just out of curiosity, how much has the world's dependence on battery devices .... (Page 1/3)
maryjane JAN 31, 11:39 PM
increased the load on the power grid?

I can remember the first 'rechargable flashlight' I ever saw advertised but before that, the only battery charger most of us had was one for an occasional dead car battery.
Now, even I have 4-5 rechargable devices, and that's not even taking into account the shop tools and yard gizmos.
300 million Americans, + the billions charging elsewhere in the world would seem to have a substantial increased load on the world's grids compared to 30 years ago.
No?
williegoat JAN 31, 11:56 PM
My guess is that most of these home devices; light bulbs, TVs and other appliances are so much more efficient that we probably use no more, and maybe less than a few decades ago. Laptops have replaced desktops and many young people rely on a phone for almost everything.
cvxjet FEB 01, 01:45 AM
The LED light bulb has really made a huge difference as far as electricity use. I wish they would come out with that big an improvement in electric motors and electric heating.

And yes; We would otherwise (LED-less) be in black-out situation.

I have mainly 40 watt bulbs which are now using (LED) 6 watts....That is a reduction of 85%...Most of our electrical use is lighting.

I was trying (Not very successfully) to write a Sci-Fi story...One of the ideas I had was for a kid to ask his father, "You mean that roofing was just tar and ceramics and such? They didn't have solar roofing panels in the old days?!!" I personally think that every building's roof should be solar panels.

Solar panels would (Basically) give us independence from the energy companies. But I want very efficient, and very DURABLE panels- made in U.S.A.
Hudini FEB 01, 07:15 AM
History has shown that people will build a better mouse trap. Solar panels will come down in price over time. Once it becomes more cost effective people will definitely use them. Realize that we can not gain total independence from power companies until battery storage ability catches up. It's not sunny and windy everyday.

MJ, I do believe electrical usage is only going up. If we start having blackouts you will see the government have some big "Build Back Better" grid program. We need to find all those Illegals a place to work.
Fats FEB 01, 07:15 AM
If everything else stays the same, the amount of batteries being charged wouldn't change.

If you had a device that used a battery every day, and ran it for 100 days.

You would use 100 batteries that a factory somewhere charged.
OR
You would use a battery that you charged 100 times.
82-T/A [At Work] FEB 01, 09:25 AM
Yeah, what everyone else said regarding LEDs and other power-saving features.

My house in South Florida had this mostly square room with a tray ceiling in the middle. Around the outside of the tray ceiling, there were recessed lights installed. This was done for me back in 2003 before I really knew how to work on a house or do anything like that myself. They had 120 Watt flood lights, for a total of 10 lights. The room was insane bright when the lights were on, and the heat was immense. That room was always extremely hot. Doing the math, that's 1,200 watts of power being used literally every time the light switch was on. That's basically a microwave running full blast, non-stop! It was crazy.

I replaced them with CFLs when CFLs came out, and then the last time I moved in there, I replaced them again with LEDs. Going from what was originally 120watt bulbs to 6w LED bulbs, it reduced the power to a total of 60 watts for the entire room when the light was on! Which is insane!!!


But to your point I think, I would be curious what happens when the country switches almost entirely to electric vehicles.


Our existing power consumption... at least my uneducated thoughts on this, is that our power grid is developed primarily to support industry and commerce during the day. E.g., solar panels provide a lot of power to supplement the power being used during the day by big businesses with increased HVAC use, etc. With nearly 20% of Americans working from home now, and people switching to electric vehicles... the solar model that many power companies have been adopting may not be the right approach as we shift to more power being used from say, 5:00 to 10:00 PM?

Curious...
maryjane FEB 01, 09:43 AM
So the consensus is that all the energy saving moves (lighting and appliances) offsets (negates) the huge increase in number of chargers that have come to be in the last decades?
82-T/A [At Work] FEB 01, 10:34 AM

quote
Originally posted by maryjane:

So the consensus is that all the energy saving moves (lighting and appliances) offsets (negates) the huge increase in number of chargers that have come to be in the last decades?




To a point, I think, yes. My opinion though is that with increased population (we now have 100 million more people, with illegals, than we had 20 years ago), and increasing use of technology, we're probably at the point where the two lines intersect on the graph... perhaps past that point. I don't know the stats... but I would suspect that we are going to start to see an increased demand above and beyond, or perhaps are already at that point.

But during the time more and more people started getting phones and cameras and tablets, we were also switching to better light bulbs and phasing out older / more energy hungry appliances. Water heaters are much better today than they were ~15 years ago, and so are air conditioning units (14 SEER seems to be standard now).


Just my uneducated thought... but again, the point of intersection is probably here, if not quickly passing.
rinselberg FEB 01, 11:10 AM
U.S. Energy Information Administration homepage
https://www.eia.gov/

International Energy Agency hompage
https://www.iea.org/

Two obvious online destinations for anyone with a craving for electricity and energy-related data and statistics.

This thread was set up as a question, and I doubt that there's enough specificity in the data at these online destinations to answer that question, but there are other questions. There's a virtually infinite universe of other electricity and energy-related questions that could be formulated. For anyone with enough of a craving.


Remember the Three 'R's


What are the Three 'R's..?
  • A power grid that's Robust, with the capacity to sustain EV charging demand 24/7.
  • A power grid that's Resilient, winterized and summer'ized for reliable operations during the harshest weather conditions year round.
  • A power grid that's Redundant, with backup capabilities to overcome the Single Point of Failure phenomenon.
The BUILD BACK BETTER plan. Not from Colonial Penn.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 02-01-2022).]

maryjane FEB 01, 11:10 AM
Your thoughts on this?
(granted, the article IS 9 years old)

Which uses more electricity: the iPhone in your pocket, or the refrigerator humming in your kitchen? Hard as it might be to believe, the answer is probably the iPhone. As you can read in a post on a new report by Mark Mills — the CEO of the Digital Power Group, a tech- and investment-advisory firm — a medium-size refrigerator that qualifies for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star rating will use about 322 kW-h a year. The average iPhone, according to Mills’ calculations, uses about 361 kW-h a year once the wireless connections, data usage and battery charging are tallied up. And the iPhone — even the latest iteration — doesn’t even keep your beer cold. (Hat tip to the Breakthrough Institute for noting the report first.)

https://science.time.com/20...ergy-than-you-think/

[This message has been edited by maryjane (edited 02-01-2022).]