4 ms·

"150 million people" There are over a billion iPhones in use worldwide. This technology is also being brought to MacBooks (100 million+), Watches (100 million+

"150 million people" There are over a billion iPhones in use worldwide. This technology is also being brought to MacBooks (100 million+), Watches (100 million+), and iPads (150 million+). Your fundamental numbers are staggeringly inaccurate. And, most crucially, representing it as a whole of the electric usage instead of peak hours intentionally misses the point of reducing peak hour usage. It's called "peak hour" for a reason.

Stupulous 4y ago
They're using US numbers both for iPhone count (which they overestimate by ~40 million) and total electricity. That should bias their estimate against their point, as the US is particularly consumerist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that measuring as a fraction of total usage would also bias their result upwards- x/avg(y) > x/max(y).
tsimionescu 4y ago
And the total worldwide use of electricity is 22,848 TWh/year, (according to the IEA [0]). So that would be 5Wh/day * 1 billion phones * 366 days = 1,830 TWh = 0.0008% of world electricity consumption. Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder, but I would wager it's at most as much of that. So yes, completely insignificant at a large scale. If anything, the biggest impact will come to individual consumers, if and when electricity prices start varying more widely across times of day. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview...
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  > Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder That is the entire point of this exercise. My point is that OP fails to address that with data (as do you).
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    Do you have some data? Or some reason to believe that iPhones are a much larger part of peak hour consumption than they are of overall electricity consumption? Based on the data we do have, there doesn't seem to be any reason to care about iPhone charging - so, if you don't come up with some data or rationale for why we should, then I still feel it's justified to say that this change has little chance of helping the world in all but the most minor of ways.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Recent price rises due to gas in Europe have exposed more people to the idea that the market price is set at the margin. If 1W of gas fired power needs to be brought online in the middle of the night to charge your phone, then all the wind power gets the same price. That's why peaks have always been the most economical place to target investments. It would be interesting to compare the charge rate of a Tesla Powerall * the number of them deployed. I can see iPhones alone winning that depending on some assumptions you make. You'd then probably be able to find stats on what Tesla gets paid for providing that service to get some idea of scale.
    - parker_mountain 4y ago
      > Do you have some data? You are the one making claims with poor data and assumptions, not me.

Stupulous 4y ago

They're using US numbers both for iPhone count (which they overestimate by ~40 million) and total electricity. That should bias their estimate against their point, as the US is particularly consumerist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that measuring as a fraction of total usage would also bias their result upwards- x/avg(y) > x/max(y).

tsimionescu 4y ago

And the total worldwide use of electricity is 22,848 TWh/year, (according to the IEA [0]). So that would be 5Wh/day * 1 billion phones * 366 days = 1,830 TWh = 0.0008% of world electricity consumption. Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder, but I would wager it's at most as much of that. So yes, completely insignificant at a large scale. If anything, the biggest impact will come to individual consumers, if and when electricity prices start varying more widely across times of day. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview...

parker_mountain 4y ago
> Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder That is the entire point of this exercise. My point is that OP fails to address that with data (as do you).
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Do you have some data? Or some reason to believe that iPhones are a much larger part of peak hour consumption than they are of overall electricity consumption? Based on the data we do have, there doesn't seem to be any reason to care about iPhone charging - so, if you don't come up with some data or rationale for why we should, then I still feel it's justified to say that this change has little chance of helping the world in all but the most minor of ways.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Recent price rises due to gas in Europe have exposed more people to the idea that the market price is set at the margin. If 1W of gas fired power needs to be brought online in the middle of the night to charge your phone, then all the wind power gets the same price. That's why peaks have always been the most economical place to target investments. It would be interesting to compare the charge rate of a Tesla Powerall * the number of them deployed. I can see iPhones alone winning that depending on some assumptions you make. You'd then probably be able to find stats on what Tesla gets paid for providing that service to get some idea of scale.
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    > Do you have some data? You are the one making claims with poor data and assumptions, not me.