From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Fri Jul 06 2001 - 07:10:42 MDT
Spike Jones wrote:
>
> > > > "J. R. Molloy" wrote: Because of Gray Davis' complicity in this matter, I
> > > > propose that Taxifornians rename rolling blackouts "rolling grayouts."
> > >
> > >Spike Jones wrote: The grayout idea is one that actually makes a modicum of
> > sense.
> > > They plan to lower the line voltage everywhere by about 10%.
> >
> > Mike Lorrey wrote: Not only that, but incandescent bulbs produce about half
> > their normal
> > illumination that low (and if they are 130 volt long life bulbs, they
> > will be even less bright), while still using 91% of the energy, which
> > will prompt people to have more lights running at the same time to keep
> > up the same illumination, thus wasting 40% more energy. Not so smart.
>
> No, this will be one where everyone wins. The power company gets to
> sell more power, thus make more money, and in the long run, the prole
> notices her power bill rise and it incentivizes her to replace her incandescent
> bulbs with low power flourescent. Capitalism at its best.
Normally, yes. However, at least in California, and according to the
stats I've seen, over 40% of California's power demand over the past 10
years has been conserved. There is little room left for improvement, and
such improvement is usually in the most expensive to conserve areas.
Perhaps you can provide an impression for how much fluorescent is used
in people's homes there, to indicate how much savings can occur further.
I'd expect with that much already conserved that they'd already be
pretty popular.
I think one of the best things that people can do is to eliminate their
traditional tower PCs in favor of laptops and flatscreen displays. PC's
use between 150-225 watts, plus a similar amount for the CRT, printer,
scanner, etc. A 4 hour a day PC habit can result in 2 kWh consumption
per day, or 730 kWh per year (not counting the lighting requirements for
using a PC). Multiply that by 10 million people, and thats 7.3 terawatt
hours per year for PC use alone. Dropping that down to 20 watts for a
laptop for everybody means a reduction in consumption of 96%. Equipping
them with solar panels for those laptops would only help with another
4%. As you can see, the key to savings in computers is moving to lower
internal operating voltages.
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