They make a big deal out of "parasitic loads" and how much energy they consume. Reality is cost to consumer's energy bill is negligible, however demand on the grid does add up when you have millions of them on the grid.
Wiping out all the savings when CFL's came in to replace std bulbs.
?Wiping out all the savings when CFL's came in to replace std bulbs.
When the grid needs to move 2x more power, the hi voltage lines leakage will also go way up. Seems like a wonderful idea.
Because parasitic is wasting power 24/7. CFL's only "save" when they are on.
I get that, but what savings was wiped out by simply replacing incandescent lamps with CFL lamps? If there was a controller involved with parasitic load - it is still there in either situation.Wiping out all the savings when CFL's came in to replace std bulbs.
When the grid needs to move 2x more power, the hi voltage lines leakage will also go way up. Seems like a wonderful idea.
When CFL's proliferated to replace std filament bulbs, all the fancy switch/recept stuff was not really on the market yet.
Good point. IOT devices (smart TV's, Tstats, cloud connected micros, etc etc), even if not parasitic themselves, they need the 3rd party compute power to make them "function". I thought wind and solar took care of all that?
Grid is taxed to point of failing because more power is being demanded, if anything by population growth, and from investors in the companies that operate portions of the grid not wanting to spend money on updating grid infrastructure before it gets to a point it can't handle the loads very well anymore.
My point is, whatever savings CFL's LED's (whatever) was there, it's gone due to [add all your reasons here]. So, if the demand causes issues outside of the "savings by technology", then the final output of the math is, need more power. Hence, still need more power with or without the savinsg from technology. Either or, lots of upgrading and new power infrastrictur is needed, and that process includes the "how much" variable. Hence, we are not saving anything, and, need to fix the system to provide way more power, about 2.5x more ! Swapping filament bulbs to LED makes no real diff, 2.5x vs say 2.6x. You see it now?
I see that the "parasitic loads" increase the energy used, I don't see it increasing it to more than what it was decreased by switching to CFL's and ultimately later on to LED's for lighting, unless you have a absurd amount of items with these parasitic loads. I'm willing to bet that most would never see a difference on a utility billing if they unplugged all such parasitic loads when not in use. But at same time a million customers and all their parasitic loads will add a few watts to the load on the utility system, but still very little in comparison to the loads that do actual work for the end user.
It's like saying, do all the effort to spend $6 just to save $5.
Something like a TV that has parasitic draw when in standby waiting for a signal "to turn it on" is drawing so little it probably doesn't even register any kWH on your utility bill if it were the only thing on for an entire billing period. Yes the load is real load but is more of a problem to the utility generation with millions of those very tiny loads on line than it is any real problem to individual users.
Well yes, but the same is true with a vast number of items- they only draw when in use. My car gets infinite gas mileage when it's parked in the driveway. The point is that when you use something, you get the equivalent usable work for less energy input.
You mean zero gas mileage, there are no miles when it's parked, no gas either. 0/0=0. If you push your car around with your own feet, the car gets miles with no gas use.
It sounds good, but the fact that we have serious power issue in US says otherwise. If everything was just "ahhh, barely noticeable", then we would never have power issues. The facts are, all the littles things are seen and are issue for power sources. The issues are not "individual" issues, the power issue sums up back to the source. 40,000,000*0.2mA*120vrms parasictics = 8,000A*120v = 960kW lost at endpoints, then you need to add in transmission losses for that ~1MW, etc. Maybe end user electric meter cant see 0.2mA, but the source sure does.
