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Computers Causing 2nd Hump In Peak Power Demand
Hugh Pickens writes "Traditional peak power hours — the time during the day when power demand shoots up — run from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. when air conditioning begins to ramp up and people start heading for malls and home but utilities are now seeing another peak power problem evolve with a second surge that runs from about 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. when people head toward their big screen TVs and home computers. 'It is [not] so much a peak as it is a plateau,' says Andrew Tang, senior director of the smart energy web at Pacific Gas & Electric. '8 p.m. is kind of a recent phenomenon.' Providing power during the peak hours is already a costly proposition because approximately 10 percent of the existing generating capacity only gets used about 50 hours a year: Most of the time, that expensive capital equipment sits idle waiting for a crisis. Efforts to reduce demand are already underway with TV manufacturers working to reduce the power consumption in LCD and plasma while Intel and PC manufacturers are cranking down computer power consumption. 'Without a doubt, there's demand' for green PCs, says Rick Chernick, CEO of HP partner Connecting Point, adding that the need to be green is especially noticeable among medical industry enterprise customers."
I just leave mine on all day!
Batteries are too inefficient to cover the cost difference (which is what the average person cares about).
Solar panels won't get you much power during the 8 PM hump.
Installation is so expensive that you'll likely never recoup your losses over the life of the equipment.
If you're running your own generation scheme, you have to notify the power company so they can disconnect your house whenever they're working on the lines (or you could end up electrocuting a man on the pole). If any kind of home-generation were to become successful, it would have to be used by a lot of people, and thus, the power company would have a hell of a lot more work to do during outages / maintenance.
Your best bet is to work the system and get solar panels installed at a discount with government rebates, tax credits, rebates from the power company, etc., and hope you can sell back some of that electricity during the day.
You could also buy an exercise bike and retrofit it to feed back into the grid, so you can exercise and save a few bucks a month.