This is not an accurate understanding of the problem. The entirety of generation capacity for almost all of electrification (except for the last few years and for a very small number of power plants) has been built to handle peak load. Peak load only exists for something like 50 hours out of the entire year. The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on. Turning off the lights in Time Square would do absolutely nothing to manage peak loads as compressors are far and away more energy intensive than lighting is.
The evidence we should be looking for is whether they require turning off AC in commercial buildings during peak load. Instead what we find is that ConEd is literally paying commercial real estate operators to reduce energy consumption during peak while asking residents to do it voluntarily without offering them compensation.
That’s how you know the game is rigged. Not through base load lighting, but by literally paying commercial land lords to do something that residents are asked to do for free.
Compressor startup is more intensive than lighting. Once the compressor is running it’s a pretty steady power consumption.
A window unit, for example, on startup (assuming it doesn’t have a smooth start) will pull a full 20A. However, during operation it ultimately will pull around 5A.
That said, there’s not some sort of special electrical budget which makes the lights in NYT come from baseload generators vs peakers. If those lights turned off, the total grid load would go down by the amount of power those lights consume. And, as it turns out, those lights are consuming around 150MW. That’s ~4 steel mills worth of heat just being shoved into the atmosphere for advertisement. It’s at least 1 powerplant’s worth of power.
Shutting those lights off would take the coordination of something like 10 businesses vs telling the millions of residence of NY to adjust their power consumption. They absolutely would make a difference. It’s not like there isn’t still a base load of power needed with those lights off.
Edit: My numbers are off, it’s closer to 35MW. ~1 steel mill worth
Based on your 5amp draw, thats 600w, which a bit on the low side, but we can use it as an average. Assuming most (75%) of residences have AC units, 2.775 million AC units try to run at the same time, using 1665 MW.
Also, please stop using that 150MW usage of times square, particularly if you’re taking it from GoogleAI. I cannot find ANY data supporting that (see possible originating claim for its use here).
Data instead suggests ~35MW draw for the billboards, using a huge overestimation of the draw (since it assumes all buildings in times square have the same number/size of billboards as times square tower, which is false). This is ~2% of the energy required/used by AC units (not including starting draw), which is tiny.
Its worth us pushing for, but lets be clear about what kind of impact that will have on the grid.
But I’d argue that 2% is still something to look at. A 2% shortfall in power capacity still means you are looking at rolling blackouts to handle the demand/production mismatch. If power has to be rationed, then I’d much rather have an extra ~50k AC units running vs pretty lights for advertisements. Especially since load tends to peak during the day anyways. Shutting off the lights during the day makes sense.
The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on.
I don’t see how that means turning them off at peak load wouldn’t lower peak load. It would also send a message that society is taking the issue seriously.
Yes, 100% true and also 100% irrelevant. The delta in NYC between base load and peak load is almost 5GW. And the base load itself is about 5GW. Given that peak loads happens only for 0.1% of the year, you can easily see that the problem has almost nothing to do with base load and everything to do with the rapid scaling up of peak load. This is why AC compressors are the culprit. They are fully automated, distributed, and they all kick on under shared environmental triggers. The starting up of ACs during a heatwave is literally almost equivalent to 100% of NYC base load.
Shutting off a few 10s of MW for lighting cannot solve the problem.
It’s actually a bit silly to call lighting a “base load”. That’s not how the grid works. Base load is specifically talking about the grid itself and what the lowest load is on the grid. They don’t have an actuarial table where your refrigerator gets put into the base load bucket while your bathroom lights are put in the peak load bucket. It’s all one load.
What power companies are looking at is the demand curve. The lowest level of the demand curve is the base load. That’s all it is.
Things do get trickier with commercial power, especially when talking about machinery. But for something as simple as lighting it’s completely straight forward. Turning off 150MW of lights frees 150MW of peeker capacity which can be used for more useful things like boiling water in a data center to answer questions wrong (I kid).
So is my air conditioner. It’s not like me turning the dial up a few degrees is going to keep the world spinning properly. /s
It’s not just Times Square just like it’s not just my AC. Times Square is a visual representation of how seriously the city and it’s residents take the issue. If those lights are blaring, then I assume a whole lot of other corporate power consumption is likewise excepted.
That’s just vibes though. Your AC is a node in a distributed cooling system that all respond to the same ambient environmental signals which means they act in a distributed coordinated manner. There are government systems for power reduction of commercial spaces - certifications, tax incentives, negawatt incentives, etc. The distributed system of ACs is almost impossible to manage because it’s functionally anarchic. And the combination of your AC and all 8m of your neighbors’ ACs turns out to be an order of magnitude more draw than all of the lighting in the entire city.
Trump is President because of “vibes”. Vibes matter because they influence behavior. Just look at the stock market. There will be more compressors working harder because of the vibes put out by those lights. Guaranteed.
For sure that’s a better analysis of the whole thing. Although, I do think it is worth noting how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising, which is ultimately not productive use of energy. And if that wasn’t done in the first place, there would be more energy to go around avoiding the problem of not having enough of it at peak ours.
how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising
And stores and businesses leaving the lights on inside, even at night when the place is closed and nobody is there. And lighting up their entire giant parking lot all night as well, all night every night, even though they’re only open during hours of darkness for a few hours each day.
I know it’s not that much energy in the grand scheme of things, especially now that everything is LED. But still, their complete disregard for energy savings – such that they can’t be bothered to install a simple timer circuit – irritates me.
(I suspect that they’re also leaving the HVAC running at full capacity overnight as well. That might be a more significant waste of energy.)
Exactly, and that’s just one example of massive waste. Another one is the fact that around half the food produced is just thrown away because it’s just more ‘efficient’ to do that. Capitalism is an absolutely insane system.
This is not an accurate understanding of the problem. The entirety of generation capacity for almost all of electrification (except for the last few years and for a very small number of power plants) has been built to handle peak load. Peak load only exists for something like 50 hours out of the entire year. The lights in Time Square represent base load, as they are always on. Turning off the lights in Time Square would do absolutely nothing to manage peak loads as compressors are far and away more energy intensive than lighting is.
The evidence we should be looking for is whether they require turning off AC in commercial buildings during peak load. Instead what we find is that ConEd is literally paying commercial real estate operators to reduce energy consumption during peak while asking residents to do it voluntarily without offering them compensation.
That’s how you know the game is rigged. Not through base load lighting, but by literally paying commercial land lords to do something that residents are asked to do for free.
Compressor startup is more intensive than lighting. Once the compressor is running it’s a pretty steady power consumption.
A window unit, for example, on startup (assuming it doesn’t have a smooth start) will pull a full 20A. However, during operation it ultimately will pull around 5A.
That said, there’s not some sort of special electrical budget which makes the lights in NYT come from baseload generators vs peakers. If those lights turned off, the total grid load would go down by the amount of power those lights consume. And, as it turns out, those lights are consuming around 150MW. That’s ~4 steel mills worth of heat just being shoved into the atmosphere for advertisement. It’s at least 1 powerplant’s worth of power.
Shutting those lights off would take the coordination of something like 10 businesses vs telling the millions of residence of NY to adjust their power consumption. They absolutely would make a difference. It’s not like there isn’t still a base load of power needed with those lights off.
Edit: My numbers are off, it’s closer to 35MW. ~1 steel mill worth
NYC has ~3.75mil housing units.
Based on your 5amp draw, thats 600w, which a bit on the low side, but we can use it as an average. Assuming most (75%) of residences have AC units, 2.775 million AC units try to run at the same time, using 1665 MW.
Also, please stop using that 150MW usage of times square, particularly if you’re taking it from GoogleAI. I cannot find ANY data supporting that (see possible originating claim for its use here).
Data instead suggests ~35MW draw for the billboards, using a huge overestimation of the draw (since it assumes all buildings in times square have the same number/size of billboards as times square tower, which is false). This is ~2% of the energy required/used by AC units (not including starting draw), which is tiny.
Its worth us pushing for, but lets be clear about what kind of impact that will have on the grid.
Thanks for digging in to the numbers!
Caught me. Was just an easy number to pull.
But I’d argue that 2% is still something to look at. A 2% shortfall in power capacity still means you are looking at rolling blackouts to handle the demand/production mismatch. If power has to be rationed, then I’d much rather have an extra ~50k AC units running vs pretty lights for advertisements. Especially since load tends to peak during the day anyways. Shutting off the lights during the day makes sense.
Whoa, 150MW of lightning in just Times Square? Or is that for all 5 boros? That’s a mind blowing number for lighting. Consider me moved.
Edit: oh. Just saw the other commenter breaking it down. Nevermind.
I don’t see how that means turning them off at peak load wouldn’t lower peak load. It would also send a message that society is taking the issue seriously.
If you look at the difference between base load and peak load, it would be obvious that the lights are inconsequential to peak load.
Peak load consists of base load plus variable components. Turning off some of the base load reduces peak load.
Yes, 100% true and also 100% irrelevant. The delta in NYC between base load and peak load is almost 5GW. And the base load itself is about 5GW. Given that peak loads happens only for 0.1% of the year, you can easily see that the problem has almost nothing to do with base load and everything to do with the rapid scaling up of peak load. This is why AC compressors are the culprit. They are fully automated, distributed, and they all kick on under shared environmental triggers. The starting up of ACs during a heatwave is literally almost equivalent to 100% of NYC base load.
Shutting off a few 10s of MW for lighting cannot solve the problem.
It’s actually a bit silly to call lighting a “base load”. That’s not how the grid works. Base load is specifically talking about the grid itself and what the lowest load is on the grid. They don’t have an actuarial table where your refrigerator gets put into the base load bucket while your bathroom lights are put in the peak load bucket. It’s all one load.
What power companies are looking at is the demand curve. The lowest level of the demand curve is the base load. That’s all it is.
Things do get trickier with commercial power, especially when talking about machinery. But for something as simple as lighting it’s completely straight forward. Turning off 150MW of lights frees 150MW of peeker capacity which can be used for more useful things like boiling water in a data center to answer questions wrong (I kid).
So is my air conditioner. It’s not like me turning the dial up a few degrees is going to keep the world spinning properly. /s
It’s not just Times Square just like it’s not just my AC. Times Square is a visual representation of how seriously the city and it’s residents take the issue. If those lights are blaring, then I assume a whole lot of other corporate power consumption is likewise excepted.
That’s just vibes though. Your AC is a node in a distributed cooling system that all respond to the same ambient environmental signals which means they act in a distributed coordinated manner. There are government systems for power reduction of commercial spaces - certifications, tax incentives, negawatt incentives, etc. The distributed system of ACs is almost impossible to manage because it’s functionally anarchic. And the combination of your AC and all 8m of your neighbors’ ACs turns out to be an order of magnitude more draw than all of the lighting in the entire city.
Trump is President because of “vibes”. Vibes matter because they influence behavior. Just look at the stock market. There will be more compressors working harder because of the vibes put out by those lights. Guaranteed.
For sure that’s a better analysis of the whole thing. Although, I do think it is worth noting how much energy is devoted to stuff like advertising, which is ultimately not productive use of energy. And if that wasn’t done in the first place, there would be more energy to go around avoiding the problem of not having enough of it at peak ours.
And stores and businesses leaving the lights on inside, even at night when the place is closed and nobody is there. And lighting up their entire giant parking lot all night as well, all night every night, even though they’re only open during hours of darkness for a few hours each day.
I know it’s not that much energy in the grand scheme of things, especially now that everything is LED. But still, their complete disregard for energy savings – such that they can’t be bothered to install a simple timer circuit – irritates me.
(I suspect that they’re also leaving the HVAC running at full capacity overnight as well. That might be a more significant waste of energy.)
Those lights are for safety and to deter break-ins.
Exactly, and that’s just one example of massive waste. Another one is the fact that around half the food produced is just thrown away because it’s just more ‘efficient’ to do that. Capitalism is an absolutely insane system.
HVAC is not left on over the weekends in most office buildings in NYC. There are incentives and certifications and standards that drive that.