Saturday, March 28, 2009

Earth Day?

http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/2009/

Heh this is pretty funny, they want us to turn off our lights for an hour? What for?

I'm all for cleaner sources of energy and a cleaner planet earth, however we need new technology that's more efficient, we shouldn't have to use technology less just because its inefficient.

Probably ~40% of the energy in the things we use daily is wasted due to inefficient technology (just my guess).

PSU's iirc are at-most like 80% efficient, and standard lightbulbs waste like 50% of their energy as heat (i've totally forgotten the exact statistics of these things, so they might be off).

But the point is, we don't need to use technology less to conserve energy, we need to make technology better!

11 comments:

  1. standard lightbulbs have a 5% efficiency!!! (everyone who knows that and still uses them even though he/she has an option ... should be die a slowly painful death!!!)
    but 80% is correct iirc

    about the energy saving thing... common sense says the same thing XD
    I'm sure you realised that turning of the lights method is a money saving method... seems somebody just doesn't want to use money to install less money sucking technology

    about the we need to make technology better... you're right !!! BUT... one of the main problem is commercial use, it's not exactly a very rewarding research (moneywise) most companies fund these things only for publicity.. if not all xD and on the consumer side if the technology is too expensive nobody will use it even though they'd save money through greater energy efficiency because they'd wind up paying much money to buy and install the new technology...

    so the first thing we need to do ^^ is convince our country leader/s to reward using such technology. If the need is there, more funds for research and distribution will be XD

    wha ... the post is awfully long sorry bout that...

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  2. "so the first thing we need to do ^^ is convince our country leader/s to reward using such technology. If the need is there, more funds for research and distribution will be XD"

    yeah i agree with that.
    i was going to write something similar in the post, but then it would have just turned into another Wall-of-text lol.

    i guess we'll eventually get more efficient technology, but it'll be in little-steps because of the money-factor involved.

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  3. Air Conditioners are rapidly becoming the #1 consumer of electricity in the USA. Even in the northeast US, where ACs have typically been used infrequently, they're overtaking *heating* as the #1 use of electricity (which is why we had that massive brownout in the middle of the summer some years ago, and not in the middle of the winter).

    So with lighting already second fiddle to AC -- and as LED lighting becomes more viable with each passing day (LEDs are some 90% efficient) -- I figure air conditioning will become by far the #1 use of electricity here in the US.

    Maybe we should turn off our ACs for an hour instead.

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  4. hah nice point about the AC's, i didn't even think of that xD

    And yeah i remember one article talking about some super cheap and very luminous LED that has a big lifetime, and how LED's are going to be the future for lighting and stuff.

    LED's have the advantage of being more efficient, and since they have a longer lifetime than standard lightbulbs, its really a win-win situation. But all this stuff is going to need some time to become mainstream i think.

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  5. I'm pretty sure standard lightbulbs are actually only 20% efficient. Florescent bulbs are very efficient, but the light they put out gives my a headache for some reason.

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  6. Oh whoops, it looks as though kabooz_kakterius is right, it is around 5%.

    But still, the florescent bulbs give me headaches.

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  7. Yeah, you're fucking right.

    Earth hour? WTF?

    We actually have the technology for safe mini reactor boxes that will power entire towns for a decade using very little material that is abundant.

    Plus cold fusion has been achieved. Fuck the naysayers, CF has been proven.

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  8. @ eben... proven and working good are 2 different things atomic fusion is not effective right now... also a much better way to get energy could be sunlight filtering ! just use a membrane that creates energy out of sunlight and cover your buildings with it XD technology has improved so far that in the near future you could have a skinlike surface on buildings XDDD maintaining itself etc

    ^^if anybody asks I didn't say anything of this ^^ cause it's the same as with cold fusion it's not gonna happen soon

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  9. As far as I know, little energy can be actually used via direct sunlight. My dad used to work with solar panels and has told me several times that covering a small/mid-size town with one would only be enough to power a few houses at most(at least by nowadays' standards).

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  10. you're right solar panels suck XD but then again I didn't talk about solar panels I talked about an organic type of solar energy conservation it works pretty much like photo synthesis in laymen terms your house will do the same stuff a tree does XD

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  11. It's a common delusion that solar panals is the most "clean and safe" source of energy. Think about how much energy (coal, oil and gas) and rare materials (rare-earth metals) you have to use to make 100 sq.m of solar panels. Moreover, there's still no good cheap, with high power density and transportable energy carrier, like oil...
    Whant to know more? www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net

    Concerning Earth Day.

    People working at power plants say that thouse who turn off lights and other consuming electronics for one hour simultaneously to "Save Earth" are stupid. There are Producers and Consumers of electricity. If consumers start to consume less, producers will produce the same. Reactors and turbines of power plants are stopped only if there's not enough consumers for a long time (weeks). Not to say that stopping thermal power plant is almost impossible: once stopped it cannot be started again. Moreover, higher ratio between produced and consumed energy stresses the whole power distribution system and increases the risk of failures. In that case engineers at power stations have to rearrange power to keep power distribution system in operational state.

    Eventually, the less consumers consume the more power is wasted...

    PS: Sorry if there are grammatical errors and typos, I have no time to check my text. Russian is my native language anyway. :-)

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