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.-- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au
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.
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.
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.
-- --------------------------------------------- Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast:
Nuh. Nothing that a good operator couldn't handle. He'd have to put his coffee and sports mag down for a bit.
compared with what they'd have output
**Of course.-- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au
It's failed miserably then! Frankly I will only take notice when they do something about the REAL problem, global over-population.
MrT.
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.
-- --------------------------------------------- Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast:
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.
Most people turn them off for 5 or 6 hours every night already!
MrT.
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.
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.
**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.
-- Trevor Wilson www.rageaudio.com.au
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.
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