Living on 2,000 Watts of Energy Per Day

[Ichingcarpenter]

When you find out that the average American lives on 11,400 watts of energy per day, it makes living off 2,000 seem near impossible. But then again, Americans are incredibly creative at coming up with ways to waste energy, so maybe it’s not that hard after all. The 2,000 Watt Society is trying to prove that it’s not just possible, it can be done without sacrificing comfort and fun.

The Swiss Council of the Federal Institute of Technology wants Swiss citizens to improve the energy efficiency of all aspects of their lives to get them to the 2,000 watt goal. From the document ‘Smarter Living’, via World Changing:

In the envisioned 2000-watt society, the quality of life will not suffer at all. On the contrary, aspects such as safety and health, comfort and the development of the individual will in fact improve, and income is expected to rise by around 60 percent over the next fifty years. However, ambitious goals call for decisive action in a variety of areas, e.g. improving materials and increasing the level of energy efficiency; substituting fossil fuels with renewable forms of energy and reducing the CO2 intensity of other utilised fossil fuels; adopting a smarter way of life and rethinking current business practices, including increasing the level of professionalism in the areas of planning and investment and the operation of buildings and installations.

As seen in the graphic above, comparing a contemporary Swiss family of 4 with the 2000 Watt Society goal, most areas of life wouldn’t change too much. World Changing rightly points out that the area that would see the most change, ‘Living and Working’, is rather ambiguous. It would be interesting to see what kinds of scenarios the 2000 Watt Society proposes in order to meet these goals. Reductions in energy use without sacrificing ‘modern comforts’ is exactly what we need and there are undoubtedly lots of ways to get there.

http://earthfirst.com/living-on-2000-watts-of-energy-per-day/

[Crazy Dave]

1. Turn off our computers?

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. My iMac is rated at 200watts, however it uses around 70 for normal use unless

I'm doing heavy gaming or opening a bunch of pictures

To calculate your costs use this formula:

Watts x Hours Used
_____________________ x Cost per kilowatt-hour = Total Cost

1000



It really doesn't use that much a month.

More here:
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html

[panader0]

2. Can I still refrigerate my beer?

Aside from that, the computer an hour a day, and a little TV, I'm not a huge energy user. I have to drive to work though.

[Ichingcarpenter]

5. My fridge uses 547Kilowatt Hours a year

or 45 kilowatts a month.

Your fridges energy rating and kilowatt use:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/eande/appliances/data/2005/fridge/fridgefreeze_autodef_bottomfreeze_noice_eff.htm

[kristopher]

4. Interesting read

Their method of using "watt" causes what I believe is unneeded confusion. Watt is an instantaneous measurement that will vary widely over the course of 24 hours. The article is using it in a way that is rather too abstract for my tastes.
That said, the overall premise and ideas presented are worth reading.

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. I think they are referring to kilowatt.

But will go to the Swiss site link in the article to read more on this.

[kristopher]

9. They deal with it properly in the article, but it is unnecessarily confusing IMO.

I suspect they did it because it the percapita annual energy consumption figure is available for more populations than any other, then they used that as a base to derive an average instantaneous rate for each population. Not the way I would have done it, but...

It goes to show how seemingly small decisions (at the time) can have a major impact on the way information is received.

[iamtechus]

6. Technically speaking, the article makes no sense

If the author had said that someone used xxxx watt-hours per unit of time it would have some meaning but they apparently don't know what they're talking about. To say that someone uses xxxx watts per day makes no sense. The term watts refers to an instantaneous measurement.

If something required an average of, say, 500 watts each day (24 hrs) we could say that it required 12000 watt-hours per day.


(edited to correct typo)

[skids]

11. Article is fine. Whoever wrote the headline needs re-education...

Take away the "watts of Energy" and "per day" and they are simply referring to the long-term averaged power draw. And it is fine to do so -- it would be easier for people to rate themselves by watts than watt-hours-per-arbitrary-time-period. It works out to a nice normal-range number like their own weight, height, and blood pressure.

All they had to do was not let the pointy-haired editor boss put a bad headline on, and then just the first time they say watts, say average watts. Then they'd have been pretty clear.

[kristopher]

12. Your point is valid

However I think the usefulness of such a conceptualization is rather limited.

[wtmusic]

13. If I'm using an average of 2000 watts all day long

that's 48kWh of energy per day. Is that what we should be shooting for?

There's no way to tell.

onedit: watt-hours and kilowatt-hours are not "arbitrary" any more than miles or kilometers are. Your electric utility bills you in kWh.

[skids]

16. Right but....

...they are arbitrary in that if you reduced the question to "how many kW per hour do you use in an hour on average?" you then
have a time term that cancels so the question sounds a little circumlocuitous.

I think the point of the article was that "living and working" use should average under 2000W, because it is the category that's sucking over 2000W, and you should not count in time spent in any of the other categories.

[Speck Tater]

8. "watts per day" is meaningless.

It should be Watt-Hours per day, or Kilowatt-Hours per day. Watts is an instantaneous measure of level of power, not a measure of consumption of energy. If you don't grok the difference, consider that 1 horsepower is equal to 745.7 watts. So to say "I use 1000 watts per day" is exactly equivalent to saying "I use 1.34 horsepower per day." It makes no sense, because it's totally the wrong unit of measure to state consumption over time.

Another example would be to measure how far you travel in a day in miles per hour. "I travel an average of 35 MPH per day." See? It doesn't make sense.

Some may consider this nit-picking, but statements like "I use 1000 watts per day" are so blatantly ignorant that it makes me cringe. No wonder we still have creationists in this country. Everybody wants to exploit the benefits of science, but everybody also seems to be to damn lazy to learn the first thing about science.

ed:typo

[wtmusic]

14. Another nonsensical article from the same website:

"The Internet Saves 10 Watts of Energy for Every Watt it Uses"

:silly:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

10. I plan on running my shed off one of these, two marine batteries

and a new and improved solar cell array.

[NYC_SKP]

15. 17,520 kWh per year

Yes, the 2000 Watt figure is misleading, they mean averaged throughout the day, higher at some times and lower at others.

Smart living with modest tastes and efficient appliances make the 2000 goal infinitely doable, at least for me.

The 2000-watt society (2,000-Watt Society) is a vision, originated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich at the end of 1998, in which each person in the developed world would cut their over-all rate of energy use to an average of no more than 2,000 watts (i.e. 17,520 kilowatt-hours per year of all energy use, not only electrical) by the year 2050, without lowering their standard of living.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Watt_society