Slashdot Mirror
Power Demand From US Homes Expected To Fall For a Decade
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."
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.
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.'"
Power demand is not falling, increase in power demand is falling. Or is it increase in the speed of increase in power demand? Some derivative, anyway.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
US energy consumption is falling even where it concerns oil, that's due to the inflation and thus higher prices in dollar amounts, though measured in gold, the oil is cheapest in history.
September 2009 â" Current (US Population 307,006,550)
Total input to refineries 14,600,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude and products 11,721,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude 9,223,000 Barrels per day
Total Domestic Oil Production 5,444,000 Barrels per day
Gasoline Consumed 8,779,000 Barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed 4,099,000 Barrels per day
September 2004 - 5 years ago (US Population 293,045,739)
Registered vehicles: 243,010,539 Passenger Cars: 136,430,651 Comm Aircraft: 8,186
Total input to refineries 15,254,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude and products 13,438,000 Barrels per day
Total Imported Crude 9,697,000 Barrels per day
Total Domestic Oil Production 5,062,000 Barrels per day
Gasoline Consumed 7,993,000 Barrels per day
Diesel Fuel Consumed
Also here is a graph of per-capita consumption.
It's not a surprise that energy consumption is falling in USA, as the population has less and less that it can spend because less and less is produced domestically. Same thing that is applied to oil can be extrapolated to all other forms of energy.
You can't handle the truth.
We've replaced the broken tube TVs with LCD and now LED TVs. The old refrigerator broke and the new one laps it terms of efficiency. And the new furnace is better than the old one.
These things alone took our bills down 30-40%.
Add some switchable powerstrips for all the phantom draws of those power supplies and it gets even better.
Industry group or not, my experience jibes with their report.
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.
Monstar L
My Georgia electric bill for June to July was 130, for July to August it was 134. I live in an area zoned for tiered rates, meaning as your usage goes up you pay a lot more. All my lights are either CFL (where they aren't easily noticed) or now LED. There are some good deals on packs of three LED bulbs. The only place without either bulb is the master bathroom because we can't find anything acceptable to replace the clear six inch globes. Suggestions are appreciated on that matter. So we simply have half them off unscrewed enough to not light; those above "my" sink. Common electronics in the house include one iMac and a laptop. Throw in a DLP television and a 32 LED in the exercise area and finally a hot water heater. The reason I posted our monthly electric bills, the house is 3900 square feet.
How is it done, well being militant with the heating and AC helps a lot. Since no one is upstairs after 7 the AC goes up to 82+, it is only below 82 from 8PM to 7AM and then its 75 (a slight cave in but hell who cares). The downstairs is 78 during the day mostly because of pets but goes to 82+ at night though it rarely heats up. Ceiling fans grace every room. Laundry and loads of dishes are done as full loads only. Modern dishwashers are more efficient than washing by hand in most cases. Modern washers (both are less than five years old) are the same. Oh, watch the lights. Its not hard to teach turning out the light when your not in the room (though it can lead to some silliness - as in its ONLY YOU in there"). Toss in a light colored shingles and that might help a bit. I would try white as a story mentioned years ago but HOAs are the law in these parts. Outside the only control I have over the elements was planting Chinese Thuja (very fast growing conical pines) to the S/SW to block direct summer sunlight in evening. Even the orientation of the home benefits, most windows are on the North side.
While I doubt every thing we do would work for most, it works for us. Make it a game. That can get everyone on board. That and have something tangible as reward to do with the savings. Like trips, hell even pizza nights paid for being smart work.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
There is no incandescent light ban, despite what Joe Barton (who co-sponsored the "ban" in the first place) would like you to believe. There is only a mandate for lights to become more efficient -- there is nothing in the law mandating that a particular lighting technology be phased in or out. In the end, it is likely a moot point anyway as market forces (partly as a result of European regulations, which the US Congress can do nothing about) have been pushing incandescent bulb manufacturers to close factories. In other words, with or without the law, incandescents are on the way out.
Like others, I would suggest LEDs. The prices are coming down fast, and the quality (and directionality, or lack thereof) is improving fast. Right now you still have to be pretty careful about what brand you buy and such -- the cheapest available bulb is likely to disappoint -- but by the time you have a hard time finding the incandescents you need I suspect LEDs will be much more viable.
As we discussed in an earlier article, incandescent lights are not being banned. Only low efficiency lights are being banned. Higher efficiency incandescents are available now but the cost more (surprise!).
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
As for CFLs not strobing... everyone says that they flicker at 22 kHz or something ridiculous, but they give me instant seizures anyway, so I'm not quite convinced.
Have you been blind tested for this? I.e. have you been subjected to both CFLs and other forms of illumination at the same color temperature without knowing beforehand which is which (and for double blind testing, the person flicking the switch not knowing either), and you get instant seizures from CFL only?
That would be very interesting, if so.
>"From 2000 to 2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."
That means the rate that GROWTH is increasing will slow down.
No, I'm pretty sure "demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a year" means just that. A decline in demand is negative growth in demand (demand meaning the actual amount of power people draw from the system in a given period of time, not the increase in that amount).
Also from TFA:
Over the next decade, experts expect residential power use to fall, reversing an upward trend that has been almost uninterrupted since Thomas Edison invented the modern light bulb.
Surely when an upward trend in residential power use is reversed, it becomes a downward trend, not just a trend going upwards a little more slowly?
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.
They are encouraging first time submitters. There has been a dearth of timely submissions lately. I'm for it. A bunch of the most prolific submitters like "twitter" have been harassed away, and somebody's got to submit this stuff.
I wonder if declining power requirements of homes have anything to do with declining power needs of computers, the migration to LCD TVs, proliferation of heat pumps and so on - or if it's just a tough economy finally driving folks to adjust the thermostat.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
I heard one estimate that 3% of PG & E's power goes towards indoor grows. There would probably be a lot less indoor growing if it were legal.
Another factor is the ongoing housing mess. Poor people conserve electricity in a variety of ways: Moving back home with the folks, not keeping the lights on in the investment house that they plan to flip (it's decaying instead), and not providing jobs for illegal immigrants who are either moving back or enterring at lower rates.
Then of course there's the CFLs and other devices that do the same thing with less energy.
"If present trends continue" is one of those phrases that will come back to haunt you. If the economy picks up and kids move out of the house, hire illegals to do their outside gardening, use growlights for their indoor gardening, and drive a spiffy new electric car to work then we'll be back to talking about how the grid can't handle it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The system has and does support a computer lab (about 10 machines back when I ran a consultancy here), a machine shop - big tools, welders, and now a physics lab in addition to all the usual home entertainment stuff and lighting -- mostly CCFL, but other types too (even good old halogens for reading and the stereo microscope where they rule). Freezer in an unheated room, freezes two liter bottles of water to put in coolers used as refrigerators in the houses. Saves a ton. In fact, nearly all we do could be done in an on-grid house, whereupon you'd find out why they are called the power company -- they find a way to increase all the other non-electricity charges till you pay the same anyway -- same thing as is called Cramming when the phone companies do it.
As I started with bare land, and built on that, I found out something really interesting. In most counties, including mine, the county has delegated the issuance and enforcement of building permits to guess who, the aptly named "power company". Ha! So all four of my dwellings needed no permits, and are "barns" insofar as taxes go. Now, think how much money that saves yearly -- and now recalculate the payoff time for solar. Laughing all the way to the bank on that one!
More on my forums, link below.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
The place my neurologist sent me for testing only tested with fluorescents, but it did show up on the EEG. Psychogenic seizures don't show up. Also, I've had seizures when friends accidentally forgot to screw in incandescent lights instead of their normal CFLs when I came to visit. I didn't have any prior knowledge that they were using CFLs and we only discovered it *after* I reacted to them. It's hard enough to get an appointment for testing (let alone getting to the appointment; my girlfriend is the only way I can get there since I can't drive and need to best escorted in with a blindfold), let alone asking them to set up something specific with multiple lamps, different types of lights, lampshades, etc, which may not be all that accurate anyway because the people slamming me on /. would just claim it wasn't truly blind because maybe I could distinguish between the bulbs based on the colour of the light. I don't get why people are attacking me on here. I have a serious health problem and I'm not asking for a ban on CFLs or a change in anyone's lifestyle... I do however want people to be aware of what I'm going through.
As far as the people who say everyone would know about this if I truly had this problem, it's simply not true. The media had no interest in picking this up, I wrote to all of the politicians in my state (California) and only got generic template responses, I tell everyone I meet, but the information just doesn't spread. I'm not looking for handouts, to push some agenda, or anything. I just want to be able to see in my house after dark.