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New Evidence of a Decline In Electricity Use By U.S. Households (wordpress.com)
There's some surprising news from the Energy Institute at the University of California's business school. America's households are using less electricity than they did five years ago.
So what is different? Energy-efficient lighting. Over 450 million LEDs have been installed to date in the United States, up from less than half a million in 2009, and nearly 70% of Americans have purchased at least one LED bulb. Compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) are even more common, with 70%+ of households owning some CFLs. All told, energy-efficient lighting now accounts for 80% of all U.S. lighting sales.
It is no surprise that LEDs have become so popular. LED prices have fallen 94% since 2008, and a 60-watt equivalent LED lightbulb can now be purchased for about $2. LEDs use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs, are much more durable, and work in a wide-range of indoor and outdoor settings.
"I would add LED TVs replacing LCD, Plasma and CRTs," writes Slashdot reader schwit1.
It is no surprise that LEDs have become so popular. LED prices have fallen 94% since 2008, and a 60-watt equivalent LED lightbulb can now be purchased for about $2. LEDs use 85% less electricity than incandescent bulbs, are much more durable, and work in a wide-range of indoor and outdoor settings.
"I would add LED TVs replacing LCD, Plasma and CRTs," writes Slashdot reader schwit1.
When they say "I would add LED TVs replacing LCD, Plasma and CRTs" do they mean real ultra-expensive LED TV's, or do they mean those mainstream TV's that use LCD technology but call themselves LED because reasons?
"His name was James Damore."
Will probably shoot back up as more electric vehicles are purchased. Though it will be more night time charging.
Enough with the nerd rage over marketing terms. You should be clever enough to have figured out that "LED TV" is used to mean "LCD TV with an LED backlight instead of CCFL" and OLED TVs are called, well, OLED. The LED backlight is, by the way, not a trivial thing when it comes to power use. If you look at an LCD most of the power it consumes comes from the backlight, with only a bit from the panel itself. So if you replace an older style set that uses CCFL backlights with a newer ones that uses LED backlights, you cut power consumption by a non-trivial amount.
Here is a chart of electricity prices in America since 1960. When corrected for inflation, prices today are about the same as 50 years ago. So, no, I don't think there has been any vast conspiracy to raise prices.
I have cut my consumption by about 40% in the last ten years. Since California has tiered pricing, and all my consumption is in the bottom tier (about 10 cents/kw-hr), my electricity bill is less than half what it was in 2007.
All my lights are LED.
All TVs and monitors went from CRT to flatscreen.
New more efficient refrigerator.
New dishwasher with air drying.
Attic fan to reduce need for A/C.
Ceiling fans in all bedrooms.
Clip fans under every desk.
All outside lights triggered by motion sensors.
And by far the biggest energy saver: Teenage daughter moved and and went to college.
The number of people in an average household has decreased. It's not surprising that fewer individuals use less electricity.
Well prices are expected to go up over time due to inflation. The real problem is that wages have been stagnant, and haven't kept pace with inflation.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
They're surprisingly nice, too! I can hardly distinguish their light from a real 60 watt incandescent. Not like the original CFLs that gave everything a strange tint
The key is to make sure you get the right color temperature. For the "soft-white" look that everyone loves from incandescents, you want 2700K.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
You are understating the costs a whole lot. $1500 isn't what it costs to do a good job insulating a home. You can spend that on a single good window. It costs quite a bit to get a well made window with two (or three) panes of low-e glass, filled with an inert gas, and so on and then of course you have to pay to have the old one cut out and the new one installed. You can get something much lesser quality and just drop it in the existing thin frame for a good bit less, but you don't get the big efficiency gains unless you do it right and have ti really redone.
So on a normal house with some big windows and sliding glass doors you can hit $5-10k easily just in redoing your glass.
Walls are another matter. Depending on the construction of your house, it can me pretty to very costly to insulate your walls. If you have something that is drywall mounted straight on concrete block, there's nowhere to insert insulation. You have to either tear down the drywall, add in framing, insulate in that, and put up new drywall (which also cuts down on the size of rooms) or tear off the exterior facade, add insulation, and put up a new one. Either way it's 5 figures to do.
It's a lot of money to renovate an old home and make it energy efficient.
Well prices are expected to go up over time due to inflation. The real problem is that wages have been stagnant, and haven't kept pace with inflation.
From year to year I think inflation and CPI is an okay measure. Over long stretches of time, well... according to some measures the US middle class hasn't improved at all since the 1970s. But if you took a family from 1970 and transported them to 2017, would they want to go back? There's no internet. No PCs. No cell phones. No digital cameras. Maybe there's lots of things you'd spend money on in 1970 that doesn't really make any sense in 2017. There will be things in 2017 that no money can buy in 1970, what's the value of that? Average lifespan has gone up from 71 to 79 years, what's 8 more years of life worth? That you get more money and spend more money is hardly the only valid way to quantify life.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
As the use of LED's and electric cars spreads (which is inevitable) we'll reduce energy usage even further - all without a single punishing act of legislation.
The green energy push has had significant help from government regulations and subsidies, which is why they exist. Appropriate regulation improves quality of life, and this is no different. In a real free market we'd still be living industrial age smog and air pollution.
Bullshit. What's happened is that the ballast is not working properly and the maintenance people make more money replacing tubes every 6 months than replacing the ballast.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's a socialist state in denial. I blame a generation getting intensive cold war propaganda: They know that socialism is evil, oppressive and unamerican, they just don't know what socialism actually means.