That's exactly it , it's a feel good thing.:D
Printable View
I don't know about eastern states but here variable load is handled by natural gas generators which spool up and down very quickly. I doubt that coal supplies 100% of your power. Earth hour would give less swing than starting a region up off a power failure. Basically its just children playing with the light switch.
Much the same, supplemented by gas, diesel or hydro, also known as "Peaker plants" with quick run up, shut down times
A large brown coal unit can take 12-24hours to run up, prior to syncronising with the the grid, basically it'd be foolish to have a generator shut down for an hour, as the lose of steam, boiler off, run down, run up costs and waste would be massive, it used to cost $80k in fuel oil alone to run up a unit at W station and that was when I was there 6 years ago
in WA theres a limited ability to turn on some loads in some places air con plants, industrial lighting I think it sort of works like your off peak HWS but in reverse.
We had a spiel on it when we toured a power plant things like the buildings that leave all their lights on at night during summer but off during winter are actually doing so to ensure that the minimum load requirement for the grid is met so they can keep the generators on line safely.
i live in the hunter valley there are 26 mines here in the singleton area.but if they dont stop and start or slow it down then rev it back up again then we are still using that power for nothing so its not economical
I think the Aliens in the UFO's would look at things like Earth hour and shake there collective heads. No wonder they dont make contact.:alien: