Closing the "green gap": energy savings from the math of the landscape function
9 comments
·February 24, 2025roenxi
taeric
I think this just doesn't come to terms with how much more efficient modern lights are?
I remember when folks were resisting LED lights at the start. Folks would literally promote turning off the lights earlier to save energy. Remember back when making sure the lights were out was a big deal?
Turns out, 60-100 watts down to 10 is just ridiculously hard to come terms with. Turn off the lights early just doesn't compete. Not even close.
This also ignores how much more efficient other things are. Televisions would be an amusing one. It isn't as dramatic, sure, but it is about a quarter of the energy?
clcaev
Is Jevons’ applicable here? People only have a fixed square footage in their house that needs to be lit, and often negative utility to having rooms lit all of the time.
edflsafoiewq
HOA I know wants every house to have more lights kept on all night (for "safety"). They explicitly say LEDs are what makes this cost effective.
formerly_proven
If electricity were cheaper you might turn the lights higher instead of balancing cost vs. comfort, wouldn't use the eco-mode on the dishwasher that occasionally results in dirty dishes, would probably not think twice about washing clothes at 30 °C instead of 40 °C, maybe use a dryer instead of clothes racks blocking the living room for a day, use the more comfortable tankless warm water heater, properly preheating the oven giving you the results you want etc. pp. ... the list is endless.
But electricity often costs upwards of 30 cents/kWh nowadays, so you avoid doing all those comfy things. 'cause they're expensive.
mikeyouse
My power is still $0.11/kwh... I haven't turned off my christmas lights in 3 years. There are huge swaths of the US where power is still (relatively) dirt cheap and nobody thinks twice about the heavy soil function on the dishwasher or leaving landscaping lights on.
This list matches my experience; https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
dworkr
If I have to spend more than 30% of my monthly budget on power, I will not be taking cold showers or living in the cold. Consuming energy replaces other hobbies. High energy prices have been normalized, at least in my state. Same with gas. People had to stop caring, or leave.
null
devwastaken
LED lighting is both better and worse.
- purposefully made with line frequency (60hz) refresh which means its actually constantly blinking. you can see this with led Christmas lights by moving them.
- pack liquid capacitors designed to fail well before the rest of the board.
- thermals are too hot and fry the diodes or the rectifier IC’s.
- wrong colors sold everywhere. a proper 4000K 90+ CRI led is hard to find and more expensive. the two most often available are 2700K (yellow) and 5000K (blue)
> The decrease is almost entirely due to gains in lighting efficiency in households...
The article is an interesting treatment of how lighting is getting more efficient and well worth a read. But pedantically zooming in on this one throwaway phrase for a second... this is a misinterpretation of the data on 2 levels.
1) The (badly labelled) graph seems to be displaying a very very slight linear uptrend for "residential".
2) Energy is literally the first example of where we expect to see Jevons paradox [0]. If its use is going down, that is because energy is getting more expensive in real terms. If the only trend here was lighting getting more efficient, households on aggregate would find ways to use more electricity because it is extremely fungible.
By default the proper way to interpret the data (if for the sake of argument I say what I would interpret as a slight uptrend is actually a downtrend) is that electricity is getting more expensive real terms. The impact that has on living standards is cushioned somewhat by improvements in lighting efficiency. But if electricity costs were steady and lighting efficiency improved we'd expect to see an increase in electricity use.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox