<< “EARTH HOUR” ABBREVIATED IS “EH” ~ MAIN ~ HOUR OF HORSEPOWER >>
SPARKAGE BOOSTED?
These graphs - from the National Electricity Market Management Company - seem to indicate an increased Australian power demand (green line) during Earth Hour (commencing at 20:00 in the second sections):
• Victoria
• Tasmania
(Via Ceni)
UPDATE. An engineer checks the data:
I have just looked at Qld, NSW, and Vic. Qld dropped the most power during Earth Hour, and it appears to be greater than normal. On average the drop is around 250 MW, in this case it is 400 MW… While Qld appears to have done well, NSW’s power usage actually went up for the first half-hour (7,777 MW to 7,862 MW), before dropping 112 MW… Vic remained more or less constant, with a drop of only 90 MW during the hour.
UPDATE I.5. Further from our engineer:
Based on the past, NSW should have dropped around 560 to 580 MW in that hour, and Vic should have been around 220-300 MW. Neither state even made average. It happens I guess (history shows some very big and very small numbers), but it will make those with the Green streak feel a little uneasy. I think the extreme ones will get quite a bit upset.
One of the things that jumps out to me, at least, is that the base load power is huge. Qld and Vic need 4.5 to 5 GW of power everyday, and NSW needs at least 6.5 GW. Imagine trying to replace that with solar and wind!
And in Canada: “Earth Hour had practically zero effect on the electricity demand in the Province of Ontario. While electricity use was barely below forecast, it was actually up slightly from the previous hour!”
UPDATE II. South Carlton before ...
... during ...
... and 40 minutes after Earth Hour. Spot the difference!
(Pics by Andrew R.)
It’s T-minus-4:30 here in Maine. Getting ready for Appreciate Living in a Prosperous Society and Being the Most Fortunate Humans Who Ever Lived Because We Have Stuff Like Electricity and Our Section of the Globe at Night Doesn’t Look Like North Korea Hour.
The plan is to pop on every light in the house, then continue to celebrate modernity by spooning nekkid with the wife while watching some Skinemax softcore we TiVo’d during last week’s free preview.
We’re going to get laid while raping Gaia!
Tim do you mean an increase on the day before? Unless I’m reading them wrong all of the graphs seem to show a decline in energy use during Earth Hour.
Posted by Villeurbanne on 2008 03 29 at 03:42 PM • permalinkOn Thursday, just days before Earth Hour, a passenger train brought down the overhead wiring at Tempe (here in Sydney). This brought all trains in that area to a screaming halt, and buses had to be brought in to move people around.
The SMH, the great promoter of Earth Hour, headlined “Passengers vent fury at train delays”. No, what they were really venting at was a lack of electricity - a lack of motive power, a lack of power to run the air conditioning and to drive the lights.
The Daily Telegraph reported how angry people got when one CityRail employee suggested that people who were stranded just “go home”. That annoyed people as they had jobs to go to and so forth.
Imagine that! Relying on electricity to get to work, to get to school, to go out and do some shopping and so on.
If the SMH had any decency, it would have congratulated CityRail on lowering the carbon footprint of thousands of Sydneysiders, and egging them on to do it again.
Except of course that all those stranded passenger had to be transferred to buses, which are much more polluting than trains.
Posted by mr creosote on 2008 03 29 at 04:40 PM • permalinkQuite seriously, why aren’t these Earth Hour flunkies being labelled the luddites that they are?
Posted by ausdiplomad on 2008 03 29 at 05:14 PM • permalink#3 Villerbanne - that’s how I read the graphs too.
But if I look further at the graphs for both days and look for a difference between the demand profile (decline) on Friday night and that on Saturday night “Earth Hour”, I see mo difference at all. In fact SFA! It looks just like everyone went about their normal business.
What a crock! An ‘Earth Hour’ for business when no one is working and so on. I wonder what the birth rate will be like in 9 months?
And I see there’s a picture in today’s Sun Herald. It looks a little photo shopped to me like last time though perhaps it’s not as blatant. Hmm. I also see that the picture in print is not available on line - I wonder why? LOL. Oh well, I suppose we will now have a little more hectoring from the righteous left to get us all in the ‘right’ frame of mind for the coming leftist Kruddfest. LOL if not boring.
#4 Cosmo, while tehre is a very real and ugly threat to the West and all it’s liberties, the ruling class prefers to tilt at imaginery threats. It’s sad, truly scarey.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 29 at 05:32 PM • permalinkMany of the “beleivers” in “Earth Hour” don’t understand what it’s for. Some say it’s for saving power/emissions. Some say it’s to save the environment. Some say it’s to “raise awareness”. I wish they’d make up their minds, they can’t even get the back story right.
Another point which irks me is that whatever they believe it is, but particularly those who believe urning off the power for one hour, at the same time, on a Saturday night somehow saves the planet, are totally oblivious that to do what they propose (cut carbon emissions and shrink their ‘carbon footprint’), they should be doing without power, and the car, and anything which uses fossil fuels, and so on, every day!
The movement of the Cate Blanchett stage performance so that it would finish before the “black out”, the exhortation to cook dinner early and do everything you need to do with the power earlier or later, just defeats the whole thing.
They’re idiots.But we knew that.
My question is how you can have demand data up to 0400 on 31 March when 31 March is tomorrow.
But assuming there’s some error and it meant 30 March most states seemed to show a slight upsurge just before 20:00 and then turned down. Thing is when the states hit their peak at 20:00 they just kept going down afterwards. Did people forget to turn their lights on or is it more as Wand suggested that this is simply a typical demand profile.
And my main question is; what on earth was happening in South Austraila just after midnight?
Looking at the graphs made me think (aspirin please nurse). The power stations are still churning out electricity while Earth Hour is on. Not like they can turn off a power station or store the surplus in drums.
So what happens to that electricity? Wonder if that downward spike in the price was the electricity companies off-loading the surplus to industry - plenty of big processes such as smelters work 24/7.
So while the Earth Hour crowd are saving the planet by candelight, is their electricty being used in stepped up production at oil refineries, smelters and pulp mills.
Ironic if that is the case.
I think it’s clear what none of the graphs show. No state saw a dip in demand at 20:00 that then came back up (even partly) at 21:00. That is what you would expect if masses of people (or at least the numbers suggested) consciously turned off their lights and turned them back on again at 21:00. The alternative possible profile would be a faster fall in demand between 20:00 and 21:00 than after if we assume power usage starts to decline at 20:00 everynight.
Really hard to be sure precisely what is going on without going back over months of graphs but these graphs suggest earth hour had no effect on power demand.
Couldn’t help myself. If you click on Tim’s link to the company there is also a 5 minute data graph. For NSW this seeems to show the peak demand for the night several hours before Earth Hour. Electricity demand trends down before and after the Hour. There is a slight blip up at 21:00 that someone really data trawling might ry to point to but, given the demand exhibits a sawtooth pattern (at all times) it would be meaningless to draw conclusions from it.
#4 That is beautifully eloquent Cosmo.
#5 This story is more to the point. Even if Earth hour achieved a significant drop in consumption of fossil fuels or electricity or whatever, so fucking what?
Currently we are free to turn switches on and off as we like. We paid for this electricity and we will do with it as we please.
On the whole we, and everyone else, like them on. A few more Earth hours (train crashes) will drive this point home.
Note: My wife got home from a concert at about 11.00 and came in saying “can you turn a few of these bloody lights off?”. So our hour of power turned into three hours. We were thorough but forgetful.Posted by ooh honey honey on 2008 03 29 at 06:31 PM • permalinkHey, what time is it in Poland? It is too late to warn them that Earth Hour doesn’t include car headlights?
Posted by Jim Treacher on 2008 03 29 at 06:38 PM • permalink#15
Really hard to be sure precisely what is going on without going back over months of graphs but these graphs suggest earth hour had no effect on power demand.Precisely.
There are usage profiles for utilities (the Erlang is specific to Telco network patronage) and it is only a departure from the profile which can be guaged.
From previous, Iemma would have been so advised by the utilities operating companies; rubbery figures ‘n all ...20. Dave S.
People who are living low carbon lifestyles allready. (Zimbabwe, NKorea etc)
They dont know much past the village gate save when the local taxman comes to town.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2008 03 29 at 07:36 PM • permalinkUnfortunately, my eldest (8yo) son is being brainwashed with this idiocy at school (I’m working on it..).
He ran around last night wanting to turn off all the lights at 8pm. I explained the stupidity of it all, but let him turn off the lights in parts of the house we weren’t using (which is good practice, anyway).
This morning (in the daylight), I walked around the house noting all the lights left on, particularly in the main living area where he was, and pointed this out to him. “But it’s not earth hour anymore, so it doesn’t matter” was the reply.
The depth of the group-think is so shallow, they can’t even get the correct message across.
Wonder if Cate Blanchett thought, as she turned out the theatre lights, that up at Liddell Power station a foreman shouted: “Hold on Tom, don’t throw that shovel of coal into the furnace. Blanchett has just switched off the lights.”
#11
My question is how you can have demand data up to 0400 on 31 March when 31 March is tomorrow.
A good question. That seems to be a quirk on the NEMMCO web site. Their web site (link provided by Tim at top of this page), 30 min real time data graphs give this error. 5 min real time data graphs give the correct time stamp. And these are graphs are more interesting if anyone can be bothered looking:
My summary of the 5 min real time data during the Magic Hour:
NSW - in the hour after the magic hour - demand ‘recovered and exceeded the demand at 8pm.
VIC - a pesky increase at the start of the magic hour but Victorians continued to go to bed.
QLD - Queenslanders continued going to bed which is more surprising considering they don’t have daylight savings. Still whatever turns a person on (maybe that should read off).
SA - South Australians continued to go to bed, but there was a slight resurgence in demand after the magic hour - maybe it was a comfort stop.
TAS - Tasmanians just went straight to bed.
SN - Snowy - now this is interesting - wow! Snowy dispatched about an additional 80 MW from about 8.30 and by 9.00 Snowy was ‘pumping it out’ well into the night!#11
And my main question is; what on earth was happening in South Australia just after midnight?
I’d guess it probably is something as mundane as off-peak hot water systems switching on. Of course off-peak electricity for hot water gives system operators a load which can be varied and used to improve the overall efficiency and operation of any electricity system - so what do greenies want to do? Why shut them all down of course. E.g., like this little piece of madness.
#12 – Power generators don’t quite work like that. Generators only supply the demand, for example if there is a decrease in demand all the generating units will back off automatically as supply will always equal demand. If there is large decrease in demand the frequency (50 Hz in Oz and 60 in the US) will increase. This is a very bad thing as if it get too high (about 52.5) the generators will trip. The same rule applies for decreases in frequency due to excessive demand.
This is why alternative power sources over 10-20% of the total demand will cause BIG problems with grid stability. Most coal fired stations have fairly slow normal increase and decrease load rates, only 3-10 MW/minute. Note: This is the simple version as it is much more complicated that this with Droop action playing an important part in frequency control.Posted by FreddyFrog on 2008 03 29 at 08:05 PM • permalink”... with Droop action playing an important part in frequency control.”
I come to this site for environmental news and I get a Viagra ad.
Posted by David Crawford on 2008 03 29 at 08:36 PM • permalinkFreddy, on the (very small) grid where I live, when the wind farm operates, a diesel generator of equal output has to run alongside to catch the voltage dips when the wind gusts.
(This is the case when the wind is at the low end of being able to turn the vanes and fluky. When it is strong and steady, the utility doesn’t have to keep a generator idling to keep the grid from crashing.)
Grid stability has been a real problem since the wind farm turned on in 2006.
Posted by Harry Eagar on 2008 03 29 at 08:46 PM • permalinkQuite seriously, why aren’t these Earth Hour flunkies being labelled the luddites that they are?
I’ve been using the term ‘Honorary North Koreans’, myself.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2008 03 29 at 08:47 PM • permalinkLet’s see how this whole “turn off civilization” thingy will work here in Pacific Northwest, okay?
Our electricity is provided by hydro-power. Big monster dams on the mighty Columbia River (and its main tributary, the Snake River). You know, Grand Coulee Dam, Chief Joseph Dam, Bonneville Dam, and a dozen or so smaller dams.
Now these dams are what is known as “run of the river” dams. That means that very little water is stored behind them, the flow of the river provides all the water they need. That river will flow through those dams whether elecricity is made or not.
We could turn off every single house-light, appliance, street light, factory, and office building in Washington and Oregon and it would not effect the environment in the least.
This being Oregon and Washington we’re talking about, I’m sure there are plenty of wing-nuts in Portland and Seattle who are probably going to do it anyway. Enjoy the darkness idiots.
Roll on Columbia, roll on.
Posted by David Crawford on 2008 03 29 at 08:54 PM • permalink#31 – Yes, this is the problem that it never mentioned regarding alternative energy. At the moment NEMMCO doesn’t even take the wind/solar generation into account, they just ignore it and the rest of the generating units fix the frequency. I think this is wrong as if we ever get to around the 10% mark it will become a major problem for grid stability. They should apply the same rule to them as other producers which is you pay if you are not where you have bid your load.
#30 – Somehow I don’t think Viagra will fix this Droop problem :-)
Posted by FreddyFrog on 2008 03 29 at 09:24 PM • permalink#35 - NSW peak is over 12GW, yes I know that this is not a lot but the population is not that great either.
Posted by FreddyFrog on 2008 03 29 at 09:30 PM • permalinkSorry, I have to vent after viewing the smug, self-righteousness of this coven at work.
Worse still is this guff from the Age:
WELL, that felt good, didn’t it?
There were a thousand candle-lit dinners and at least one wedding illuminated in the old-fashioned way.Lovers and friends met under the clocks at Flinders Street Station in unaccustomed gloom while across the road at Federation Square more than 1000 people marked Earth Hour with torch-lit family events and unplugged music.
There was darkness — and we saw it was good.
And so now we can all lie back in the afterglow, feeling pleased with ourselves and how we all did our 60-minute bit for the planet. And wait another year for another hour.
They’re serious? Darkness is good? A wedding illuminated in the old fashioned way? What? The Neolithic way?
Clearly, not everyone heeded the message. The lights still blazed at Scots Church, the Athenaeum Theatre, the Shrine and in empty office buildings all over town.
Ha! Take that you meddlesome Presbyterians and you dead soldiers, you’ve been outed.
With the event now global, Earth Hour Australia chief executive Greg Bourne said, with “my neck on the line”, he hoped more than 100 million people were taking part."Now we have this image of darkness, and consciousness, going around the world,” he said. “It is a message of hope and optimism
Tim, I nominate that foolishness as the statement that best sums up this lot, hope and optimism through darkness, a sort of 21st Century arbeit macht frei.
I was listening to 774 this morning and a guy from the power station said there was a drop equivalent to 2 large generators. The news followed after that leading with ‘There was a drop in power usage equivalent of 2 power stations.’
Is a generator equivalent to a power station? - pardon my ignorance.
I was a dinner guest during our EH. The host turned off the light and lit up candles. I pointed out the pointlessness of the exercise, especially with the candles burning. For my hosts, it appeared to be some sort of religious rite, and they were very interested to see how many neighbours were co-religionists. Moral oproborium poured on those who had lights on. It appeared they felt themselves somehow sanctified by the exercise.
I think, not in the minds of my hosts, but in the minds of the misanthropic luddite zealots leading this scam, that they really, really just don’t like electricity.
BTW I left my lights and radio on while out, eh.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 29 at 09:59 PM • permalink#39 – I would like to know who the “guy from the power station” was as he is a wanker. Although to be fair a unit at a power station may be as small as 2MW (not coal fired) or a large as 770MW. Some power stations have only one unit but there are some with around 6 units (that I know of).
Posted by FreddyFrog on 2008 03 29 at 09:59 PM • permalink#38 Nic. Are you sure the author wasn’t have a laugh.
And so now we can all lie back in the afterglow, feeling pleased with ourselves and how we all did our 60-minute bit for the planet. And wait another year for another hour.
Don’t you think that could have been sarcastic. But then it again it came from the Age so most probably not.#39 No, a single power station will contain many generators. google your local power station or company; it will provide all the details.
What the reporter did was display his ignorance and help create a mass-delusion. When it undeniably doesn’t warm, or even gets colder, over the next couple of years, Al Gore and
co-religionistsfellow swindlers will claim that Kyoto worked and they had saved the planet. It will be at this point that people will realise that they prefer it warm.Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 29 at 10:16 PM • permalink#38 Nic,
."Now we have this image of darkness, and consciousness, going around the world,” he said. “It is a message of hope and optimism
Doesn’t this just sound like a religion? But it is a religion of darkness. Incredible. A post modern religion of darkness is the message of hope and optimism????
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 29 at 10:22 PM • permalink#14 There’s a reason the watermelons and swindlers chose 8-9 pM. They can show a chart and say: “See, the drop in electricity usage"
I still haven’t figured out why they don’t like electricity. Perhaps it’s because it is invisible.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 03 29 at 10:34 PM • permalink#50 Like James Thurber’s grandmother, they probably believe that electricity leaks all over the house.
The Hour of Power has commenced here in the Peoples’ Republic of California, and no difference as far as I can see.
I AM doing my part, however: every light is on both TV sets are on (the one in the living room has the sound going through a Carver TFM-35x 750-watt amp - turned up loud enough the cat decided she’d rather be outside), the A/C is on, despite the fact it is a bit chilly here, the dishwasher is running (only half filled) and I’ve got a load of laundry in the clothes washer.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2008 03 29 at 11:24 PM • permalinkThose photos of South Carlton need the reuter’s touch before they can be published in the left media.
Posted by surfmaster on 2008 03 29 at 11:24 PM • permalink"Spot the difference!”
I’ve spotted it! In complete contrast to the time I was living in Carlton in my youth - it now gets more more and more in-focus the later it gets on a Saturday night.
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2008 03 29 at 11:55 PM • permalink#22,
That is absolutely brilliant. I’m sure this has (and will) repeat itself all over the world.
The kids they target are all for being an activist, except when it is inconvenient to them. I was like that when I was a kid (I’m 25 now) also but I got smarter hopefully your son and other children will also get smarter.
#27 Freddyfrog
OK, thanks for explaining.
I will take it from another angle. In NSW and Victoria part of the supply is hydro. I think that hydro is also part of a national power grid. Would it have been more likely that any excess supply would have been shed from these hydro generators? I am figuring hydro is more responsive to electricity demand than coal, which takes time to convert to heat. I also figure thermal stations have a level of maximum efficiency that electricity authorities strive to maintain.
It would deliciously ironic if all Earth Hour succeeded in doing is to shut down non-carbon hydro and wind generators and left the thermal generators to carry on unaffected.
#55 Kae
I have also noticed this. But I have noticed that it gets worse when you have 2 mates around on your wife’s 50th birthday (today) and the 3 of U 2/3 empty a 3 litre bottle of whisky.
Yes, worse.
Why am I typing this while lying down? Oh. I missed the chair. You get that sometimes.
MarkL
Canberra#59
Snowy Hydro is c. 3% of the national capacity.
They buy electricity from the grid when it is cheap (i.e. demand is low) and pump lake water to uphill reservoirs; when electricity is expensive (i.e. demand is high) they release water back downhill via turbines and sell the resultant power back to the grid.I got wasted while I listened to Joni Mitchell at full volume with my house lit up like a hot LZ. Sure felt good to be alive and I quietly thanked our pioneering ancestors for their good work in making power at the flick of a switch a reality. Then I wondered how it was that some dirty, smelly, vinegar tits, green hippy wanted to undo all their good work and have us listening to crickets over a sputtering cow dung fire. Greens are soooo effing boring!!!
Yes you do JohnA, for your astute powers of obversation, here is your prize.
Posted by dean martin on 2008 03 30 at 06:01 AM • permalinkFor Earth Hour I fixed my girlfriend’s furnace. To celebrate, we burned many gallons of delicious oil.
Posted by Don't Bogart that Midget, Comrade! on 2008 03 30 at 03:07 PM • permalink#38:-
And so now we can all lie back in the afterglow, feeling pleased with ourselves ...
That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it - feeling pleased with themselves. And I’m sure no-one missed the, er, carnal subtext of “lie back in the afterglow.” For some of these people, pointless but self-righteous gestures seem to be a form of self-gratification.
Whichever way you look at it, it’s not about the planet, it’s really all about them.
#62
Which displeases the Greens, as it’s classed as ‘non-renewable energy’.Wimpy Canadian wrote:
Doesn’t this just sound like a religion? But it is a religion of darkness. Incredible. A post modern religion of darkness is the message of hope and optimism????
Worshipping the Divine Shadow?
Posted by Patrick Chester on 2008 03 31 at 12:32 PM • permalink
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Heh-heh-heh.
Tim roolz! ;-p