The Earth Hour Con

Tonight, all of you will diligently observe Earth Hour. Yeah! Right!

Tomorrow, you will hear wonderful stories of how many hundreds of thousands, (perhaps even millions) of tons of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) were saved, and how this one hour will symbolically aid in the battle to save us from what we are told is ‘catastrophic’ Climate Change/Global Warming.

Those figures will be impressive, and will make you think that actually this is one small step. However, those figures will be theoretical only, and what has actually happened in reality is nothing like that at all.

How these figures will be arrived at is like this.

Persons actually taking part will be asked to register at one of the Earth Hour sites. All those people will be added together, and then they will add a further amount for the people who they think have participated but have not registered. Then they will add in the theoretical totals for all the buildings that might also turn off their lights as well. They will then calculate how much electrical power that number of people and buildings have not used for that Earth Hour period of time. This will give them a theoretical total of KiloWattHours that were not consumed. They will then use that number to extrapolate it back to what was produced by a theoretical coal fired power plant. They know that on average, a large coal fired power plant will burn 6.5 Million tons of coal each year, so they can make their calculations from that. They then use the calculation that each ton of coal burned produces 2.86 tons of CO2, and that is the theoretical amount of emitted CO2 that might have been ‘saved‘.

However, the reality is another story altogether.   …  

What the people making that calculation fail to understand is how the electrical power is produced in the first place, how it is supplied to the grids, and how consumers then use that electrical power.

As I have explained in numerous earlier posts, just how a coal fired power plant produces its power is a complex thing. It is more than just burning crushed coal in a critical furnace to boil water to high pressure steam to drive a large multi stage turbine which in turn drives a large generator. The weight of that large turbine/generator complex is around 250 to 400 tons and it rotates at 3600 RPM, or 60 times a second, and snap your fingers. Snap…..60 rotations….. snap…..another 60. That speed of rotation is constant, and the weight being driven at that speed necessitates that it be kept going at that speed all the time. It just cannot run up and down on a moment’s notice, so it will just keep lumbering on, day in day out, and the only time it does run down is for carefully scheduled maintenance down time, months in the planning and taking time to do the process of running down and back up very carefully, because of the complexity, foremost there the weight of the whole spinning complex of turbine and generator.

Hence, those large coal fired plants supply huge amounts of power to the grids all the time, this power being used to provide the 65 to 70% of all consumed power, what is termed the Base Load Power, that level of power that is required absolutely, 24/7/365. At other periods of time, smaller plants that can run up and down to speed at short notice, mainly Natural Gas fired turbine driven plants that will come on line to provide the power to top up the grids as needed, and this is called Peaking power.

Planning for each separate grid across the Country dictates that an amount of electrical power is always there at the grid. This is calculated on years of stats for power consumption for that grid for each period of time. This is an amount of power a small percentage level higher than what is being used by all consumers for that period of time. That amount of power is always there at the grid, ready to be used.

Those coal fired plants, Nuclear powered plants, and to a somewhat lesser extent Hydro Electric plants supply all the power they generate to the grid all of the time.

The grids then schedule each of those Peaking Power plants to come on line and supply extra power to the grids for those periods of time when extra is required. They will run up before those times, so that the power they generate is available to be used.

You, as a consumer, and all consumers from every area that uses power will then draw down the power that is already there at the grid.

Enter Earth Hour.

Individual consumers will turn off their lights and probably some other power consuming devices in their homes. This will amount to such a small amount of power that those grid planners will not even take it into account.

Those coal fired plants will lumber on as they always have because they supply the Base Load, and cannot just run up and down. Those Peaking plants will also stay running, because at the end of that Earth Hour period, that power will again be needed, so it just has to be there.

So, while individuals all across the Country will be turning off their lights, grid planners everywhere will be doing what they always do, and will have the same amount of power available at the grid that they always have during that period of time.

What also needs to be realised by those observing Earth Hour is that this is not one overall thing. It is being done all across the Country on the hundreds of grids that cover the Country, so each grid will have a small amount of their overall electrical power total not being used, but still there at the grids. That does not mean plants run down at all, just that a small amount of their total is not being used. It’s still there at the grid, available for when Earth Hour finishes.

So, then, let’s look at an individual level of power consumption and what you will not be using during that Earth Hour.

This image is from the US Government Energy Information Administration, and details household electrical power consumption. If you click on the image, it will open in a new and larger window. Even though this image is for U.S. consumers, it is similar to residential power consumption for all Western World Countries. Some people might see the date there, 2001, and say that things have changed, but in fact they have not changed all that much, and in fact, if there has been such a swing to Compact Fluorescent Lighting, then the percentage shown there for lighting of 8.8% would in fact be lower, but even if they have come into widespread use, that percentage would be only a tiny bit smaller.

Let’s just say you are observing Earth Hour by just doing what is requested, turning off your household lights, and there’s a reason why it is only the lights that they ask you to turn off. You’re not going to turn off your hot water system. You won’t turn off your refrigerator or freezer if you have one, because the temperature rise, even for that Earth Hour period will mean that when you turn them back on, the part that uses the most electrical power, the compressor will have to run longer to cool the inside back down, longer than for the small periods it would have been running during that down time. The Earth Hour people have been very cunning for their scheduling of their Earth Hour, making it not in Summer when you might have cooling on or Winter when the heat will be on, so they plan it for a benign time, either mid Spring or mid Autumn when heating and cooling are not really being used all that much. It is also planned for a Saturday night when even the Peaking Power load requirement is smaller than it might be for a weekday period when work places, and all those shopping centres will still be in operation, using the power they always do, but do not on Saturday nights. So in effect, all you will be turning off is your lights for that period of time, and maybe the TV. Computer use will go up as those people will be keeping in contact, because the site actually encourages you to use the Facebook, Twitter, etc to keep in touch with others, so power will actually go up in that area.

As you can see from the chart, lighting makes up only 8.8% on average of all your residential power consumption. The average household power consumption is around 30KWH per day, and for each State you live in, and if you visit this link, and click on the blue Residential tab at the top it will break it down even further for your State, but for this, I’m just using the U.S. average. The lights at your house are on for around 6 hours a day on average. So, by observing Earth Hour you will be saving 16.7% (one sixth) of 8.8% of 30KWH or 0.44 KWH of your daily power consumption. I mentioned above that this applies not just for the U.S. but for all Western World Countries that have constant access to a reliable source of electricity at that residential level.

As to monetary savings this too can be calculated. Your average Monthly power bill is $104 (U.S. monthly average) and the savings on that monthly electricity bill will be big enough for you to be suitably impressed also.

By observing Earth Hour, your next electricity bill will be this much cheaper:

$104 divided by 31 (days in this month) for a daily cost of $3.35. Lighting 8.8% of that amounting to 29 cents, and one sixth of that amounting to 5 Cents.

Did you get that?

By observing Earth Hour you save 5 cents.

I fully understand that this distills the whole thing down to what may seem to be a little ridiculous, but it shows how the spin that says that this is really something symbolic is really just that. Spin.

You may also see some very large buildings also shutting off their lights as well, as some cities will move into (semi) darkness, but something similar will also apply here, because in most of those buildings, lighting still only comes in at around 11 to 12% of all their power consumption, and most are a lot less lit up than they are at the same time during the normal working week.

It may look really effective to see large areas go into darkness, but be fully aware that not one grid will be shutting down one plant, because that power will still need to be available at the grids for all those areas, and even if they were to shut down one of those gas fired plants, that power will still be needed again at the end of Earth Hour, and to go through the shut down and then fire back up process will actually consume more fuel than would have been used during that down time. Either way grid planners can not afford to ‘guess’ the tiny drop in consumption and shut down plants accordingly.

It just will not happen.

So, when you hear of how much CO2 was saved from being emitted during Earth hour, be aware that this is a theoretical calculation only, and has been calculated across a whole area, when individual areas on individual grids have not changed one bit.

That is why Earth Hour is just one great con.

Once you are aware of what actually IS happening, it even loses its symbolic value.

Tagged: Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Emissions, Climate Change Fraud, Climate Change Religion, Earth Hour, Global Warming Alarmism, Global Warming Hype, Household Electrical Power Usage

Posted in: America (USA), Blundering Bureaucrats, Climate Alarmists, Climate Change, Environment, Environmental activists, Fanatics, Fear-mongering, Fraud/Waste, Global Warming, Junk Science, Leftists (In the USA aka as Liberals-Progressives), Power Hungry, Propaganda, Public Opinion