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Earth Hour tonight


Andrew*

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Sorry but this earth hour thing is a load of carp. Its a token gesture...

Maybe so, but I took part purely for the benefit to astronomers, though I don't think it was very well supported in my area (and it's not easy trying to type in the drak)

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Hello,

Personally I am very in favour of reducing emissions, increasing renewable energy supplies and capping 'wasteful' energy usage.

Here's my thoughts on the whole 'Earth Hour' thing....

If we are wanting to do something helpful towards climate change by reducing the amount of power we use (from oil, gas and coal power stations) then there are far better ways of doing it than having a few campaigners switching a few lights off. The trouble with 'Earth Hour' is exactly that, it only lasts an hour......everyone switches everything back on again which probably uses more energy at the power stations to meet the new demand.

If the governments of the world had enough balls then they would provide each household with enough electricity for the basics i.e fridge, freezer, one or two lights. As that will never happen then they (and us) must look at other means, unfortunately these other means are either overlooked by the 'education, housing, or NHS, or as we are now seeing hugely (supposedly) expensive to implement.

The U.K. is surrounded by water, we have many rivers, hills and dare I say it, quite a bit of sunlight. The current trend by the government and local councils is to do minimal at the maximum price......pretty much goes for anything really (you can include potholes in this equation). We should be harnessing these renewable sources and get rid of the rubbish.

Or,

Prisons, overcrowded? Hamster wheels....free energy supply, keep them busy for days or years.

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Agreed, but the main problem is public-wide paranoia of the dark, not helped by the sensationalist media.

If the UK were to achieve an increase in renewable energy suppy then that means the public could turn night into day every square metre of the land and feel good about it because "oh it's all high efficiency and low carbon footprint" and "oh we feel so much safer because it never gets dark anywhere, horay!".

Here in the Netherlands we have to contend with this:

post-16194-133877436358_thumb.jpg

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"If the governments of the world had enough balls then they would provide each household with enough electricity for the basics i.e fridge, freezer, one or two lights. "

and I would add "and power for your CCD's TEC cooling, dew/heater strips, laptop, mount drive etc..".

mmm, I like the sound of that. As you say it needs someone with balls to be in power.

Having said that I feel slightly hypicritical, using air travel most weeks of the year. My carbon footprint is quite an embarassment.

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I think most people would agree that turning off domestic lighting (and a few landmarks) wouldn't make much of difference. I think the intent of the activity was to draw attention to wasting power and it certainly got us thinking how we could reduce our carbon footprint.:)

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The thing is that no energy was saved, cause they dont throttle back the power stations just cause demand dips...most conventional power stations take 12hrs to start up from cold and 45minutes to switch to the grid if they are on 'hot standby' but not sychronised to the grid... all it will mean was a bit more water was pumped up electric mountain.

And its very annoying being preached to about my 60watt bulb when the government has filled the country with, what are they? 250watt/ 500watt? street lights as far as the eye can see. Why have they not all be changed for directional leds? Now that would really save a chunk of money and emissions...

As for the getting enough energy for the 'basics' do you not think thats a bit facist? Jeez, who's to decide whats the 'basics' are... I wouldnt include a freezer so you can get rid of that, and I definatley wouldnt telescopes and computers... I'm fine see cause my telescope hand operated, thats the basic... and as its only 3" I could see a lot more if everything was dark!

@Holland...Jeez, I thought our skies were bad!!!!!!!!

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The thing is that no energy was saved, cause they dont throttle back the power stations just cause demand dips...most conventional power stations take 12hrs to start up from cold and 45minutes to switch to the grid if they are on 'hot standby' but not sychronised to the grid... all it will mean was a bit more water was pumped up electric mountain.

!!!!!!!

Sorry Tycho but 25 years in the power industry prevented me from letting this go without comment:D

You can "throttle back" the turbo / generator sets, otherwise there would be no control on the grid at all. It would be a bit like having no throttle on your car and only being able to start, go at full whack then switch off when you want to stop.

You only shut down a machine when no more throttlling of the machines in that area is possible.

Oh and I do agree with switching off for earth hour, anything that raises public awareness is good by me.

As for being preached at to turn off your telly from standby to save the planet when the church in the next village, on a hill for crying out loud, is lit up with 50kW of sodium lights (cos it looks nice) then that is guaranteed to get my goat.

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"As for being preached at to turn off your telly from standby to save the planet when the church in the next village, on a hill for crying out loud, is lit up with 50kW of sodium lights (cos it looks nice) then that is guaranteed to get my goat."

Yup! Here here... You hit the nail on the head there.

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Yes, they'll throttle the turbine valve to alter how much electricity is produced, but they wont alter the amount of coal thats being fed into the furnace when demand is expected to drop for an hour! Our coal plants are all old designs, our newest plants are from the early 80s! Theres a huge amount of boiler inertia so they want to keep the furnace as steady as possible to minimise thermal stress on the system... so they'll be no reduction in emissions... Thats why economy 7 leccy was cheaper at night... if they could just stop making it they wouldnt need to offer it at a discount! The newer plants they are looking at building now, they are hoping to design so the amount of leccy generated is controlled by the coal feed so they can save money when demand lulls...

My point is the VAST amount of waste in this country is through the government and industry... As they are responsible for most of it they should lead by example. Just looking out my window now I can see 19 lights all over 250w for SURE! Convert the savings that would be made by converting them all to LEDS which would pay for itself simply in reduced energy costs.... now that would make a big difference. So if instead of living in the dark for an hour we ALL spent 15mins writing angry letters to our local representatives insisting THEY make the change or we wont be voting for them, real change could be effected.

Like Portable says... for some reason our council has become obsessed with lighting all the old bridges churchs and landmarks up with thousands of watts of lighting, then puts a leaflet through my door telling me to swap to compacts for the sake of the children!!!!

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The biggest incentive to reduce your energy consumption is the quarterly bill. Ours has risen to £160 :D albeit over the winter period. After a rather verbally colourful phone call to N.I.E i was assured our bill was "actually quite low.." as our usage was " well below average..."

Ho Hum...:(

Will.

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The biggest incentive to reduce your energy consumption is the quarterly bill. Ours has risen to £160 :D albeit over the winter period. After a rather verbally colourful phone call to N.I.E i was assured our bill was "actually quite low.." as our usage was " well below average..."

Ho Hum...:(

Will.

Mine was £900!!!! :D (normally half that as we're fully electric)

I had to sit down....

But then I realised we had a new meter installed at Christmas, which lead me to examine the bill more closely and realised that the Economy 7 and daytime tarrifs were switched and I was being charged wrong.

The company (I won't mention the name) didn't even spot this mistake and were quite happy to take several hundred pounds from my account.

It took a lot of phone calls to sort it and as a result my account with them has been frozen until I have been re-charged with the proper amount.

For some reason I still have the residual feeling that you get when someone has stolen your car....

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I just got my quarterly bill of £1092... I thought that was pretty amazing for a victorian 2 bed flat with no central heating... I didnt realise we'd been cooking THAT much!!! They wouldnt be trying to scam me now would they? hy is it when you deal with 'service providers' these days it feels like your buying a second hand car???

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I just got my quarterly bill of £1092... I thought that was pretty amazing for a victorian 2 bed flat with no central heating... I didnt realise we'd been cooking THAT much!!! They wouldnt be trying to scam me now would they? hy is it when you deal with 'service providers' these days it feels like your buying a second hand car???

You really should query that.

Seriously.

You don't think somebody else is tapping into your electricity?

The majority of my bill is the heating and water - four large economy 7 storage heaters turned up full over the freezing period plus water tank, on for seven hours a day.

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One of the weird things is this "Energy Efficiency Rating" - Now required reading prior to house purchase. I was "scared stiff" that my fuel bill would rocket when I moved from a (typically freezing!) energy efficient flat to this my (supposedly much less efficient) little house. Amazingly I now heat my whole place with one (albeit rather large) gas fire. Before I was having to add full-rate fan heaters to augment the economy seven, and still barely exceeding 60F. Being cold all the time was miserable and was adversely effecting my health... :(

I sense a lot of these "energy ratings" are just based on vendor opinion? Maybe I should check the loft for past evidence of "Hydroponic Activities"... or a very large train set? :D

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