• healthetank@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    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.

    • cogman@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      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.