Author Topic: earth hour dilemma (Read 568 times)

bob golding · « **on:** March 28, 2009, 12:07:22 PM »

just heard about "earth hour" we are supposed to turn off the lights for 1 hour at 8.30 this evening to save the planet. if we are off grid does it still count?

TomW · « **Reply #1 on:** March 28, 2009, 06:49:20 AM »

Bob;

I say we should all fire up every light in the house on RE and make a statement on how energy should be done!

Thats my story and I am sticking with it.

Tom

Electron Pump · « **Reply #2 on:** March 28, 2009, 07:17:08 AM »

Absolutely. Me and mine had that discussion lastnight. Fire up all the R/E you've got. Shine it for all to see. Turn off all the mass produced grid power.

Is that 8:00 central standard time zone?

zap · « **Reply #3 on:** March 28, 2009, 08:08:15 AM »

From what I've heard, it's 8:30 to 9:30 local time i.e. your local time.

I too think you should turn on every RE light. It might just get your neighbors to ask "What's the deal?"... thereby giving you a chance to do a little RE preaching.

Electron Pump · « **Reply #4 on:** March 28, 2009, 08:43:54 AM »

Gotcha!

tanner0441 · « **Reply #5 on:** March 28, 2009, 11:49:19 AM »

Hi

I don't know about the US but in the UK while they go on about domestic users saving a few watts. Look at Super Markets with KWs of lighting on 24 hours a day, office blocks with lights and computers running all night, yet they are turning off some street lights to save money. We have a medium sized store, Lidle, I counted about 9KW of car park lighting on all day, it's been like that for weeks. If I put every light on in my house with CFLs I can't do 1KW.

I was involved years ago with the AC on an ofice block the main frame and AC was 270KW and it had to be upgraded before the building was signed over, yet we are expected to save the planet. If you have RE make sure your batteries are up and go for it, and get the local paper to take photos.

Brian

RandomJoe · « **Reply #6 on:** March 28, 2009, 11:59:35 AM »

Heh. I wondered that same thing! My aunt in Toronto is quite into Earth Hour and related - has a small party where they turn off the power and light candles. I just thought "well, I can power the cablemodem with a battery and carry on just like normal..."! (The cablemodem is at the other end of the house, so the only part of my network not on the solar system battery bank already. Gotta run a line through the attic.)

It would be kind of cool to see the effect in cities where a large number take part. But around here, I seriously doubt many will care - if they even know what Earth Hour is! About the only place I've seen it mentioned locally is in E-surance ads...

I'm not particularly into the whole cause behind Earth Hour, but I may do something just for the fun of it. I could kill the breaker to the house, pretend it's an hour-long outage and give my solar backup system a test-drive!

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #7 on:** March 28, 2009, 12:30:17 PM »

IMHO the basic "earth hour" drill is another piece of politically correct feel-good waste-motion don't-actually-solve-anything theater. Like scrapping a relatively new big car to buy a compact - and thus burn more fuel making an extra car than you'll save over its life (while the big car gets sold to somebody else who doesn't keep it in tune or broken up for parts to keep a dozen beaters on the road for an extra year or so.).

It's all about using social pressure to get people to conform, while not actually doing anything useful (and in fact wasting the people's time and energy that might have been spent on somethng that WAS useful).

They'll turn off their lights for a little while. And a bunch of them will light candles or oil lamps that burn more fossil fuel than the efficient power grid would have. Not to mentin the several that will burn down their house through mishap (and the several more who will use it as an excuse to get out of their underwater mortgage via homeowners' insurance.)

Meanwhile the power plants will still be spinning and burning - perhaps throttling back a bit but saving nowhere near the turned-off lights' share of fuel - because the operators can't predict what the load drop will be and because it's too short to really shut anything down and restart it afterward.

I agree that the thing to do is light up with RE and use it to educate anybody who notices and asks. Let's do something useful with this. B-)

DamonHD · « **Reply #8 on:** March 28, 2009, 01:05:09 PM »

Write to LIDL's head office: I think they'd be horrified from a financial and eco standpoint.

A gentle polite nudge from a concerned customer directly to the CEO can do wonders, trust me.

Rgds

Damon

Fused · « **Reply #9 on:** March 28, 2009, 01:58:23 PM »

Ill have my little 12x20 barn lit up!

Fused

bob golding · « **Reply #10 on:** March 28, 2009, 03:52:48 PM »

spent my earth hour with all the lights on reading an interesting e book i downloaded on making your own batteries. all you need is lead, to the tune of the beatles song. dont think anyone noticed as i live a mile from any anyone else,a few foxes maybe.

wingman1776 · « **Reply #11 on:** March 28, 2009, 04:11:25 PM »

I will use the earth hour to test the used new batterys I got yesturday.

dnix71 · « **Reply #12 on:** March 28, 2009, 04:37:24 PM »

I could live well on what we waste at work. We have banks of 4 foot flourescent lights that are burned out but left on anyway. Even complaining to #2 didn't get anything done about it. Meanwhile they extended our 1 hour a day furlow through the middle of April.

Them that has gets. Dwayne (#2) said he doesn't even know what we pay for electric, because the utility bills go directly to headquarters (in a far away state) to be paid.

valterra · « **Reply #13 on:** March 29, 2009, 08:57:09 AM »

I vote for the idea of turning all your RE stuff on also. It will send one of two messages:

- This Lights Off thing is a bunch of BS that won't really solve anything

or

- I have all my lights ON because I made the electricity myself!

I wouldn't mind whichever message is inferred.

Of course, most people don't know about the "night" and wouldn't get either message anyway. :-)

Just my 2c.

I remember NBC doing that on Nightline one night - Turning off all their lights before going on a commercial break - of course, once the commercials were over, they were all back on. Anyone who's been inside even a small television studio knows about the hundreds of Kw's of the lighting alone being used.

Oh, and of course, they didn't cut power to their transmitters. :-D THAT would send a REAL message!

valterra · « **Reply #14 on:** March 29, 2009, 09:01:21 AM »

I used to work for one of the Class 1 Railroads. The 2nd or 3rd largest in the country. Like anyone else working for a giant company, I could spot all kids of waste all over the place.

When you said you could live well off of their waste, that struck a chord with me. You are SO right.

This is the same company that has an attic full of probably 2 tons of Magnet wire from the old days when they used to wind their own motors. But they wouldn't sell it to me, even at scrap prices.

It'll be there for another 100 years, until one day someone just tosses it all into the dumpster.

So sad.

richhagen · « **Reply #15 on:** March 30, 2009, 04:12:26 AM »

Here in Chicago, we have been upgrading alley lighting as a straw to grasp at in a hope to reduce crime. I can easily read a newspaper at a good distance in the bright orange light in my alley. I could heat my home with the electrical usage of the lighting added to my alley alone. I would rather deal with the criminals appropriately to reduce the recidivism rate, and save the energy for more necesary purposes. Rich

SparWeb · « **Reply #16 on:** March 30, 2009, 11:23:39 AM »

Hey I did exactly that, too: I turned everything off in the light (just short of going to the main breaker on the panel and flipping that, too), then went outside, and turned on every one of my barn lights, powered by RE. :^]

The Earth Hour success is measured in the drop in power on the local electrical grid, so go ahead and burn every RE light you have!

Depressing fact: Alberta's power consumption dropped by 1%. Hey still within statistical variability, there! The message is not getting out the way it should.

ghurd · « **Reply #17 on:** March 30, 2009, 02:19:54 PM »

"1%"?

We did it a couple years ago.

Nobody near me knew it was happening.

We were simply the house with no lights on. Not uncommon.

G-

cyplesma · « **Reply #18 on:** March 31, 2009, 08:27:07 PM »

hehe I saw something on a detroit news about some casinos in vegas turning their lights off I wasn't paying too close attention but now I realize what they were talking about.

8 )

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #19 on:** April 02, 2009, 09:19:16 PM »

Will the cable modem take power-over-ethernet?

RandomJoe · « **Reply #20 on:** April 04, 2009, 06:16:42 PM »

No, it's actually fairly ancient as the IT world goes and no-frills. But it keeps on working!

On the plus side, it's 12VDC, as well as the router (both Linksys) and I have run them off a battery in the past. I just don't know for sure if they will handle the up to 14.5V charging voltage were I to connect them to the battery bank directly.

That's becoming a recurring issue, I just bought an Eee PC laptop, and it's 12VDC input as well. Just don't know if it can handle a wider range or not. Not too eager to just try it and see, either!

Ungrounded Lightning Rod · « **Reply #21 on:** April 06, 2009, 03:28:02 PM »

If you've already got an ethernet cable to its location you could try using "poor man's power-over-ethernet mode B", which doesn't require anything but a little wire hacking.

10-T and 100-T ethernet uses only the second (orange/white) and third (green/white) pair. The first (blue/white, pins 3&4) and fourth (brown/white, pins 7& pair are just floating.

If the power drain is low enough you could tie the blue/white lines together for the (+) side of the 12V power and the brown/white lines together for the (-). Fuse it at no more than an amp and a quarter at the sending end (to keep the wire from setting your house on fire) and tie it to the power input on the modem end. If the modem's internal regulator is good enough and the current low enough it will just work.

People have powered WRT54Gs at 12V 1A over a hundred feet of cable this way. The wire drops the voltage to 11 or so but the modem/router then regulates it down to +5 and is happy.

Cat 5E uses #24 AWG connectors, which the TIA (telecom industry assoc.) rates at 360 ma/conductor at 50V - if you want to put 100 of 'em in a bundle at 45 degrees C ambient. So if your modem has low enough draw I'd fuse it at 3/4A just to be safe - within about 4% of the TIA recommendation. And I'd make REALLY SURE the two conductors of each of the pair you use for power get tied together so all the current doesn't end up on one of 'em.

(REAL power-over-ethernet starts out at 48V, can "phantom" on the signal wires as well as using the spares, and goes through a bunch of handshaking to make sure it has a standards-conforming device at the powered end and doesn't fry something that wasn't ready to be handed 50 watts on a comm line.)

Wikipedia article here.

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Author Topic: earth hour dilemma (Read 568 times)

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