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The electricity you don't spend is electricity you don't need to produce. We don't really need electricity, we need to do useful stuff with it. Doing laundry wi
by locallost 4y ago
The electricity you don't spend is electricity you don't need to produce. We don't really need electricity, we need to do useful stuff with it. Doing laundry with electricity is useful, as is having a computer network. Are massive glowing screens in the middle of the night useful? That would be a very long discussion, but I say no because any local usefulness is outweighed by their negative impact overall.
Saving electricity is just as useful as adding new capacity, and it's faster, cheaper and easier. As a comparison, the US spends about twice as much electricity as Germany per capita [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
- hbossy 4y agoActually they are as you need to maintain some base load on a grid.
- _ph_ 4y agoNo, only if your grid is composed of "slow" power plants, you have to. That is why for a long time, all night-time energy usage was encouraged, to raise the base load. Ironically the outcome is used as an argument against renewables as it "but what about the base load"? :p And if not completely dominated by slow power plants, there is always enough load on the grid to keep it stable. Especially in a day and age where there is a lot of storage, which can absorb some excess power production.
- locallost 4y agoIf I understood correctly, I don't think it's a good idea to waste energy to cover base load. It can be used for useful things instead.