Thread: Earth Hour

Originally Posted by bee utey

Earth hour allows non-mathematical people to feel they are "doing their bit". Every hour is earth hour at my place, I have all the trendy light bulbs and don't leave them on needlessly. If the state's power use drop was revealed as a percentage of daily use instead of some eqivalent number of toasters or somesuch rubbish, then people would see that it is just a gesture. A nice gesture I'm sure, but who will go out for a cruise in their car to have a look at the lack of lights? Business as usual for me!

My word. When I grew up I'd get a clip over the ear if I left the light on after leaving the room.

....and if I was cold, "put a bloody jumper on"

...Plenty of water in the tap..

And so on.

Originally Posted by schmierer LR at singleton

the message is god but the idea is wrong the power stations go from a certain demand to say half of that so the supply is not there but then after that hour is up they get a massive overload and struggle to keep up with it,because they have to burn so much coal to get it up to speed,earth hour actually causes more green house gases then normal.so instead of earth hour it should be called "kill earth hour"
and so many people think by just doing this that we will be saved from global warming.hmmmmmm i wonder what sort of replies i will get

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.

Originally Posted by bee utey

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

Originally Posted by rovercare

Dummy loads? care to share?

Having worked heavily in the power industry, production industry and power distribution industy, I've never come across a dummy load

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.

Originally Posted by Disco_owner

So how's that different to every other night then..

Not much!

Originally Posted by Blknight.aus

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.

Sounds feasable in a small grid situation, that lacks capacitor banks that help with PF correction etc, as dependant on generator loading could differention between on and off scenarios.....although, not on the eastern coast where we're all linked

Originally Posted by p38arover

A greenie wankfest.

I'll make sure I turn on very light in my house.

Remember to turn them off before you go to Darwin Ron

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