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The switch from incandescent to CFL and LED bulbs was a big jump in efficiency, and that one was pretty easy to implement at the consumer level. There should h

The switch from incandescent to CFL and LED bulbs was a big jump in efficiency, and that one was pretty easy to implement at the consumer level. There should have been a modest reduction in power usage with the switch from CRTs to flat panel displays as well. However, that was low hanging fruit and there aren't too many other places where we are going to see that kind of jump. Maybe some kind of powerful heat pump based kitchen oven? The heater coils they currently use are basically unchanged since the invention of appliances, but it's hard to imagine what a more efficient replacement would look like with foreseeable technology. Some sort of induction oven where you always have to stick your food in an insulated metal box before sticking it in there? Maybe a hot water heater that uses a heat pump? Maybe it would have two tanks and you pump heat from one tank into the other, making your cold tap super cold at the same time? There just aren't a lot of places left for your typical household to save a significant amount of power. I'd love it if industrial users put more thought into power savings but that requires buy in from rich people and that's a lot harder to do.

konschubert 4y ago
What percentage of electricity usage was incandescent light bulbs?
- jandrese 4y ago
  It's hard to say, but the changeover was noticeable: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/08/climate/light-bulb-efficiency.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/08/climate/light... When you have a technology in very nearly every home in the country and used daily that you can replace with something a whopping 85% more efficient it adds up.
mjmahone17 4y ago
Ground to air heat pumps could increase efficiency for air conditioning (which in hot and humid states is probably the largest line item for electric usage). Part of the problem here is the install cost means you likely want to share the ground source piping with 4 or more homes, but we don’t really do small scale self governance (build or share things amongst a dozen or fewer households) in the US anymore.
elihu 4y ago
There are heat pump water heaters already. I think people usually have them setup so that the excess cold air is either used to keep the building cool in hot weather or it's routed outside in cold weather.
antisthenes 4y ago
The next low-hanging fruit improvement is community solar installations, or barring that, individual home solar installations. Technically, things like better insulation are low hanging fruit in the sense that the technology exists and the materials for it are cheap, but it's incredibly labor-intensive, especially when retrofitting old housing stock. Solar is much easier to retrofit onto a home than making a 50+ year old house well-insulated.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
Maybe steam convection ovens are more efficient? I haven’t looked at power consumption, but it might be less since steam requires a lower temperature to work with. But people use their ovens so little that it might not matter much in the large scale.

konschubert 4y ago

What percentage of electricity usage was incandescent light bulbs?

jandrese 4y ago
It's hard to say, but the changeover was noticeable: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/08/climate/light-bulb-efficiency.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/08/climate/light... When you have a technology in very nearly every home in the country and used daily that you can replace with something a whopping 85% more efficient it adds up.

mjmahone17 4y ago

Ground to air heat pumps could increase efficiency for air conditioning (which in hot and humid states is probably the largest line item for electric usage). Part of the problem here is the install cost means you likely want to share the ground source piping with 4 or more homes, but we don’t really do small scale self governance (build or share things amongst a dozen or fewer households) in the US anymore.

elihu 4y ago

There are heat pump water heaters already. I think people usually have them setup so that the excess cold air is either used to keep the building cool in hot weather or it's routed outside in cold weather.

antisthenes 4y ago

The next low-hanging fruit improvement is community solar installations, or barring that, individual home solar installations. Technically, things like better insulation are low hanging fruit in the sense that the technology exists and the materials for it are cheap, but it's incredibly labor-intensive, especially when retrofitting old housing stock. Solar is much easier to retrofit onto a home than making a 50+ year old house well-insulated.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

Maybe steam convection ovens are more efficient? I haven’t looked at power consumption, but it might be less since steam requires a lower temperature to work with. But people use their ovens so little that it might not matter much in the large scale.