Today, I thought up of a weird idea that may one day revolutionize society. Most people in the Western world wake up early, are in the office by nine, work till noon, take a lunch break, go back to work and are back home by five or six. Why not shift our work hours ahead, and save a lot of energy in the process? For most families, the parents are at their workplace for most of the daylight hours, as are their children (if they attend school). During this nine-to-five period of time, energy usage in the home - due to lights, appliances, heating, whatever - drops drastically, I would guess, as there is simply no one at home to use energy. Instead, energy consumption comes from the energy used at the workplace - keeping all those lights on, running those copying machines, and so on and so forth. Then when parents and children return home for the evening, lights and appliances are once again switched on. In essence, with our current state of affairs, we are using electricity both at home and at the workplace, from the start of our day to the end.
But imagine if we shifted our nine to five workday (and similar "school day") five hours ahead. Work and school would start sometime around three or four o clock, instead of the nine as it is now. What would the advantages of such a situation be? Well, people usually keep the lights on at home only during the evening and night hours, when there isn't much sunlight. The same isn't true, however, of most people's workplaces. Lights have to be on work, regardless of whether the sun is out. So, by moving work later into the night and allowing people to do their family, leisure and recreational activities in the morning and early afternoon hours, we could potentially save a lot of energy! People spending time at home in the morning rather than at night wouldn't switch any lights on, but if they were doing the same at night as they are now, they probably would have the lights on (or at least some).
I probably haven't described this very clearly but if you see what I'm trying to get it, a shift of the workday could save lots of energy consumed by lights.
More later.
Cheers,
Kamster
4 comments:
good observation ryan but unfortunately this won't have an impact as large as you think.
residential homes and such don't consume nearly as much energy than industrial uses and transportation. it is actually a very small fraction of these giant energy consumers.
this is why even though some people considered Earth Hour a success, statistically, it barely made a dent in the overall consumption of electricity.
also, even if you could theoretically save 100% of the electricity in your home, the consumption of electricity from lights is far less than the heating, A/C, and even the electricity from your TV and computer. yes this is true: even if your computer or TV is off it is still wasting energy, because the transformer within the component is to on. technically, the electronic is not finitely 'off', it is merely on standby.
you can test this out by putting on infrared glasses and walking around your house, looking at your electronics. they emit heat even when it is turned off.
Yes your points are right, that lights etc. don't make up that big of a percentage of a nation's energy consumption, but if you factor in stuff like heating (which you can turn off with a programmable thermostat)too, then your energy savings go up a lot.
My whole point is that if we do our leisure stuff at home in the daylight hours (turning off heating and lights) and work at the workplace at night (with the lights and heating on there as they normally would be), we save on the large residential portion of energy costs that are associated with high heating/hydro bills. Don't know the exact scop of this though or exactly how much energy it would save, but my guess is ALOT if everyone did it.
it's a nice idea, but the ramifications of this would be too large. there are so many things you must consider before you jump into this. first, i guarantee that not a significant number will NOT turn their lights off in the daytime. it's just habit. second, every single schedule, database, signpost, rules, bylaws, cultures, would have a huge effect.
okay. let's just talk about signs for now. one of the reasons why america does not move to the metric system is because you would need to change hundreds of millions of signs on the roads and freeways. now think of this in terms of North America. all the signs saying you can't park at this time along the streets would need to be changed. i'm guessing that's a bit under 200 000 in mississauga alone.
this is just like UD. this topic is too big for just one post to handle.
back to your reply. the amount you save in residential electricity consumption is just not worth it to change North America's culture that is so ingrained within us.
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