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Average power usage for a 1 person household in Germany is 1300 kwh/year (roughly, numbers vary, but not to a degree that it matters). That's about 150W sustai
by morsch 4y ago
Average power usage for a 1 person household in Germany is 1300 kwh/year (roughly, numbers vary, but not to a degree that it matters).
That's about 150W sustained. So 1500W for a large sign, that's like 150 high power LED light bulbs, I guess that checks out.
Anything that reduces ads in the public sphere is fine by me.
- moffkalast 4y agoEveryone lauds LEDs for being super energy efficient, but the reality is that they really aren't. It's just that they are being compared to even worse light sources that were so bad at efficiency it's hard to really grasp how much they sucked.
- suction 4y ago
- sexy_panda 4y agoIs there a more efficient way of producing light? Because I don't know of any.
- avidiax 4y agoThe one that's the most neglected is natural lighting. Light pipes, solar collectors, and microprism window treatments are all available. The second thing is white paint. You need less outdoor lighting if the built environment absorbs less light.
- moffkalast 4y agoIt's the most efficient option we have, but that doesn't mean it's good. In the 1800s the steam engine was the most efficient way of producing work from heat, but that still didn't make it objectively efficient.
- aimor 4y agoI read a neat article recently that talked about the "Dubai Lamp". They're lightbulbs that Philips makes for Dubai that are twice as efficient as their standard LED bulbs. The difference is simple: LEDs are more efficient when run at lower power, so by increasing the number of LED elements in the bulbs and reducing the voltage across them you get 600 lumens for 3 W. For reference, California requires lightbulbs to operate at 80 lumens per watt or higher. https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-lights-you-cant-buy/ https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-royal-li... Looks like they're bringing this idea to the rest of the world: https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/8719514343788 https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-bulb/87195...
- xxs 4y agoLEDs are super efficient, household LED bulbs retrofit for e14/e27 are just a terrible example of overdriven ones with bad lifetime. That has very little to do w/ properly constant current (not over) driven LEDs. (Edit overdriven - higher heat output and worse efficacy) The max efficacy woulod be 683 lm/w. Blue LEDs can reach 1/3 of the theoretical maximum.
- moffkalast 4y agoThe lifetime is pretty good when driven correctly to be sure, I was just talking about raw efficiency. Underdrive a led as much as you want, but you'll still lose half of your energy to waste heat. The heat will just be spread out more and be less noticeable on each chip. Like, I'm sure we can agree high power LEDs have gigantic heatsinks and fans for other reasons than cosmetic.
- andrepd 4y agoLEDs can light a medium-sized room with <5W. That's incredibly energy efficient.
- moffkalast 4y agoNot when you consider that it's still heating the room with 3 of those watts. If you asked me to build a house and I threw away more than half of the bricks you'd call me crazy. But when it comes to leds it's called "incredible efficiency". It's only efficient in comparison to the other options, not in any objective sense.
- shukantpal 4y ago“Efficient” is a relative comparison. Any absolute threshold would be arbitrary anyway
- moffkalast 4y agoNot really. Converting all the energy to work would be 100% efficiency, converting none of it would be 0%. It's an absolute measure. Now sure there are subcategories where 100% efficiency is the maximum theoretical efficiency (like the carnot cycle limit of 37% for heat engines), but that's already misleading info if not specified.
- shukantpal 4y agoYou provide no points to refute my statement. Being bounded between 0% and 100% is irrelevant, unless you think only 100% efficient is not inefficient - which would be absurd due to the impossibility of obtaining an “efficient” label.
- puchatek 4y agoIf they are so inefficient then where does the wasted energy go?
- xxs 4y agoThe wasted energy as per usual - heat/entropy. It's just that LEDs are the best we have.
- morsch 4y agoWhere it always goes, waste heat. In the case of LEDs, about 50% to 60% of the power draw escapes as heat. Of course, incandescents are much worse.
- xxs 4y ago70% near heat would the very very efficient blue leds, properly driven and all. below that, i.e. 50-60 is just theoretically impossible.
- tencentshill 4y ago
- fyvhbhn 4y agoI wonder what's the impact of online advertising as well.
- xxs 4y ago>1300 kwh/year this is extremely, extremely low. No heating, no cooling, no hot water, no car charging. A fridge alone tends to be over 400KW/h. Edit: polycaster listed close to 5kWh/year for 3+ household. 1person being 2k. So, extremely low estimate.
- ivan_gammel 4y agoHeating is a separate cost, rarely electric. Cooling - did you know that Germans aren’t big fans of A/C? Hot water - same as heating. Besides, in Germany we don’t say “Car charging”, we say “eat healthy and ride your bike”.
- xxs 4y ago>Heating is a separate cost, rarely electric. Of course, geothermal pumps are still a better option than most.
- ivan_gammel 4y agoYou can call it geothermal, when it comes from underground pipes ;) District level heating still exists in some areas, also quite often there’s a single oil or gas boiler for a multi-apartment building.
- odshoifsdhfs 4y agoWith number 25 on cars per capita in the world and one of the biggest car industries and also obesity rates above average than EU. 'eat healthy and ride your bike' my ass
- ivan_gammel 4y ago>With number 25 on cars per capita in the world For one of the richest countries with one of the biggest car industries being only 25th is a great achievement in mobility. Yes, we could do better, but just compare it to the default country (#7 in car ownership, #2 if you exclude microstates). >obesity rates above average than EU 47th in the global ranking, after Iceland. And USA is right after Oceania. It depends on the perspective.
- polycaster 4y agoNot sure where this number comes from. Statistisches Bundesamt says it's 1,958 kwh. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Environment/Environmental-Economic-Accounting/private-households/Tables/electricity-consumption-private-households.html https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Enviro... Interestingly, for 2 person households they state 3,196 kwh and for 3+ person households 4,919 kwh. Energy consumption scales worse than I expected. I assumed there would be more synergy in shared households.
- morsch 4y agoI googled it. Your source is much better. But it's in the same ballpark, anyway.
- jansan 4y agoYour source includes "Electricity for heating, hot water". Maybe this includes households using heat pumps for heating, so this could explain the difference?
- proto_lambda 4y agoNot just heat pumps, but also electric water heaters, which are standard issue for older apartment buildings (those without central hot water).
- mrguyorama 4y agoAnd also probably the single least efficient source of heat for a home. An apartment using resistive heat instead of a heat pump should not be allowed anymore.
- proto_lambda 4y agoWait, what? How could electric resistive heating with its 100% efficiency possibly be less efficient than gas or oil, which are the main alternatives in use at this point? Heat pumps have >100% efficiency, which makes them stand way out at the top, but they're an exception rather than the rule.
- rr808 4y ago> 1300 kwh/year Wow that is low. In most states in the South average household consumes that per month. https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/the-states-that-use-the-most-and-least-amount-of-energy-per-household/# https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/the-states-that-us...
- radicality 4y agoYeah that really surprised me. I live in a 1-bedroom in NYC and am almost at 1000 kWh/month, especially because of the recent heat waves.
- lm28469 4y ago> In most states in the South average household consumes that per month. That's what happens when you live in cardboard houses in the middle of a literal desert. In Europe more people live in better build houses or flats with centralised heating and no AC. I used 1500kwh last years while working full time from my living room and spent maybe 100 euros on heating
- tpmoney 4y agoOn the other hand, because of AC the American south also doesn’t have swaths of people dropping dead when the daily temperatures rise above 80F. And considering that’s a daily part of living in the US south for roughly 6 months of the year, that’s probably a good thing.
- dmitriy_ko 4y agoAverage American "cardboard house" is better insulated than average European brick or concrete house. Having heavy walls make your house feel "sturdy" but it has nothing to do with energy efficiency. A lot of houses in Europe are just brick or concrete with no additional insulation. In US it's it's rare to have uninsulated houses. In US more people live in very hot places like Texas and Arizona and people mostly live in single-family houses. Single-family houses obviously takes more energy to cool than "flats". Plus average American house/flat has twice the living area.
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
- immibis 4y agoGermany also has mechanical signs that mechanically scroll different posters past a (full-size) viewing window. Banning the electronic ones won't cause there to be less ads.
- emn13 4y ago1500W of LEDs is... rather bright; on the order of 150000 lumen. I guess there will be significant losses perhaps, but I sure hope most signage is using a lot less than that.
- ceeplusplus 4y agoFor context, this is what 100W of LED looks like [1]. Those signs don't come anywhere close to this. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrAV1Qh4fs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrAV1Qh4fs
- morsch 4y agoThat's what it looks like when you have a small module and put it in a flashlight. What does it look like as a 15m2 billboard?