3 ms·
I get what you are aiming at, but strictly, both have a linear relationship here? More, you can only cut out so much of the time, and since you can run modern
by taeric 2y ago
I get what you are aiming at, but strictly, both have a linear relationship here?
More, you can only cut out so much of the time, and since you can run modern lights for the full day before you burn the energy you would save by turning off the lights an hour early, it is kind of silly at a personal level to think that will work out. (City level and larger, sure?)
Pulling it back to this article, the assertion is that getting more efficient with energy use for lights would just be offset by us using more lights. Which, I think it is fair to say that we do. Considerably more lights, in many instances. It doesn't completely negate the energy savings, but largely because of how big that energy savings was.
- ryao 2y agoAs far as the integral is concerned, the rate is a constant while time is a linear variable, so the improvement from LEDs is a constant time improvement and the improvement from running the lights less is a linear time improvement. Otherwise, we are in agreement. That said, I do think that there is an incentive to spend the energy savings on things other than lighting.
- taeric 2y agoBut the power use is also constant over time t, such that any reduction in time use is effectively a constant drop in cost. You are literally shrinking either the width (time) or the height (electricity use) of the curve, as it were. For your point to be stronger, you would have to show that using lights for longer makes them less efficient, such that you increase the unit cost of electricity over the time variable. Which may indeed be the case. The naive model, though, is just Cost = (electrical use) * (time), and reducing time is the same as reducing electrical use via efficiency.