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Boiled Water posted:Denmark (and some of the EU I'm not sure) banned import and sale of old style light bulbs meaning you can now boy only power saving compact-fluorescent bulbs or LED lights. The ban is EU wide actually.
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Sep 13, 2012 09:33
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Install Gentoo posted:Let's say you have an average 40 watt incandescent bulb you want to replace - it costs $1.25 for the bulb and runs for 1,000 hours. At 8 hours a day, 50,000 hours is 17 years. You completely forgot to discount the projected period, which brings the price of bulbs plus electricity for the CFL and LED to very similar levels. On top of that, there's the risk of your lighting needs changing over 17 years - it's a very long period to lock yourself into a certain type of light bulb in most situations for most people. Don't get me wrong, LEDs are cool and hopefully will drop in price enough to make them the default choice sooner rather than later, but it's probably not the right economic decision for most people at the moment.
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Sep 13, 2012 12:32
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schmen posted:Ah thanks very much for that, I'm actually not all that educated about the waste and all of nuclear reactors, I knew wasn't easy to get all the isotopes, but wasn't aware that it was such a pain to get it in the first place. The SMR is an answer to nuclear's ultimate problem: regulatory costs (http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter9.html). The gist of it is that instead of building large plants that take several years to complete and are prone to regulatory changes and economic uncertainties during construction (elevating their cost to ridiculous levels), you can build a bunch of small plants on a factory line as quickly as possible and avoid the brunt of economic uncertainties. This also has the advantage of standardizing your reactors. Instead of having a bunch of different reactors that all need their own lengthy licensing process, you build one reactor as a "standard" and get that licensed, and it more-or-less speaks for the reliability of all the other reactors you're going to build identically, which greatly reduces licensing costs. The disadvantage is that smaller nuclear plants end up being less fuel efficient than larger ones, and won't be as flexible in terms of on-site waste management and generator capabilities. But you'll end up with a fleet of reactors that basically costs 25-30% of what it takes to build singular large units.
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Sep 13, 2012 12:41
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I guess I just like the idea of having a reactor where you don't have to fuel it for decades, instead of lovely coal like Australia has way too much of right now.
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:At 8 hours a day, 50,000 hours is 17 years. You completely forgot to discount the projected period, which brings the price of bulbs plus electricity for the CFL and LED to very similar levels. On top of that, there's the risk of your lighting needs changing over 17 years - it's a very long period to lock yourself into a certain type of light bulb in most situations for most people. Yes, LED bulbs last an EXTREMELY long time. I hardly see how that would make the overall price match CFLs though, as CFLs can't get much lower in power usage per light output at all. Also I don't see what you mean by "lighting needs changing in 17 years" - at worst you just move the bulb to another fixture if at year 9 you decide you want 60-watt-equivalent out of the lamp you had the 40-watt-equivalent LED bulb in. Electricity prices are also inevitably going to go up over the time span, making them better and better -they've gone from 8.31 cents per kwh nation average to 12.12 per kwh nation average since 2003. Let's go back to my example of bulbs: quote:You can replace that with an 11 watt CFL bulb, that costs $7, and lasts 10,000 hours. Let's compare for only 20,000 hours of use (6.8 years or so at 8 hours a day): CFL: 2 bulbs + 220 kilowatt hours = $40.66 LED: 1 bulb + 120 kilowatt hours = $37.50 Again, that's just with the nationwide average electricity price right now, and without the possibility of it rising being factored in. It can get a lot larger difference, like if you live in the Middle Atlantic states where electricity averages 15.65 cents per kwh: CFL: 2 bulbs + 220 kilowatt hours = $48.43 LED: 1 bulb + 120 kilowatt hours = $41.78 Or at the extreme, in Hawaii where the rate is 39.99 cents per kwh: CFL: 2 bulbs + 220 kilowatt hours = $101.98 LED: 1 bulb + 120 kilowatt hours = $70.99
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Sep 13, 2012 17:08
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For the LED bulbs, are they doing cycle testing? I mean, I know the standard bulb testing is pretty questionable in terms that they usually just leave the light on until it degrades to a certain point, much like a metal creep test. UL is pretty bad about making good, rigorous light bulb tests in my opinion.
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Sep 13, 2012 17:25
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Install Gentoo posted:Yes, LED bulbs last an EXTREMELY long time. I hardly see how that would make the overall price match CFLs though, as CFLs can't get much lower in power usage per light output at all. Also I don't see what you mean by "lighting needs changing in 17 years" - at worst you just move the bulb to another fixture if at year 9 you decide you want 60-watt-equivalent out of the lamp you had the 40-watt-equivalent LED bulb in. How many times have you moved in the past 17 years, and did you take all your light bulbs with you each time? Can you be sure that the fixtures you have in your home (or the new one you move to) will require the same mix of bulbs of various wattages over such a long period? Have you ever broken a light bulb? For a commercial or industrial installation a lot of these factors are mitigated, but there's just too much variability in the lighting in an apartment or house to comfortably make projections that far out. If you want to use less electricity, all the more power to you, but a lot of the assumptions don't hold up if you're making a purely economic decision. Install Gentoo posted:Let's go back to my example of bulbs: Once again, you are completely failing to discount the costs involved. What's the point of tossing around a bunch of nominal dollar figures?
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Sep 13, 2012 17:52
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Once again, you are completely failing to discount the costs involved. What's the point of tossing around a bunch of nominal dollar figures? I don't quite follow you. Could you please generate an example of the correct accounting of the figures?
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Sep 13, 2012 17:53
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Kaal posted:I don't quite follow you. Could you please generate an example of the correct accounting of the figures? That depends entirely on the rate you choose for yourself, but let's take a 5% real discount rate for shits and giggles (a lower rate favors the LED more, a higher one the CFL). We'll go out 20,000 hours and 50,000 hours, which are the two comparisons he's done. At 50k hours at the national average price of $.1212, the nominal amounts (which he posted correctly in the first comparison post) would be $101.66 for the CFL and $59.36 for the LED, so the CFL option costs 71% more. Discounted, that comes out to $72.91 for the CFL vs $48.43 for the LED, or 51% more. At 20k hours, the second comparison done, the nominal amounts are $40.66 vs $37.54, the CFL is 8% more expensive. Discounted, it's $36.33 vs $35.70, the CFL is only 2% more expensive. What it comes down to is that the LED has higher up front costs that have to be paid in today's dollars, while the CFL option has recurring bulb costs that can be paid in future dollars. If you have any outstanding credit card or student loan debt, it's probably silly to buy LEDs over CFLs. If you only a have mortgage and your preferred investments are bonds, the LEDs look a lot more attractive. For a REIT, it depends on their cost of capital, but that's probably north of 10% in most cases. And of course, living in an area with higher electricity costs favors the LED. There are a bunch of less tangible possibilities we can't predict: -Electricity prices go up faster than inflation (favors LED) -CFL prices drop as tech improves (favors CFL) -Circumstances that prevent the full 50k years of LED usage - moving, dropping a bulb, etc (favors CFL) There a ton more if you think about it for any length of time, those just immediately come to mind. AreWeDrunkYet fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 18:35
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Once again, you are completely failing to discount the costs involved. What's the point of tossing around a bunch of nominal dollar figures? Kaal posted:I don't quite follow you. Could you please generate an example of the correct accounting of the figures? I think he's talking about discounted cash flow, which is a way of accounting for the fact that, thanks to the wonders of economics,  today is worth more than in a year's time. A sum of money in the future has a net present value, which is basically how much that sum of money at that point in time would be worth in today's money. So, for example, if the annual rate of inflation was 5%, then this time next year would be worth 10/1.05 = $9.52 today.If you are talking about discounted cash flow, AreWeDrunkYet, I'm not sure I get your point. Assuming electricity costs remaining constant at 12.12c/kWh, and the prices, lifetimes and usage specified by Install Gentoo, LED bulbs come out cheaper than CFL at interest rates below 20%. Given that energy prices are trending upwards and according to Wikipedia, at least, inflation in the US has only reached that level very occasionally and briefly, LED bulbs are looking pretty good. Calculations: Assuming 8 hours of use per day, 365.25 days per year, that's 2922 hours per year. At a 11W power draw for the CFL that's ~32.1 kWh, costing $3.89 at 12.12 c/kWh. At a 6W power draw for the LED that's 17.5 kWh, costing $2.12. That's the yearly electricity cost, so using an inflation rate of 5% which I pulled straight out of my backside, and assuming that all power bills are paid at year's end, the net present value of 17 years' worth of electricity can be approximated by [Annual cost * (1 - 1/{1 + annual inflation rate}^no. of years)/annual inflation rate] - giving a NPV of $43.92 for the electricity used by the CFL bulbs, and $23.96 for the LED. Cost of the bulbs is simpler. With unit costs of $7 for a CFL and $23 for a LED, and the CFL needing replacement every 10,000 hours (1250 days or 3.42 years), the net present values are [Unit cost/(1 + annual inflation rate)^no. of years] - giving NPVs of $7, $5.92, $5.01, $4.24 and $3.59 for the CFL bulbs and $23 for the single LED. Totalling all that gives a net present value of $69.69 for the cost of five CFL bulbs and the electricity to run them for eight hours per day over the course of 17 years, and $46.96 for one LED bulb used for the same time. Advantage: LED. The advantage stays with LED until the annual inflation rate hits ~20%, at which point the NPV for CFL is $33.01 and that for LED is $33.14. Of course, this is neglecting the month and a bit left over (50,000 hours comes to 17.11 years) but gently caress it, this is close enough. Especially given it ignores much more significant things like changes in costs, inflation and real wages. EDIT: That'll teach me to hit 'preview' more often. Friend Commuter fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 18:38
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I hope everyone involved in the above ridiculous discussion realizes exactly how dumb the idea of telling people to spend $20 now so they can save $5 over the next 15 years is.
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Sep 13, 2012 19:06
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Rent-A-Cop posted:I hope everyone involved in the above ridiculous discussion realizes exactly how dumb the idea of telling people to spend $20 now so they can save $5 over the next 15 years is. Would you also like to share your opinions on home insulation and higher efficiency vehicles?
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Sep 13, 2012 19:10
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computer parts posted:Would you also like to share your opinions on home insulation and higher efficiency vehicles? If you want people to do something inconvenient your return is going to have to be a lot better than pennies a year over the next 2 decades. CFLs and LEDs aren't going to win over many converts on cost savings just because the savings are small and the time frame is far too long.
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Sep 13, 2012 19:20
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If you give me $100 now I will give you $101 (adjusted for inflation) on your 80th birthday. What a great deal for you! So I take it your answer to my previous question was "exactly like lightbulbs, chief"?
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Sep 13, 2012 19:21
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e: nvm, did some math wrong
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Sep 13, 2012 19:24
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If you give me $100 now I will give you $101 (adjusted for inflation) on your 80th birthday. What a great deal for you! Maybe you should take your misguided, five year old arguments elsewhere? CFLs are a clearly superior choice to incandescents today with payback periods measured in months, and the same will probably be true of LEDs by the end of the decade.
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Sep 13, 2012 19:30
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Maybe you should take your misguided, five year old arguments elsewhere? CFLs are a clearly superior choice to incandescents today with payback periods measured in months, and the same will probably be true of LEDs by the end of the decade. computer parts posted:So I take it your answer to my previous question was "exactly like lightbulbs, chief"?
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Sep 13, 2012 19:37
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:How many times have you moved in the past 17 years, and did you take all your light bulbs with you each time? Can you be sure that the fixtures you have in your home (or the new one you move to) will require the same mix of bulbs of various wattages over such a long period? Have you ever broken a light bulb? This is not an actual disadvantage; either LED bulbs will become so common that you can find them preinstalled wherever you go (like normal bulbs), in which case everyone pereptually wins, or you can just take the LED bulbs with you and leave behind something shittier. This is what people have been doing with CFLs for years; keep the old incandescent bulbs that come with your residence in the back of a closet, plug in CFLs everywhere, reverse the switch when you leave and take the CFLs with you. This works even better with LEDs because LEDs are a lot harder to break. quote:There are a bunch of less tangible possibilities we can't predict: LED prices drop every year, almost predictably, so that's a plus for LEDs. LED bulbs are also hard as gently caress to break, so you can scratch that one off, too. Rent-A-Cop posted:I hope everyone involved in the above ridiculous discussion realizes exactly how dumb the idea of telling people to spend $20 now so they can save $5 over the next 15 years is. The advantages are a lot more dramatic than that; the bulbs are hard to break, they're not hot to the touch, they last years and years longer, you save a ton of electricity per bulb, etc. And they're not any less convenient than CFLs or incandescents, they plug into the same sockets just like any other bulb and they sit alongside the other bulbs at the store. There are maybe a few very specific situations in which buying an LED won't benefit you
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Sep 13, 2012 19:39
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:How many times have you moved in the past 17 years, and did you take all your light bulbs with you each time? 5 times and I always took my CFLs and then later LED bulbs with me. You don't take incandescents because they're dirt cheap and not worth it. Heck most of my lighting fixtures I can just leave the LED bulb in when I move because unlike incandescent or even some CFLs, they're not going to break in transit. At this point I've got only 2 CFL bulbs left and when they finally die I'm going to be all LED yo. Many of them only get used 2 hours a day max! Those bulbs will literally last me the rest of my life - over 68 years! quote:Can you be sure that the fixtures you have in your home (or the new one you move to) will require the same mix of bulbs of various wattages over such a long period? Have you ever broken a light bulb? Uh, yes? Never had a place where 40 and 60 watt equivalent bulbs didn't work. And even if there were some I couldn't use, I could just hold on to them until others broke. Or hell, let a friend or family member use one,I've done it before. I've never broken an LED bulb, they're tough as hell. I broke a CFL bulb once but so what? quote:For a commercial or industrial installation a lot of these factors are mitigated, but there's just too much variability in the lighting in an apartment or house to comfortably make projections that far out. If you want to use less electricity, all the more power to you, but a lot of the assumptions don't hold up if you're making a purely economic decision. So then why shouldn't we all just use incandescents? Using less electricity is the name of the goddamn game. LED bulbs use 85% less power than incandescents and 45% less than CFLs. Christ do you not realize how important a shift it would be if America was collectively using that much less power from shifting to LEDs? If I "discount the costs" then LEDs get even better. The power is an ongoing cost and guaranteed to rise over time. The power used, in fact, far eclipses the cost of the bulb. Friend Commuter posted:Totalling all that gives a net present value of $69.69 for the cost of five CFL bulbs and the electricity to run them for eight hours per day over the course of 17 years, and $46.96 for one LED bulb used for the same time. Advantage: LED. The advantage stays with LED until the annual inflation rate hits ~20%, at which point the NPV for CFL is $33.01 and that for LED is $33.14. Don't forget "not needing to change the bulb in a fixture nearly as often". Rent-A-Cop posted:I hope everyone involved in the above ridiculous discussion realizes exactly how dumb the idea of telling people to spend $20 now so they can save $5 over the next 15 years is. You start paying 45% less for power for lighting over CFL bulbs right away, or 85% less than incandescents. Hell, the $23 figure I use isn't even the lowest you can get an LED bulb for, you can sometimes find them on sale for like $10 but I used the higher figure to be fair. Nintendo Kid fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 20:06
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Rent-A-Cop posted:If you give me $100 now I will give you $101 (adjusted for inflation) on your 80th birthday. What a great deal for you! This terrible example sums up your bad argument. Let's go with a lazy Worst Case Scenario from Install Gentoo's numbers above: Install Gentoo posted:Let's compare for only 20,000 hours of use (6.8 years or so at 8 hours a day): We're already dealing with only 40% of the LED bulb's life, but that's part of the worst case. Also no change in costs for electricity (Rising costs make the LED even better) and, oh... let's do 8 cycles of this for 53.4 years (Mid twenties). That would mean that you get $124 for your $100 now, if there's no inflation. Per bulb. As the costs of power generation increase (And they will), the savings difference will continue to improve. Is it enough to retire on? Of course not, but it'll make that retirement just a little bit nicer. Edit: Tangentially related but I've got these strip lights in my house that use these bulbs and they fail like mad. Is there an LED option for them that's reliable? Taerkar fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 20:17
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I'm not spending my money on anything! It's all snake oil! Hey why isn't our consumer-driven economy getting better!?
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Sep 13, 2012 20:54
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Taerkar posted:Edit: Tangentially related but I've got these strip lights in my house that use these bulbs and they fail like mad. Is there an LED option for them that's reliable? These look like they'd be suitable replacements if they need to also be dimmable: http://www.amazon.com/Great-Eagle-L...+50w+equivalent I have a few Great Eagle branded LED bulbs, they work great.
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Sep 13, 2012 21:39
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In a world where interest rates are close to zero and stocks are perpetually lovely, you'd have to be crazy to not see the value of a cheap investment with good returns like LED bulbs. The equivalent yearly interest is something like 3% and the income is completely tax free (coming in the form of a cheaper electric bill). People would go absolutely nuts if banks started offering 3% tax free saving accounts, especially if these accounts reduced local CO2 emissions. The investment cap is super low but the returns are solid
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Sep 13, 2012 21:41
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Taerkar posted:Is it enough to retire on? Of course not, but it'll make that retirement just a little bit nicer.
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Sep 13, 2012 21:41
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Rent-A-Cop posted:It's still the weakest of several arguments. Seriously, most Americans can't figure out why pay-day loans are a bad idea. "Saves you $0.25 a day!" isn't much of a marketing slogan. It's the exact same argument that caused the surge in demand for fuel efficiency, so maybe you should rethink your position. Pay day loans prey on people who live hand to mouth, not people who can afford to buy LED bulbs
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Sep 13, 2012 21:48
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CFLs arn't for everyone, as some people have health issues with being around fluorescent lights.
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Sep 13, 2012 22:01
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-Troika- posted:CFLs arn't for everyone, as some people have health issues with being around fluorescent lights. Yes, another reason to use LEDs, on top of all the other reasons. Really no one should be actively seeking out CFLs as they are a transition technology.
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Sep 13, 2012 22:27
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QuarkJets posted:It's the exact same argument that caused the surge in demand for fuel efficiency, so maybe you should rethink your position. Pay day loans prey on people who live hand to mouth, not people who can afford to buy LED bulbs If you look at the numbers you'll also notice that "greenness" has been a significant driver of hybrid vehicle sales even when the math isn't in their favor.
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Sep 13, 2012 22:49
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Taerkar posted:Edit: Tangentially related but I've got these strip lights in my house that use these bulbs and they fail like mad. Is there an LED option for them that's reliable? Look for LED bulbs with the GU10 base, for example: http://1000bulbs.com/search/?filter%5Bcategory%5D=2000&filter%5Bbase+type%28text%29%5D=GU10
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Sep 13, 2012 22:53
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Do you honestly not see a difference between a large savings with a small (if any) additional up-front cost as in the case of fuel efficient cars, and a small savings with a significant additional up-front cost? A $23 LED bulb lasts as long as $35 of fluorescent bulbs and $62.50 of incandescent bulbs. And that's before you add in the money saved on power. Ain't no car on the market that will last 50 times longer than one car, 5 times longer than a second car; and costs the same as 18.4 of the first car while using 15% of the gas; and 3.2 of the second car while using 55% of the gas.
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Sep 13, 2012 22:58
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Do you honestly not see a difference between a large savings with a small (if any) additional up-front cost as in the case of fuel efficient cars, and a small savings with a significant additional up-front cost? Is this a joke post or are you just making bad arguments? In what universe is a few dollars extra for an LED bulb considered "a significant up front cost" but the many hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars spent for a more fuel efficient vehicle model (especially hybrids and electrics) is a small or insignificant up front cost? You're quibbling over an additional up front cost of maybe $100 over traditional bulbs when you upgrade a small house or large apartment. For the kind of person who can afford to pay extra for a more fuel efficient car, this is not significant And as was pointed out already, the returns on LEDs are vastly superior as a percentage of additional cost. The large group of people who pay extra for more fuel efficiency are easy targets for LED marketing QuarkJets fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Sep 13, 2012 |
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Sep 13, 2012 23:50
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Humans are extremely bad at being efficient, especially with energy, as it requires effort and change, two things that as a species we do really really badly. A much better idea would be to focus efforts on producing excesses of cheap, available energy like the thorium cycle and say "Ok, now you don't need to be as efficient because we have lots of carbon neutral energy." I'm not saying that efficiency is BAD and is something that shouldn't be strived for, I'm just saying its incredibly difficult to implement on a level that would be meaningful. Efficiency is usually tied to a base cost of upgrading before any savings are made, the majority of people would rather have their teeth pulled than be forced to buy into something they can't see any benefits from for 3+ years.
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Sep 14, 2012 12:55
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Hobo Erotica posted:This sounds interesting, could you tell us some more? Where do you work, what do you, what is it like on the job, what's it like in the market place? Missed your post, sorry! My job is as a contractor, working at an engineering firm designing and building the electrical transformer platform that sits at the center of the wind farm. Its main function is to connect the individual wind turbine cables (at 30 kV) to the big cable (150 kV) going to shore. I work in The Netherlands, but most of the farms are built in Germany at the moment. Germany has a relatively small piece of the North Sea pie, but they plan to cram as much wind turbines in it as possible, see this link. I'm not entirely sure how much of this is subsidized by the German government, only that it's substantial. To compare, The Netherlands has more North Sea but only two small wind farms, with not a lot of plans for more. The case for wind parks on land vs sea is mostly about scale. On land (in densely populated Northern Europe at least) it's very difficult to build a 100-turbine farm because you would run into a mountain of poo poo from local governments and NIMBY residents. The NIMBY attitude is pretty valid as well because for wind turbines to be effective they need to be very large, say 100 meters high with 120 meters span. Apart from the eyesore these turbines make a lot of noise that carries very far due to the height. The noise is a killer here, you're talking about a 40-50 square km area where you can hear turbine noise all day every day, good luck finding one. On sea you don't have this problem but going offshore means there are a lot of practical problems and expenses that you don't have on land. It's a pretty hostile environment for people doing maintenance, and because wind turbines break *often* you have to deal with lovely winter weather and high wind (oops) at sea. Everything is made from high grade stainless steel ($$$), but it still rots like a motherfucker because salty air is one of natures best ways of increasing entropy. Safety systems, emergency generators, redundant communications, helicopter landing pads, it all adds up pretty quickly. If you have the room, build them on land really.
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Sep 14, 2012 15:45
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Yeti Fiasco posted:Humans are extremely bad at being efficient, especially with energy, as it requires effort and change, two things that as a species we do really really badly. But the thing is with LED bulbs, you can get all the benefits clearly up front, particularly when switching from incandescents. They run a lot cooler than incandescents and cfls, they don't need specialized fixtures just use your existing ones, and especially if you're switching from incandescents you get an 85% drop in your power bill for lighting. Not to mention all the other ways of efficiency. Replace your crappy old standard def CRT set with a flashy new LCD HDTV? You're almost certainly using much less power to watch TV now. Old fridge breaks down? Any new fridge will be more power efficient. Heating system breaks or air conditioner breaks? The new system is probably more efficient. Hell, have an old Pentium 4/Athlon desktop? Any new computer is going to use less power. Practically any home appliance there is, if it's more than like 6 years old? The average kind of that appliance on the market now is more efficient. Even your cell phone's charger is going to be more efficient now than the charger and cell phone you had 4 years ago. You don't need to train people to turn off the light every time they leave the room, if leaving the light on now draws 15% of the power it used to. You don't need to tell people to conserve energy by watching less TV when their new TV uses 35% the power of their old one.
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Sep 14, 2012 17:07
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Install Gentoo posted:Not to mention all the other ways of efficiency. Replace your crappy old standard def CRT set with a flashy new LCD HDTV? You're almost certainly using much less power to watch TV now. Old fridge breaks down? Any new fridge will be more power efficient. Heating system breaks or air conditioner breaks? The new system is probably more efficient. Hell, have an old Pentium 4/Athlon desktop? Any new computer is going to use less power. Practically any home appliance there is, if it's more than like 6 years old? The average kind of that appliance on the market now is more efficient. Even your cell phone's charger is going to be more efficient now than the charger and cell phone you had 4 years ago. But when do you see these changes? When you get the electricity bill, that fridge/tv/whatever will take years to pay for itself in efficiency savings.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:02
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Yeti Fiasco posted:But when do you see these changes? When you get the electricity bill, that fridge/tv/whatever will take years to pay for itself in efficiency savings. Only if you're buying a new fridge/tv/whatever for efficiency purposes alone; as Install Gentoo alluded to, most people get something more efficient than their old model when the old model breaks whether they like it or not (for instance, you can't even give away CRT monitors anymore)
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Sep 14, 2012 18:32
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Yeti Fiasco posted:But when do you see these changes? When you get the electricity bill, that fridge/tv/whatever will take years to pay for itself in efficiency savings. Dude, the point is you can't buy a fridge as inefficient as the average model from 10 years ago now. Nor can you buy a TV that inefficient or computer or heating system. poo poo is naturally more efficient now, no one has to go out of their way to do it. A 50 inch LCD TV uses less power than a 28 inch CRT, and it's even higher definition and thinner, lighter and so on. Next time an appliance breaks, or you're simply sick of it and want a change, I can pretty much guarantee you the replacement you buy will be more efficient than what you have now. No one has to change their habits, or hunt down special appliances. You don't need to change your lifestyle or give up "luxury" or "unnecessary" things. My utility bill at this apartment has gone down drastically over the past like 2.5 years I've lived here. First, they replaced the heating and air conditioning units with newer models, and my utility bill went down even though I now have it set to heat to 70 instead of 68 in winter, and cool to 72 instead of 74 in summer. Then I replaced my old 24 inch CRT which broke with a 32 inch LCD - it uses like 38% the power and looks better. I switched from a few incandescents and mostly CFLs to a few CFLs and mostly LED bulbs and that power usage dropped a lot. I got rid of my old Pentium 4 computer with a CRT for a Core i7 computer and LCD combo that's way faster but also uses way less power. The fridge that came with the unit broke and was from the mid-90s - the new fridge I got in uses way less power and is even bigger and has an icemaker now. Basically efficiency is great, and you don't have to compromise to get it.
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Sep 14, 2012 18:52
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I'm pretty sure I mentioned that efficiency is awesome, but not saving grace that will somehow make the world better. Despite all these advancements in efficient electronics, the US energy production increases each year to fit demand because they're simply using more of it, even with all their super energy saving kitchen appliances.  No doubt that chart would be much higher if we still had horribly inefficient appliances, but it would still be the same shape. If you want to actually do something constructive, you've got to figure out how to take that big red chunk sitting in the middle and get rid of it, being efficient takes a small bit away and that's good, but you can only be so efficient, after that you have to look at how to replace it, because we can't live without it, we're just too reliant on an energy rich society. edit: also, all that saved energy is probably taken away from renewable, since renewable energy is so drat expensive and has to be bought at a subsidized rate. Yeti Fiasco fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 19:43
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Yeti Fiasco posted:I'm pretty sure I mentioned that efficiency is awesome, but not saving grace that will somehow make the world better. Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 22:03
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Yeti Fiasco posted:I'm pretty sure I mentioned that efficiency is awesome, but not saving grace that will somehow make the world better. I'm personally using 61% the electricity and 79% the natural gas (for stove and heating) than I was 2.5 years ago. If you don't think getting that savings from everyone in the country would help in a huge fuckin' way I don't know what to say to you. Believe it or not, but most people haven't yet had the time or occasion to replace a lot of outdated appliances with much more efficient ones yet, so it hasn't dropped spectacularly. Strudel Man posted:This is due primarily to increasing population, though. Energy use per capita has been mostly static or decreasing since the 70s. For what it's worth, your chart includes all energy usage. Including transportation (gasoline, diesel, etc), and burning natural gas/oil directly for heat. His is just electricity. But yes in general Americans are using less energy.
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Sep 14, 2012 22:27
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Install Gentoo posted:If you don't think getting that savings from everyone in the country would help in a huge fuckin' way I don't know what to say to you. Why do I have to keep reiterating that I think EFFICIENCY IS A GREAT THING THAT SHOULD BE SRIVED FOR, I just think that getting everyone to do it is phenomenally more difficult than building carbon neutral nuclear energy sources.
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Sep 14, 2012 22:43
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