
Shocker: Power demand from US homes is falling - ph0rque
http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Shocker-Power-demand-from-US-homes-is-falling-2159166.php
======
ars
Energy use has been correlated with economic output for virtually all of human
history.

So either this trend is reversing (which seems unlikely to me), we are in for
a prolonged recessionary period, or this is just a temporary dip due to new
lighting technology, and the trend will revert.

~~~
jerf
OK, so look ten years ahead into the future. Let's say you're a middle-class
American right now. How are you going to double your energy consumption?

Is your home going to take twice as much energy to heat? No. If anything,
it'll take less as increasing energy prices make insulation pay off even
sooner.

Is your gadget collection going to take twice as much energy? Probably not.
TVs are getting more efficient as a side effect of other issues. As your
computers go portable they _have_ to consume less energy unless batteries get
better in a way they aren't likely to in 10 years. What will a 2021 home
computing device do with 200 watts? (Other than "explode".)

Are you going to passively consume energy by, say, buying a new car? For all
we bitch about quality, a lot of the big ticket items are lasting longer than
ever before. A 100,000 mile car used to be a cantankerous beast, and a sort of
badge of honor for the skillful owner who kept it running. Now it might not
need replacing for a long time after that if you just feed it oil on the
recommended schedule. And in general the acquisition of "stuff" seems to be
slowing down and will continue to slow down; media collections that were once
walls of books and plastic VCR tapes are now downloads and some bits on a
disk.

What would you _do_ with twice the energy budget, if you're already a middle-
class American?

It is true that economic activity has been correlated to energy output, and
it's a bit soon to start shutting down the oil companies. But there's an ever-
increasing amount of economic output being done in the form of knowledge (of
how to build better cars, etc), and in just-plain-bits, and we can have a
looooot of such output for not very many terawatts. I expect that we are
probably going to see the peak mass-energy-resource-environment-consumption
per person in the US peak in the next 10 years, then start inexorably trending
downwards for a very long time after that. (As others observe, this is not an
announcement of that peak, but I think we're going there.)

Incidentally, that's one of the interesting questions to ask of anyone who
ever mentions the Kardashev scale... what exactly is the civilization _doing_
with the entire output of the Galaxy, assuming it also basically has perfectly
efficient manufacturing and computing processes? It's a mindblowing question.
But in the meantime we mere humans don't appear to me to have infinitely
unbounded energy desires.

~~~
Someone
"OK, so look ten years ahead into the future. Let's say you're a middle-class
American right now. How are you going to double your energy consumption?"

Wall-to-wall three-D screens, a couple of robots, a 3-D printer that prints
new furniture for every season, moving to an area hotter than Phoenix, sn ice
rink in your garden next to the swimming pool everybody already has?

I do not think that will happen, but if economic reality would not apply, I
guess that is what would happen.

It does not surprise me that house-related power usage per household drops. In
the Netherlands it has halved in the past 30 years. The main drivers are
better insulation (double glazing, walll and floor insulation) and more
efficient heating.

~~~
sgk284
If electric cars take off and everyone starts charging them at home, you can
be pretty certain we'll see a huge spike in the electricity usage of the
average American home.

~~~
kaybe
We should really be looking at energy usage then and not electricity. (Is
heating with electricity even that common in the US?)

~~~
CWuestefeld
_He requested an energy audit from his utility, Nstar, to help cut his power
use. ... He replaced his electric dryer with a gas-powered one._

Tell me again why electric cars are supposed to be superior to those powered
by gasoline?

OK, I'm being snarky, but I really think this underscores the fact that
supporting electric cars has become more of a religion than a rational
conclusion based on any real evidence.

Regarding energy usage, it drives me crazy that people fixate to such a degree
on, e.g., the heat coming off of lightbulbs. In climates that require heating,
this isn't waste: it's heating the house. In the winter, there's no reason to
go around turning off all your lights and appliances. It all goes into heating
your house, so the only cost is the difference in price between electric heat
vs. oil/gas. So claiming that a decrease in energy draw for a light of X%
translates into an X% improvement in energy usage is just wrong. (granted that
in the summer, A/C must work in the other direction; but my complaint is that
our discourse never approaches this level of nuance)

~~~
kaybe
It depends on where the electricity and the gasoline come from, clearly.

If the electricity comes from burning coal, not so great, if it comes from
wind turbines, great! You can even use the car batteries as storage.

And if the gasoline is made from biological materials (3rd generation or
above, which means that food production doesn't suffer for it) - great! If
it's made from oil, however.. never mind global warming, we'll run out of
cheap oil soon enough.

All these things are being considered, and the most economic solution will
win, I hope. How is this not a rational conclusion base on real evidence?

------
simonsarris
That is a bit of a surprise. On the face of it one might expect Jevons
paradox[1] to take hold, but I guess a home is a pretty closed system and
there aren't too many new places to use power. More gadgets, yes, but a person
can only use so many gadgets at once.

I for one find myself wanting to install more subtle light now that my power
bill is so low (almost completely 10W, 13W and 18W CFLs). I started wondering
where I can get creative, such as putting 0.5, 1 or 2 watt under-the-cupboard
lights to gently illuminate the kitchen counters. I already have some brass
wall-mounted "candles" that use 0.5 watt bulbs; they are nice and subtle night
lights, and leaving them on all year round would be less than 8 dollars a
year.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox> (see especially
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Khazzoom-
Brookes...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Khazzoom-
Brookes_postulate))

~~~
andreyf
I've also been thinking of experimenting with subtle LED lighting around my
place, and would appreciate any advice/feedback you have about different
hardware.

~~~
tesseract
I just recently bought and installed some LED ribbon lights[1] above my home
desk/workbench for task lighting. I got them "raw" so the project involved
some soldering and, for appearances' sake, mounting them inside a piece of
aluminum channel but I am quite pleased with the result.

I don't know your experience with LED lighting or LED flashlights but unless
you are very certain you want "cool white", you should probably opt for "warm
white" which tends to be in the 2700-3300K range and matches the color
temperature of a modern, non-"daylight" CFL.

[1] e.g. <http://www.adafruit.com/products/357> \- or you can go the route I
did and order 5-meter reels direct from China on eBay; they run $30-$40

~~~
Egregore
Are these waterproof ribbon lights safe for in-home use? Here in local market
I was told that these are for outdoor use and not designed for indoor.

~~~
tesseract
You can get them without the silicone waterproofing tube, or remove it if you
have ones that came with that. Ideally they should be stuck to a material such
as metal that can help with conductive heat dissipation - especially if you
get the kind with extra-bright "5050" LEDs rather than the standard "3528"
components. However I don't think that is absolutely necessary - and I have
also never heard of any kind of warnings against using them indoors, whether
waterproof or not.

------
jmathes
Misleading title. Power demand from US homes is rising. The rate at which it's
rising is falling, and projected to continue falling.

~~~
Bud
Nope. It's projected to ACTUALLY fall, as the article makes quite clear, if
you simply read the third paragraph:

    
    
      Over the next decade, experts expect residential power use to fall, reversing 
      an upward trend that has been almost uninterrupted since Thomas Edison 
      invented the modern light bulb.
    

Or, read further down for the actual numbers:

    
    
      From 1980 to 2000, residential power demand grew by about 2.5 percent 
      a year. From 2000 to 2010, the growth rate slowed to 2 percent. Over 
      the next 10 years, demand is expected to decline by about 0.5 percent a 
      year, according to the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit 
      group funded by the utility industry.

~~~
hollerith
It is not falling yet, though, so the title ("Power demand from US homes is
falling") is wrong or at least misleading, as grandparent asserts.

------
sogrady
I'm curious how much - if any - of the abating rate is due to shifting
patterns of device usage. Our household, for example, is much like Mark
Pilgrim's: "My 7-yr-old is sitting in front of a working 42-inch HDTV watching
cartoons on an Android phone. The future is now." [1]

We have a fully functional 37" Sharp LCD, and yet the majority of our media is
consumed via laptops, tablets or phones.

All of which draw power, of course, but likely less power than a large
television. And even if they were comparable in terms of power consumption,
the fact is that the computers would be on even if we were watching TV.

Throw in wider trends like the number of people cutting the cord (getting rid
of cable) and it makes me curious about whether using smaller devices -
particularly those designed to be power efficient - and the absence of others
has an impact.

The plural of anecdote isn't data, however, so I have no idea if this is
relevant or not.

[1] <http://twitter.com/#!/diveintomark/status/112491024936476672>

~~~
rhplus
According to Energy Star, electronic devices (TVs, computers, etc) only
account for about 4% of home energy consumption, so I'd doubt that device
usage patterns is much of a driving factor here.

Almost three quarters of our home energy is spent heating things up or cooling
things down:

Heating: 29%, Cooling: 17%, Water heating: 14%, Appliances: 13%, Lighting:
12%, Electronics: 4%

Source:
[http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_save_energ...](http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=products.pr_save_energy_at_home)

------
icefox
As mentioned in the article states are setting up programs to help you save
energy. For those that live in MA head over to <http://www.masssave.com/> and
sign up for the free* audit on your house. They give you stuff and will chip
in the first $2K on work they find that can improve your house and there is a
0% loan you can get for major improvements like windows, replacing your heater
etc. Heard from several friends last year that did it saved a bundle last
winter and just had them out on my house and expect my heating bill too be
much less this winter.

* Well free in the wacky logic that part of your utility bill funds this, but ....

~~~
trafficlight
Northwestern Energy ran a pilot program last year where they do an energy
audit on your house and then pay for whatever the recommendations are. I ended
having new, blow-in insulation installed in all of my exterior walls at no
cost to me. That was about $1700 worth of work. Then, over the next few years,
they will come by and do additional audits to see if saves Northwestern any
money by actually paying the work themselves.

------
sailfast
In addition to more energy efficient homes and lightbulbs this is probably
also being caused by a huge dearth of demand due to a down economy. Crude Oil
prices drop during economic downturns for the same reason - the markets know
that demand will be significantly lower.

Glass half full - hopefully this is a signal that we're becoming much more
efficient in our consumption and we can produce the same economic growth with
a lot less energy.

~~~
gregable
The article touches on this briefly and argues that for home usage, it's
usually not too correlated with the economy. "Even when the economy is
stagnant, people still watch TV and keep their ice cream cold."

Oil prices are affected by non-home and non-personal energy use. In a weak
economy, less industrial usage to make and transport things we buy and much
less personal travel (fewer vacations, fewer flights).

------
sandieman
Wait till we start plugging our cars into the grid.

------
ja27
I don't know about the average family but in the past 5-7 years I've replaced
almost everything in my house that consumes electricity - HVAC, water heater,
dishwasher, fridge, television, computers and light bulbs. Almost all of those
went to more energy-efficient models. I think the only thing that's gotten
worse is the huge pile of gadget chargers.

~~~
dfxm12
And if you are smart you can outsource charging many of those gadgets. Many
probably do without realizing the impact. Charge your laptop as you browse the
web in a coffee shop; charge your phone in your car; charge your MP3 player at
work; etc...

~~~
icebraining
_> charge your phone in your car_

That's not really outsourcing, unless you get free gas. When you're using more
energy from the battery, you're adding extra load to the alternator which
increases the drag and therefore using more gas.

------
hugh3
Article could do with some more numbers.

Is the huge growth in compact fluorescent lighting sufficient to account for
the difference, alone? I'm wondering whether the other factors are sufficient
at all.

