Any one participate in "Earth Hour"?

[MMAX]

Originally Posted by Nano

like the title says, obviously your not shutting down your tanks for the hour or hours, but does anyone participate by reading a book for an hour versus watching tv, or turning off that light in the basement that you left on earlier? I'm not a hippie, just "gauging the interest" in it

The last 2 years my wife and I turn off the lights and go outside for a walk for an hour, with her being to pregnant to walk to far, we might read a book together tonight.

What will you do?
(and lets keep it positive )

In one word...nope. Couldn't stand not to watch the Flames miss the playoffs once again.

[es355lucille]

Originally Posted by ScubaSteve

I used to participate in earth hour until I started doing clean energy research and learned how the grid really works. When you plug something into the wall you're not plugging into a giant battery, the power isn't stored there waiting for you to use it. The power you use was produced only moments before and if no one uses it it it wasted as heat. So the power companies spend tons of time and money learning people's behavior so they can predict the load and match their output to the demand. Earth hour throws this out of wack. If tons of people shut their power off for just an hour on a single day it introduces an unpredictable fluctuation into the demand. So, to avoid putting people who aren't part of earth hour in the dark, power companies err on keep their output roughly where it should be for that time of day (though some of them may be starting to figure out earth hour). This results in a TON of energy just being wasted. Kind of the opposite effect of earth hour, huh?

Don't get me wrong, I'm a total hippy doing a PhD in the hippy side of science and i think the idea of earth hour is good, but once you learn about how it all works you start to see that it's a little misguided.

Very interesting. Thanks for the info.....this goes along with how we live our lives every day. We try to lower our use on a regular basis. To take part in an hour long window per year is a good education for young kids but not much use in reality.