This is not an accurate understanding of the problem. The entirety of generation capacity for almost all of electrification (except for the last few years and for a very small number of power plants) has been built to handle peak load. Peak load only exists for something like 50 hours out of the entire year. The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on. Turning off the lights in Time Square would do absolutely nothing to manage peak loads as compressors are far and away more energy intensive than lighting is.
The evidence we should be looking for is whether they require turning off AC in commercial buildings during peak load. Instead what we find is that ConEd is literally paying commercial real estate operators to reduce energy consumption during peak while asking residents to do it voluntarily without offering them compensation.
That’s how you know the game is rigged. Not through base load lighting, but by literally paying commercial land lords to do something that residents are asked to do for free.
For sure that’s a better analysis of the whole thing. Although, I do think it is worth noting how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising, which is ultimately not productive use of energy. And if that wasn’t done in the first place, there would be more energy to go around avoiding the problem of not having enough of it at peak ours.
how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising
And stores and businesses leaving the lights on inside, even at night when the place is closed and nobody is there. And lighting up their entire giant parking lot all night as well, all night every night, even though they’re only open during hours of darkness for a few hours each day.
I know it’s not that much energy in the grand scheme of things, especially now that everything is LED. But still, their complete disregard for energy savings – such that they can’t be bothered to install a simple timer circuit – irritates me.
(I suspect that they’re also leaving the HVAC running at full capacity overnight as well. That might be a more significant waste of energy.)
Exactly, and that’s just one example of massive waste. Another one is the fact that around half the food produced is just thrown away because it’s just more ‘efficient’ to do that. Capitalism is an absolutely insane system.
The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on
That’s not what base load means. Base loads are loads that you cannot turn off without putting the safety and well being of people in jeopardy. The hospital is a base load. Telecommunications is a base load. Traffic lights are base loads. The subway is a base load. Water and sweage pumps are base loads. Lights in a dark tunnel or underground space are base loads. Turning off any of these will have a significant detrimental effect to the population. Billboards and decorative lights are not base loads, keeping them on is a choice, not a necessity. What detrimental effect does turning them off have?
Sure. It’s intermediate load. You’re correct. It doesn’t change the argument. But I appreciate the adherence to the correct use of technical terminology
Compressor startup is more intensive than lighting. Once the compressor is running it’s a pretty steady power consumption.
A window unit, for example, on startup (assuming it doesn’t have a smooth start) will pull a full 20A. However, during operation it ultimately will pull around 5A.
That said, there’s not some sort of special electrical budget which makes the lights in NYT come from baseload generators vs peakers. If those lights turned off, the total grid load would go down by the amount of power those lights consume. And, as it turns out, those lights are consuming around 150MW. That’s ~4 steel mills worth of heat just being shoved into the atmosphere for advertisement. It’s at least 1 powerplant’s worth of power.
Shutting those lights off would take the coordination of something like 10 businesses vs telling the millions of residence of NY to adjust their power consumption. They absolutely would make a difference. It’s not like there isn’t still a base load of power needed with those lights off.
Edit: My numbers are off, it’s closer to 35MW. ~1 steel mill worth
Based on your 5amp draw, thats 600w, which a bit on the low side, but we can use it as an average. Assuming most (75%) of residences have AC units, 2.775 million AC units try to run at the same time, using 1665 MW.
Also, please stop using that 150MW usage of times square, particularly if you’re taking it from GoogleAI. I cannot find ANY data supporting that (see possible originating claim for its use here).
Data instead suggests ~35MW draw for the billboards, using a huge overestimation of the draw (since it assumes all buildings in times square have the same number/size of billboards as times square tower, which is false). This is ~2% of the energy required/used by AC units (not including starting draw), which is tiny.
Its worth us pushing for, but lets be clear about what kind of impact that will have on the grid.
But I’d argue that 2% is still something to look at. A 2% shortfall in power capacity still means you are looking at rolling blackouts to handle the demand/production mismatch. If power has to be rationed, then I’d much rather have an extra ~50k AC units running vs pretty lights for advertisements. Especially since load tends to peak during the day anyways. Shutting off the lights during the day makes sense.
That 2% would be of what the residential ac units are using, not total. It’s fraction of a fraction of a fraction. 3 % of residents deciding to not shut their ac off consumes 33% more electricity than times square.
I get the optics, and I’m in favor of forcing businesses to put residents first, but they need to do more than just shut off their lights.
If the wealthiest intersection on the planet cant even pay lip service to an issue like that, how is anyone going to take the issue seriously? “You must reduce your comfort for the greater good, but the advertisements stay on” is callous and puts one of the least important things above the needs of the many. Its like saying emergency vehicles only on the roads in a snow storm, but then you see an ice cream truck driving around. Clearly, the priorities are not straight.
The priorities are off because of capitalism, not because lit signage remains lit.
It is absolutely nothing like seeing an ice cream truck on a road that’s been limited to emergency vehicles.
Spending time and effort and political capital and writing the laws and regulations and doing the enforcement simply because you think the optics matter that much is just not a good use of time. If the city wants to address power usage, lit signage is incredibly low on the priority list. Meaning if the priorities were in order, lit signage would stay on and the ACs would be managed by cycling them on and off using a planned controller. Because the reality is that turning the signs off would only allow for a very very little bit of additional uncoordinated cooling systems, but managing cooling systems would allow for literally billions in savings on infrastructure investments into the power grid.
So, in fact, the signs remaining on while ConEd chases after AC management is evidence of priorities being in place correctly
This is not an accurate understanding of the problem. The entirety of generation capacity for almost all of electrification (except for the last few years and for a very small number of power plants) has been built to handle peak load. Peak load only exists for something like 50 hours out of the entire year. The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on. Turning off the lights in Time Square would do absolutely nothing to manage peak loads as compressors are far and away more energy intensive than lighting is.
The evidence we should be looking for is whether they require turning off AC in commercial buildings during peak load. Instead what we find is that ConEd is literally paying commercial real estate operators to reduce energy consumption during peak while asking residents to do it voluntarily without offering them compensation.
That’s how you know the game is rigged. Not through base load lighting, but by literally paying commercial land lords to do something that residents are asked to do for free.
For sure that’s a better analysis of the whole thing. Although, I do think it is worth noting how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising, which is ultimately not productive use of energy. And if that wasn’t done in the first place, there would be more energy to go around avoiding the problem of not having enough of it at peak ours.
And stores and businesses leaving the lights on inside, even at night when the place is closed and nobody is there. And lighting up their entire giant parking lot all night as well, all night every night, even though they’re only open during hours of darkness for a few hours each day.
I know it’s not that much energy in the grand scheme of things, especially now that everything is LED. But still, their complete disregard for energy savings – such that they can’t be bothered to install a simple timer circuit – irritates me.
(I suspect that they’re also leaving the HVAC running at full capacity overnight as well. That might be a more significant waste of energy.)
Exactly, and that’s just one example of massive waste. Another one is the fact that around half the food produced is just thrown away because it’s just more ‘efficient’ to do that. Capitalism is an absolutely insane system.
HVAC is not left on over the weekends in most office buildings in NYC. There are incentives and certifications and standards that drive that.
Those lights are for safety and to deter break-ins.
Supposedly, sure. I don’t think they really make much of a difference, though.
That’s not what base load means. Base loads are loads that you cannot turn off without putting the safety and well being of people in jeopardy. The hospital is a base load. Telecommunications is a base load. Traffic lights are base loads. The subway is a base load. Water and sweage pumps are base loads. Lights in a dark tunnel or underground space are base loads. Turning off any of these will have a significant detrimental effect to the population. Billboards and decorative lights are not base loads, keeping them on is a choice, not a necessity. What detrimental effect does turning them off have?
Sure. It’s intermediate load. You’re correct. It doesn’t change the argument. But I appreciate the adherence to the correct use of technical terminology
deleted by creator
Compressor startup is more intensive than lighting. Once the compressor is running it’s a pretty steady power consumption.
A window unit, for example, on startup (assuming it doesn’t have a smooth start) will pull a full 20A. However, during operation it ultimately will pull around 5A.
That said, there’s not some sort of special electrical budget which makes the lights in NYT come from baseload generators vs peakers. If those lights turned off, the total grid load would go down by the amount of power those lights consume. And, as it turns out, those lights are consuming around 150MW. That’s ~4 steel mills worth of heat just being shoved into the atmosphere for advertisement. It’s at least 1 powerplant’s worth of power.
Shutting those lights off would take the coordination of something like 10 businesses vs telling the millions of residence of NY to adjust their power consumption. They absolutely would make a difference. It’s not like there isn’t still a base load of power needed with those lights off.
Edit: My numbers are off, it’s closer to 35MW. ~1 steel mill worth
NYC has ~3.75mil housing units.
Based on your 5amp draw, thats 600w, which a bit on the low side, but we can use it as an average. Assuming most (75%) of residences have AC units, 2.775 million AC units try to run at the same time, using 1665 MW.
Also, please stop using that 150MW usage of times square, particularly if you’re taking it from GoogleAI. I cannot find ANY data supporting that (see possible originating claim for its use here).
Data instead suggests ~35MW draw for the billboards, using a huge overestimation of the draw (since it assumes all buildings in times square have the same number/size of billboards as times square tower, which is false). This is ~2% of the energy required/used by AC units (not including starting draw), which is tiny.
Its worth us pushing for, but lets be clear about what kind of impact that will have on the grid.
Caught me. Was just an easy number to pull.
But I’d argue that 2% is still something to look at. A 2% shortfall in power capacity still means you are looking at rolling blackouts to handle the demand/production mismatch. If power has to be rationed, then I’d much rather have an extra ~50k AC units running vs pretty lights for advertisements. Especially since load tends to peak during the day anyways. Shutting off the lights during the day makes sense.
That 2% would be of what the residential ac units are using, not total. It’s fraction of a fraction of a fraction. 3 % of residents deciding to not shut their ac off consumes 33% more electricity than times square.
I get the optics, and I’m in favor of forcing businesses to put residents first, but they need to do more than just shut off their lights.
Thanks for digging in to the numbers!
Whoa, 150MW of lightning in just Times Square? Or is that for all 5 boros? That’s a mind blowing number for lighting. Consider me moved.
Edit: oh. Just saw the other commenter breaking it down. Nevermind.
If the wealthiest intersection on the planet cant even pay lip service to an issue like that, how is anyone going to take the issue seriously? “You must reduce your comfort for the greater good, but the advertisements stay on” is callous and puts one of the least important things above the needs of the many. Its like saying emergency vehicles only on the roads in a snow storm, but then you see an ice cream truck driving around. Clearly, the priorities are not straight.
The priorities are off because of capitalism, not because lit signage remains lit.
It is absolutely nothing like seeing an ice cream truck on a road that’s been limited to emergency vehicles.
Spending time and effort and political capital and writing the laws and regulations and doing the enforcement simply because you think the optics matter that much is just not a good use of time. If the city wants to address power usage, lit signage is incredibly low on the priority list. Meaning if the priorities were in order, lit signage would stay on and the ACs would be managed by cycling them on and off using a planned controller. Because the reality is that turning the signs off would only allow for a very very little bit of additional uncoordinated cooling systems, but managing cooling systems would allow for literally billions in savings on infrastructure investments into the power grid.
So, in fact, the signs remaining on while ConEd chases after AC management is evidence of priorities being in place correctly