Here’s a graph of Anti-HumanityEarth Hour’s effects in California.
It doesn’t really surprise me. Even if a lot of people dimmed lights, the amount of electricity used for lights in CA isn’t that huge a percentage of the total demand. For instance, one of the biggest drivers, particularly in the Bay Area, 24/7/365, is server farms, and no Virginia, even in the land of fruits and nuts, they’re not going to shut them down for a stupid political propaganda stunt.
[Update a few minutes later]
Martian achievement hour was actually a second stage of a Ruskie rocket reentering.
Server farms? C’mon, Rand. Even in Silicon Valley server farms are no match for 10 million refrigerators, air conditioners, water and space heaters. (Although, admittedly, they cleverly picked the date to be when A/C use in California is low. They probably knew very well that people would willingly turn off their lights for an hour — but the A/C when it’s 99 out? Ha! Get real.)
Sad fact o’ life is that the big bulk of our electricity usage is moving heat and momentum around. This business of generating photons or TTL voltages is just noise.
Well, in certain locales there’s industrial electrochemistry, too. I believe the amount of electricity used in the US to make aluminum is much larger than the amount used in household lighting. And Al production is increasingly strongly, because, you know, it’s very environmentally sensitive to make things out of aluminum, because they’re lighter and you save energy that way, ha ha.
What a religion! Always good for laughs.
Even in Silicon Valley server farms are no match for 10 million refrigerators, air conditioners, water and space heaters.
Carl, are you aware of the actual numbers, or are you just going with your intuition? Anyway, I said “one of the biggest drivers,” not “a majority.”
Nitpick: “24/7/365” (hours/day, days/week, days/year) should be either 24/7/52 or 24/365. … Not that either is likely to catch on.
Bill, blame Jerry Reynolds.
Sure, Rand. Here you go.
Moving heat around — A/C, fridges and freezers, heating space and water, and drying clothes — accounts for just under 60% of all household use of electricity. Lighting is about 9%.
I don’t doubt that server farms are one of the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand. But it’s still only a few kilowatts at a time. One industrial-size air conditioner on the roof of a strip mall building will equal it. Hmm….of course, maybe you were referring to the air conditioning needs of the servers, which are much larger than their power-supply needs. Still, there are a lot fewer server farms than fast-food restaurants, say.
I was including all of the power associated with keeping the servers alive. If you turn off the air, you might as well turn off the servers.
Well, fair enough, but then I think I would characterize that as the growth in air-conditioned facilities period. Whether they’re used as server farms or cubicle farms, ha ha, doesn’t matter so much. The important driver here is the increasing unwillingness of Californians to live, work, or even drive in anything other than an air-conditioned environment.
I don’t think it’s a trivial point. We expend staggeringly amounts of energy moving heat against temperature gradients, the Second Law being what it is. Since the energy budget is so enormous here, and the technology, with rare exception, fairly primitive, it’s probably an area for “energy efficiency” with far more low-hanging fruit than lighting. I mean, if everyone in the nation suddenly switched to CFLs instead of incandescents, at a staggering capital cost, we’d reduce electricity usage by a whole 3 to 4%.
On the other hand, figuring out some way to boost average air-conditioning efficiency by a mere 30% would reduce electricity consumption by 7% or so all by itself. Furthermore, A/C power usage tends to be absurdly peaked — everyone gets home at 6 on a hot summer day and fires up the A/C, and usage skyrockets. Lighting doesn’t suffer nearly as much from the same peaking, and being unable to spread the burden out contributes substantially to generation and transmission inefficiency.
So, you know, if I was greenie interested in efficiency — which, believe it or not, I am — waste of any kind offends me — my first target would be greater efficiency in heating and cooling. I would leave the light bulbs and green computing for the next half century. To me, the present focus on lighting is as if the NIH spend most of its research funds on trying to cure multiple sclerosis instead of heart disease and cancer. Weird priorities.
I think the same thing about “green cars,” to, incidentally. The modern IC engine is amazingly close to thermodynamic perfection under idle running cirxs, gasoline is a marvelously compact and efficient energy storage substance, with all kinds of advantages. It’s nuts to prioritize replacing the gasoline engine when there are far more powerful possibilities for transportation efficiencies. (Smart roads, better civil engineering, better traffic management, including nonstupid toll and HOV policies, and on and on.) I am quiet sure the amount of gasoline wasted by 5 million cars driving 5 MPH stop and go on the 405 in LA each day dwards what would be saved if everyone in the nation switched to a Prius.
My fourteen year old Tercel gets great mileage.