[ExI] How Electricity Became a Luxury Good

[BillK]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 2:26 PM, spike wrote:
> Green energy will be expensive, it will not be green, but we will employ it
> anyway, because we will gradually run out of alternatives, and yes we need
> energy, lots of it.
>
> Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, can you find anything
> in the previous sentence which you would dispute?
>
>

As an aside, last year I obtained a sensor system that displays the
house electricity usage. The sensor clips around the electric cable by
the meter and sends the data to the display.

You can immediately see the effect of switching on the kettle, as the
display leaps up by 2000 watts.
This has been useful in pointing out which devices use the most
electricity. It also enabled a hunt to find all the things still using
electricity after I thought everything was switched off. Switching
lights off and changing to energy efficient light bulbs.

Some devices, like TVs, still draw current while switched off, and
these need to be switched off at the mains plug. The current used is
small, but as it was on all the time, the yearly total was quite
expensive.

I am now down to running at about 60 watts consumption, for the
laptop, modem, wifi and electric clock. Winter will be much more, of
course!

I recommend everybody to get one of these meters. They're fun!

BillK