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Power Demand From US Homes Expected To Fall For a Decade

Posted by timothy on from the now-keep-pace-canada dept.

We hear all the time that household energy consumption is rising, both in the U.S. and around the world. That's been true in the big picture for several decades at least, but reader captainkoloth, with his first accepted submission, points to an Associated Press article with some encouraging news on this front: the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years. Take it for what you will, but that conclusion is drawn by the Electric Power Research Institute, "a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."

11 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Not a huge surprise by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As the last of the vacuum tubes (incandescent light bulbs and CRTs) get phased out, power consumption goes down. Now if we could just find a way to get rid of (most) fractional horsepower motors.

    1. Re:Not a huge surprise by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can use a little power as you like, the network costs will get you.

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      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    2. Re:Not a huge surprise by hedwards · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There are minimum expenses, you have to have towers sufficient for at least one transmission line pretty much no matter how little your consumption. But, if you halved the power consumption you should be able to at least cut the transmission capacity by a third, if not a full half. And every line you run has to be maintained and every bit of capacity has to be paid for by somebody.

      Ultimately, it tends to be better to have the utilities owned by the local government than a for profit entity because any "profits" can at least be sure of going back into the infrastructure. That's how it's been around here for ages and our price and quality is quite good. Price isn't entirely fair because we do have hydroelectric dams to provide power, but even as we've demolished them the price has still remained lower than most other parts of the country.

      The thing which really hurt us was when Enron cheater our utilities out of that money when they went under.

    3. Re:Not a huge surprise by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I grew up pushing a manual lawnmower every week during summer. It worked just great.

    4. Re:Not a huge surprise by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Um... utility companies have a legal monopoly. They have already gamed the system and are outside of the free market.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
    5. Re:Not a huge surprise by davester666 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wonder if this 'report' takes into account all these sexy new electric/hybrid vehicles that are going to save Earth from greenhouse gases.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    6. Re:Not a huge surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      so wait a minute.

      If electricity last year cost 100 bucks per gigajoule, and electricity this year cost 130 bucks per gigajoule and you reduced your household useage from 1 gigajoule to 0.7 gigajoules, you still saved 39 dollars versus last year compared to having not upgraded.

      The move is still very smart financially, your point regarding rate increases has no place in this discussion. The same thing happens with water and other infrastructure, a large portion of the maintenance bill for a utility was covered by usage costs in the past, so when usage drops the utility actually loses enough income that they cannot maintain the system and therefore your bill doesn't drop as much as you thought it should. Oftentimes you can see a transmission charge for electricity, this is the approximate cost of what it costs to get your power to you and is upkeep on the lines, poles, and transformers. Depending on the mix of power, your transmission charges can actually be greater than the cost of electricity (say a town fed entirely by a hydrodam 100km away). The fixed cost of electricity is low in this case, but 100km of lines are expensive to maintain. Some people also call this the hookup fee, with negative connotations, but it is well warranted because to use the system it needs to function.

      Imagine if people could choose which parts of the bill to pay, and they decided to not pay for maintenance, obviously at some point the system would break down and there would be insufficient cash to fix it so people can use electricity and the utility can bill again! This represents a death blow to a utility, FULL STOP for operations. (this obviously neglects possible short term financing opportunities)

      it also isn't surprising that yearly raises are occurring as the boomer generation has largely deferred the cost of maintaining the nations infrastructure time and time again while only applying quick or short term fixes to the grid.

  2. Probably true by drinkypoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you can't afford to pay the light bill, your electricity consumption is going to decrease sharply.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  3. Efficiency is only part of the equation by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    demographic changes and societal changes are probably at least as responsible, if not more responsible, for the changes. Due to the "great recession" American kids are finally figuring out what their counterparts in other rich countries(Italy and Japan foremost among them) that living with mom and dad after graduation and even employment isn't as bad as either forking out massive amounts of money in rent to someone else every month or buying a house/apartment that is pretty much guaranteed to be worth less than you paid for it the second you sign the lease.

    As such, as more people live in the same household per capita energy consumption tends to fall as there are more "economies of scale" in things like refrigeration and heating/cooling.....

    Whether or not this will be a long term trend like it is in Italy and Japan still remains a question and is critical to long term residential energy consumption estimates.

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    Monstar L
  4. Where are these bulbs? by cnaumann · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even today's 'high efficiency' halogen lights only produce about 10 lumens per watt. By 2020, all general purpose lights must produce 45 lumens per watt. This effectivly bans all current forms of incandescent lights.

  5. How to Lie with Statististics by WebManWalking · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You were absolutely right to be concerned about the rate of growth metric. Consider 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + ...

    The 2 represents a doubling of the sum so far (200%). Now the sum is 3, so the 3 represents a 100% increase. Now the sum is 6, so the 4 represents a 67% increase. Now the sum is 10, so the 5 represents a 50% increase. Now the sum is 15, so the 6 represents a 40% increase. And so on.

    Now suppose that these numbers represent electricity usage. Although usage is monotonically increasing, the rate of growth is monotonically decreasing. Other commenters have pointed out that "TFA" says actual usage will go down. But you were right to be concerned. If actual usage is expected to go down, why didn't they say that? Why did they say that the rate of growth is expected to go down?? That phrase is a major red flag to identify someone who's trying to lie with statistics.