In case anyone else is interested in whether Earth Hour reduced electricity use, I acquired data from the NY Independent System Operator, the folks who control the markets of power swapped around several regions in the state (and also handle trades across the state borders), data for the past week of electric use. I have posted a PDF including two charts of integrated hourly load; integrated means they measured the amount of energy used over the whole hour, then divided that by the time period (1 hour) to derive the average power used during each hour. (I trust them with this math, since it means they have to divide a number by 1.) Page 2 shows Central New York instantaneous loads in MW, measured every 5 minutes, and the difference between this Saturday and the previous Saturday: http://energyteachers.org/ETODocuments/EarthHour2009DataNYS.pdf My first impression of the data is that one really has to squint to notice any effect of Earth Hour, when we were asked to turn our lights out to observe the event, 8:30-9:30 PM, March 28. Because of normal variance, it's difficult to attribute change in the load due to Earth Hour; but, comparing March 28 measured loads with those March 21, I can bracket the possible effect: The impact was certainly under 100MW, 2% of the total load. From the first Central New York chart, since there is no easily perceivable dip between 8:30 and 9:30, one might assume that the Earth Hour impact was between +/-30MW, or 2%. The second CNY chart shows the difference between March 28 and March 21, showing that the whole afternoon/evening, we were using less than the previous week. There is a curious inversion at 8:30, but the datum there is the cumulative energy use between 8 and 8:30. Alright, who jumped the gun? Obviously someone with a searchlight. Those of us who ate late, candlelit dinners, shut off our LED lights, raised the thermostats on our SunFrost refrigerators, unplugged our 5W netbooks and rechargeable-battery-chargers, we can claim that we were able to shut down a small power plant for an hour...maybe. Is it always the people who are afflicting the lesser tragedy on the commons that regulate themselves when the commons tragically suffers? But wait, Alison and I used about 200W less than we would have used were there no Earth Hour. If every NY household cut their use by 200W, that would be almost 2GW of reduction, one nuclear power plant. The analysis above yields a maximum reduction of 100MW/2GW, or 5%. Hey, maybe 5% of New Yorkers participated...not bad. Maybe it was people who used 1kW of lighting who shut them off, in which case 1% of them participated. I certainly enjoyed our candle-lit dinner, after which we played checkers-chinoise. It reminded me of camping, perhaps my all-time favorite activity, where I learned that one can clean dishes after a greasy south-asian dinner with a smidgeon of cold water and soap, that one can brush one's teeth in the dark, that a cold shower isn't deadly. You can access the raw data at: http://www.nyiso.com/public/market_data/load_data/rt_actual_load.jsp -- -Shawn Reeves [email protected] http://energyteachers.org EnergyTeachers.org is a 501(c)(3) public charity, and we provide teachers with free services. A few of us have already used GoodShop while shopping online, where common retailers donate a portion of their revenue to our favorite charity; we pay exactly what we would otherwise pay, no more. To start supporting EnergyTeachers.org without spending an extra penny, go to: http://www.goodsearch.com/goodshop.aspx?charityid=842402
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