Cut back commercial electricity use?

[dahermit]

When the issue of cutting back on the use of electricity is discussed, it usually takes the form of persons reducing the amount of electricity that they use in their homes. However, night time U.S.A., when viewed from space, is ablaze with light until morning, much of it from sources other than homes. For instance, street lights (often out in rural areas at cross roads), lighted commercial signs, empty parking lots, etc.

The statements that street lights, parking lot lights avoid crime notwithstanding, is there not a large amount of electricity being wasted by entities other than home owners? Or, am I missing something?

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

When the issue of cutting back on the use of electricity is discussed, it usually takes the form of persons reducing the amount of electricity that they use in their homes. However, night time U.S.A., when viewed from space, is ablaze with light until morning, much of it from sources other than homes. For instance, street lights (often out in rural areas at cross roads), lighted commercial signs, empty parking lots, etc.

The statements that street lights, parking lot lights avoid crime notwithstanding, is there not a large amount of electricity being wasted by entities other than home owners? Or, am I missing something?

No, not at all, vast amounts of electricity are wasted on advertising signage that runs all night.

 

[ASPCA4EVER]

When the issue of cutting back on the use of electricity is discussed, it usually takes the form of persons reducing the amount of electricity that they use in their homes. However, night time U.S.A., when viewed from space, is ablaze with light until morning, much of it from sources other than homes. For instance, street lights (often out in rural areas at cross roads), lighted commercial signs, empty parking lots, etc.

The statements that street lights, parking lot lights avoid crime notwithstanding, is there not a large amount of electricity being wasted by entities other than home owners? Or, am I missing something?

Putting to useful purpose the time that I spend sitting in the Dr.'s office waiting room...I started counting the recessed lights & the fluorescent lights and estimated the number of watts per doctors office per floor per building and it knocked my socks off that we sit under that excessive/abuse of electrical use and no one seems to give-a-sh!t that this isn't needed. And that's not even the number of wasted energy being wasted next door at the hospital...and they are struggling to keep their doors open...HA-HA. I've started writing letters to the admin. and the area newspapers and all I hear are other opinions from newsreaders that I'm a 'NUT JOB'.

I'm shocked, I tell you...just shocked!!!

 

[Mare Tranquillity]

Putting to useful purpose the time that I spend sitting in the Dr.'s office waiting room...I started counting the recessed lights & the fluorescent lights and estimated the number of watts per doctors office per floor per building and it knocked my socks off that we sit under that excessive/abuse of electrical use and no one seems to give-a-sh!t that this isn't needed. And that's not even the number of wasted energy being wasted next door at the hospital...and they are struggling to keep their doors open...HA-HA. I've started writing letters to the admin. and the area newspapers and all I hear are other opinions from newsreaders that I'm a 'NUT JOB'.

I'm shocked, I tell you...just shocked!!!

How could you be shocked that you are a nutjob? People on this site have been saying that ever since you started posting! Not me of course, but other people.

 

[ASPCA4EVER]

How could you be shocked that you are a nutjob? People on this site have been saying that ever since you started posting! Not me of course, but other people.

Oh, no...say it ain't so...you mean that there could be SOME truth to that sentiment

 

[Hanno]

Well, to my mind you're missing some things. Depending on who you ask lights are a metaphor for human achievement or hubris.

I believe nighttime is the off-peak time for electricity use, so energy use being visually apparent then is misleading. Also, your use of the term 'commercial' is imprecise, even without involving streetlights. On the issue of streetlights, it's a myth that driving slower burns less gas - the higher the speed one achieves the more gas is burned doing so, but 2000 RPM's is 2000 RPM's regardless of how many miles one covers per 'M'. Factor in person-hours and product-hours, the advantage of trucks being on the infrastructure when commuters are not, safety - I think eco-sentiment could be more fruitfully applied elsewhere.

Commercial in the sense of inside places of business doesn't seem to bug you - with that I concur. Advertising, assuming people only advertise where it will be seen, there will tend to be a free street-light effect for their efforts. If commerce tries to compete with neon against daylight it'd be hard to discern the prevailing effect given the dynamics that would have to be involved to make people want to advertise that intensely. If, for instance, it's to work a liquor license extra hard, that would fall into recreation, so who's to say where the superfluity begins. After that, we could look at energy to build signs, energy to build things other than signs - I mean, why do anything but scrub oil off penguins then when that's done off ourselves before we injure the planet again - it becomes to paraphrase Ayn Rand, a code which damns man as evil, and demands that he aspire to a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice.

 

[dahermit]

Well, to my mind you're missing some things. Depending on who you ask lights are a metaphor for human achievement or hubris.

Of course I am missing some things. The post was to stimulate discussion.

I believe nighttime is the off-peak time for electricity use, so energy use being visually apparent then is misleading.

Off-peak or not, it takes fossil fuel to generate the electricity.

Also, your use of the term 'commercial' is imprecise, even without involving streetlights.

Yes, I should have included the words: "and municipal".

On the issue of streetlights, it's a myth that driving slower burns less gas

The issue of streetlights has nothing to do with driving, either slower or faster.

- the higher the speed one achieves the more gas is burned doing so, but 2000 RPM's is 2000 RPM's regardless of how many miles one covers per 'M'.

The higher the speed the more the effects of wind resistance pushes against the car. If you were traveling at 25 mph in high gear @2000 rpms, if you were to increase your speed, you would have to increase your rpms to say, 3000 and it would take more gas to achieve that increase. What is an 'M'?

Factor in person-hours and product-hours, the advantage of trucks being on the infrastructure when commuters are not, safety - I think eco-sentiment could be more fruitfully applied elsewhere.

Much of what you have written is incoherent. Did you post this while sober?

Commercial in the sense of inside places of business doesn't seem to bug you - with that I concur.

Places of business (inside) must be lighted; they cannot be expected to business in the dark.

Advertising, assuming people only advertise where it will be seen, there will tend to be a free street-light effect for their efforts. If commerce tries to compete with neon against daylight it'd be hard to discern the prevailing effect given the dynamics that would have to be involved to make people want to advertise that intensely.

Here is that sober issue again.

If, for instance, it's to work a liquor license extra hard, that would fall into recreation, so who's to say where the superfluity begins.

ditto as per above.

After that, we could look at energy to build signs, energy to build things other than signs - I mean, why do anything but scrub oil off penguins then when that's done off ourselves before we injure the planet again - it becomes to paraphrase Ayn Rand, a code which damns man as evil, and demands that he aspire to a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice.

Come on. Sobriety is not all that bad...give it a try.