[HN Gopher] German digital signage ban prompts confusion
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German digital signage ban prompts confusion
Author : amelius
Score : 214 points
Date : 2022-08-26 08:53 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.avinteractive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.avinteractive.com)
| tpmx wrote:
| martin_a wrote:
| Stupid whataboutism.
|
| Those signage displays are creating lots of light pollution and
| consume lots of energy. It's a good thing to shut those down,
| no matter how much energy we have/create.
| TomK32 wrote:
| Bigger problems in Germany are the lack of big power lines
| between the North and South and of course the reluctance to
| build more wind energy. Especially Bavaria has been shooting
| its own feet several times, even built a gas power station a
| few years back and now it's in a bit of a panic...
| turing_complete wrote:
| You cannot power a country with wind power alone. Even if you
| want to build wind turbines, you need nuclear, gas, or coal
| to back them up.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| You could if there was an energy efficient, cheap, and
| widely available storage.
|
| Such storage is right now domain of unicorns and pixie
| dust.
|
| Other solution include near loseless transmission of power
| between sunny and shaded side.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Wind, solar and pumped storage gets you a long way, to be
| fair. We definitely need some nuclear, but it's far too
| expensive to rely on.
| tjansen wrote:
| Germany doesn't have much potential for pumped storage.
| It can work in a country like Norway, but not in Germany.
| adrianN wrote:
| No, but you can power something like 70% of a country with
| wind power alone. Add in some solar and a few hours worth
| of storage and you can go 90+%. Add a few days of storage
| and you reach two nines. A few weeks for more nines.
| tpmx wrote:
| "Add a few days of storage"
|
| This is very non-trivial and will take decades longer
| than building nuclear power.
| hnbad wrote:
| The best time to build storage would have been fifty
| years ago. The next best time is now.
|
| We need power supply now, yes, but we will still need
| storage decades from now. So building them now is vital.
| Yet we aren't doing that. That's a problem.
|
| We literally have no time left, yet at the current course
| we'll be in the same situation in 2030 or 2050 as we are
| today and we'll keep making the same excuses.
| freilanzer wrote:
| > will take decades.
|
| We already had decades, so where is it?
| SyneRyder wrote:
| Tesla seems to have done it pretty quickly for South
| Australia:
|
| https://electrek.co/2018/05/11/tesla-giant-battery-
| australia...
|
| Elon promised "Tesla will get the system installed and
| working 100 days from contract signature or it is free."
| And then had the entire thing connected and powering the
| South Australian power grid in just 63 days:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/10/elon-
| musk...
|
| I'm fairly confident that 100 days is less than decades.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| That project was 200 MWh.
|
| 1 day of Germany electricity consumption is on the order
| of 1,400,000 MWh, something like 7,000x larger. A "few
| days" of electricity storage would take orders of
| magnitude longer to build and deploy, even if we worked
| on Elon's most optimistic timeline.
| adrianN wrote:
| Building enough nuclear power plants to power a country
| also takes decades and is very non-trivial. The quicker
| we reach 90% carbon-free, the more carbon budget we have
| left to figure out the remaining 10%. Renewables are the
| quickest, cheapest way to do that.
| tpmx wrote:
| The research and tech actually exists for large scale
| nuclear power. It's essentially a solved problem, unlike
| large-scale energy storage.
| adrianN wrote:
| We can always create methane or ammonia from hydrogen.
| That's a solved problem. The only research left to do is
| to bring down the price.
| tpmx wrote:
| I.e. the "only" remaining problem is to do it at large
| scale at a reasonable cost.
| adrianN wrote:
| Right now there is little demand for storage because we
| don't have sufficient renewable generation capacity. It
| is no surprise that storage technology hasn't been
| deployed at large scale and is still relatively
| expensive. But since we know how to build MW scale
| electrolyzers it's really just a matter of building more
| of them.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You can do hydrogen, but ammonia production is like 16%
| efficient?
| adrianN wrote:
| Efficiency is less important than cost. Maybe ammonia is
| so much easier to transport and store that it's worth the
| efficiency penalty.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| If I have this right, Ammonia is 2x more expensive than
| petrol per tonne, and has half the energy density of
| petrol, so it seems to be 4x more expensive?
|
| I am not sure how to compare with hydrogen, as you say
| costs for it are in storage and transportation
| mqus wrote:
| But if we look at actual nuclear projects in finland and
| france, they are expensive and mostly failing and take
| far too long (think decades, not years). End storage of
| fuel rods is also not a solved problem of nuclear power,
| esp. in germany.
|
| So I would rather take the fast-to-build solar and wind
| plants and research "large scale" energy storage
| alongside. Storage also does not have to be large-scale,
| you can just subsidise a lot of decentralized storage and
| invest in more flexible energy consumers (aka wash your
| clothes when the sun is shining).
| someguydave wrote:
| >Building enough nuclear power plants to power a country
| also takes decades
|
| People in Germany said these things 10 years ago too. If
| Germany had started building nuclear in quantity 10 years
| ago then they would be coming online now and would get
| cheaper with each new plant. Instead you will have
| crippling and deindustrializing power prices for years to
| come.
| adrianN wrote:
| If we had continued building renewables in quantity ten
| years ago we would be in much better shape now too.
| Unfortunately we did neither.
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| Large scale nuclear power with current tech isn't
| feasible, because of the lack of good uranium sources
| someguydave wrote:
| This is an insane take, there is plenty of uranium
| globally. Whoever says otherwise is lying.
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| There may be plenty of uranium. However there isn't
| plenty available for easy extraction.
|
| "Is nuclear energy green" Sabine Hossenfelder
| someguydave wrote:
| I respect Sabine but I am skeptical about the paper she
| puts forth about limited uranium supplies.
|
| See the late Prof. MacKay's work on the subject,
| considering fast breeder reactors to reuse the fuel and
| ocean extraction of uranium:
| https://www.withouthotair.com/c24/page_164.shtml
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| I am talking about current tech, not Future tech
| adrianN wrote:
| To be fair, we could build breeder reactors.
| tlocke wrote:
| If you build enough renewables, then there comes a point
| when at times you're generating more than is needed
| immediately. That surplus electricity can be used to make
| hydrogen gas by electrolysing water. The gas can be stored
| indefinitely and burned to generate electricity when
| needed. So with enough renewables, no fossil fuels are
| needed.
| Maakuth wrote:
| This is not false, but the economics are not good for the
| full round trip. There are efficiency losses in the
| conversion both ways and hydrogen storage is not fun as
| it is very low density and due to small molecule size,
| prone to leaking through almost anything. Probably a lot
| of hydrogen will be produced this way during renewable
| peaks, but mainly it would be for industrial processes
| that need it.
| dmytrish wrote:
| In theory, yes, it's possible to store renewable energy
| for later consumption, but this is not the case right now
| and rollout of any storage technology might take years
| without certainty that it will work well. In the current
| situation, it's either blackouts, or gas/coal, or nuclear
| when there's no sun and wind.
|
| On the other hand, I can understand why the current
| situation is like this: Germany boldly betted big time on
| renewables getting cheap enough, they made it work with
| backfill options available at the time. I just wish
| energy storage was tackled sooner as well.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| this "around the corner" argument is getting tiresome. We
| have a climate emergency NOW. We are actively hurting our
| future by continuing to emit carbon NOW. We already have
| a solution to that problem in the shape of nuclear power.
|
| Instead, we wait on renewables and storage to run the
| grid at some indeterminate point in the future.
|
| The debate on this issue really is toxic and frustrating.
| We need all solutions working NOW, not tomorrow, and one
| of those solutions is widespread nuclear power.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > The gas can be stored indefinitely
|
| Storing hydrogen is far from trivial. It's a bit like
| trying to store water when you're only allowed to build
| tanks out of paper.
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| This isn't true.
|
| You could even power the world just from renewables
|
| https://innovationorigins.com/en/researchers-agree-the-
| world...
| immibis wrote:
| That's false. You can't power a country with one source of
| wind power _in the manner to which they have become
| accustomed_. Which is the same justification for so many
| bad things throughout history, be it wars for resources, to
| making battery-farmed workers pee in bottles because
| Jeffrey couldn 't bear to have one fewer personal yacht.
|
| If people had grown up with variable supply of electricity,
| they would have no problem with it today. It's only the
| transition from something better to something worse that
| causes riots.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Power issues in Europe will be big enough going into the winter
| that the few German nuclear power plants will likely the least
| of our issues.
| tpmx wrote:
| "We are going to have a severe lack of energy, so shutting
| down nuclear power plants is likely the least of our issues"?
|
| I'm afraid I don't follow the logic here.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Shutting down the German nuclear power plants does not help
| the situation obviously but right even turning them on now
| is not going to help us at all over the winter. First of
| all not enough energy gets generated from there in the
| grand scheme of things, secondly they would not be
| operational in time.
|
| If you want to look for more nuclear to turn on, have a
| look at France where less than 50% of nuclear power plants
| are currently generating energy.
| adrianN wrote:
| Homes are heated with gas, not with nuclear power.
| Industrial processes run on gas, not on nuclear power.
| phh wrote:
| If there's no gas, most homes can heat with electricity.
| Turn on your oven, your gaming console, your TV, open
| your fridge's door, etc. Also as I understand it, it's
| much easier to do rolling blackouts on electricity than
| on gas, so gas will be more likely to fail for a long
| time than electricity.
|
| Most industrial processes can be stopped without
| endangering people.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| Problem is, without nuclear power, they will have to
| resort to generating power from natural gas instead of
| using that gas for heating, which will in turn have
| problems compound.
| adrianN wrote:
| Right now gas plants are running to stabilize the grid in
| France...
| phh wrote:
| Uh, as far as I know, that's forever been the case?
| Nuclear is too slow to react to events, so we always need
| some safety margin that gas can provide?
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| France's issues with nuclear are long lasting. They are
| running only 24 out of 56 power plants today and a lot of
| that outage is ongoing for many months. France is a net
| importer for almost a year I believe which is untypical
| for the country which normally exports cheap nuclear
| electricity.
| phh wrote:
| Yes, France's current situation fucking sucks. However my
| answer was for this message:
|
| > Right now gas plants are running to stabilize the grid
| in France...
|
| As far as I know, gas plants have always been used to
| stabilize grid in France.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| That may be true, but that's orthogonal to the entirely
| home-made problems Germany is facing right now. While not
| a complete solution, using the remaining nuclear plants
| is an obvious stopgap measure to at least alleviate those
| problems in the short term.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Yes, but if you can use less gas for electricity
| generation you have more for the other uses. Germany has
| other sources of gas besides Russia (e.g. Norway). The
| goal isn't to completely stop using gas at all, but
| rather to reduce dependence on Russia who only supplies
| 30% of German gas.
| foepys wrote:
| Only 24 of 56 French nuclear reactors are currently producing
| power, for various reasons. Less than half.
|
| Germany's coal and gas power is currently helping to power
| France. 4.3% of Germany's power generation is being exported to
| France at this very moment.
|
| https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FR
| yodelshady wrote:
| Also Germany: _repoens_ , I believe approx. 8 GW, coal plants.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/juliecoleman/2022/07/08/germany...
|
| I'm sorry, but this is hearfelt: the German greens are climate
| _criminals_. And they were fully warned of exactly this
| situation _decades_ ago, so no, they have zero "circumstances
| forced our hand" defence.
|
| You _knew_ , and you chose to burn coal _anyway_.
| permo-w wrote:
| what blame do the Christian Democrats have for this?
| freilanzer wrote:
| If you blame them for everything you will be at least
| partially correct more often than not.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I'm sorry, but this is hearfelt: the German greens are
| climate criminals. And they were fully warned of exactly this
| situation decades ago, so no, they have zero "circumstances
| forced our hand" defence.
|
| The Greens have not been in government _for the last sixteen
| years_. It was the conservative governments under Merkel and
| particularly the environment and later economy minister
| Altmaier who openly _celebrated_ reducing buildout of solar
| power [1].
|
| As for nuclear power: any talk about lengthening their
| operation is utter madness. There are no fuel rods and the
| reactors haven't had their security checkups because they
| were scheduled to be shut down - and just look at France just
| _how catastrophic_ nuclear power actually is (ETA: I
| substantially detailed that in a daughter comment, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32605337).
|
| The government has little other choice than to keep the coal
| burners running at this point, as the Merkel governments have
| done everything in their power to hinder renewable energy
| buildout, and the Bavarian CSU has sabotaged cross-country
| high voltage power transmission lines.
|
| [1] https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Einbruch-bei-der-
| Photovoltaik-ar...
| tjansen wrote:
| > The Greens have not been in government for the last
| sixteen years.
|
| While this is true, they have always been in favour of
| shutting down nuclear power plants and now they would have
| the opportunity to reverse this course, but they don't.
|
| The Greens have been founded as an anti-nuclear party. In
| the 80s, they even demanded to replace nuclear power with
| coal (https://twitter.com/MoormannRainer/status/14352977444
| 8733801...). Shutting down nuclear power plants is
| obviously more important to them than the climate.
|
| > and just look at France just how catastrophic nuclear
| power actually is.
|
| What's so catastrophic about France? Despite all the
| troubles they currently have, their CO2 emissions per kW
| are still a fraction of Germany's.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > While this is true, they have always been in favour of
| shutting down nuclear power plants and now they would
| have the opportunity to reverse this course, but they
| don't.
|
| Because nuclear does not make sense. The financial risk
| of accidents at a Fukushima or Chernobyl scale is too
| high (as no insurer will take on that risk, the taxpayers
| will have to pay for it, and as the Ukraine invasion and
| the fighting around Chernobyl shows, disaster plants are
| a danger for decades!), a lot of the uranium comes from
| questionable sources (Russia and Khazakhstan [1]), and
| Europe does not have permanent storage solutions for the
| nuclear waste [2].
|
| Renewable energies already make up 41% of our electricity
| generation, it could be 100%.
|
| > What's so catastrophic about France? Despite all the
| troubles they currently have, their CO2 emissions per kW
| are still a fraction of Germany's.
|
| For the sake of not spamming around the same text, I
| consolidated the list of issues here in a sibling
| comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32605337
|
| As for the CO2 emissions: yeah because the CO2 everyone
| else in Europe generates to compensate their nuclear
| issues is not counted in _their_ CO2 budget but _ours_.
|
| [1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/where-
| our-uraniu...
|
| [2] https://www.br.de/nachrichten/wissen/atommuell-die-
| suche-nac...
| tjansen wrote:
| > Because nuclear does not make sense.
|
| Assuming your three points would be solved, would you be
| in favour of nuclear power plants? Or what exactly would
| need to change?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| I would of course _not_ be in favor of nuclear power. A
| new nuclear plant takes well over a decade to build - it
| makes way more economical sense to build renewable power
| plants because they can be ready far faster and pose less
| danger and waste to our children.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I was with you until here.
|
| The waste was never the main problem and contemporary
| nuclear power plant designs don't share many of the other
| downsides either.
| tjansen wrote:
| > I would of course not be in favor of nuclear power.
|
| Ok, let's say I could convince you that it is possible to
| store nuclear waste safely, and show you that building up
| wind power takes at least as long. Could I convince you
| then?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| No, because of the financial risks involved in
| constructing, operating and getting rid of them. The
| costs associated with Fukushima are estimated to be at
| least 200 billion dollars [1], Chernobyl 235 billion
| dollars [2].
|
| Even leaving out disaster scenarios: A modern EPR nuclear
| power plant is at ~1.6 GW [3] at a cost of 11 billion
| euros, taking a decade or more to build, and about a
| billion dollars to tear down [4]. A wind park half the
| size costs two billion dollars in two to five years [5],
| has less risks in construction, no risk at all of a
| catastrophic failure, and assuming 80EUR/kWh in teardown
| costs [6] 16 million EUR for the teardown.
|
| That means wind power at a capacity factor of 0.4-0.5 [7]
| (meaning, you need two of them to achieve the same
| available capacity to the grid on average) is half as
| expensive as a nuclear power plant even when ignoring the
| efficiencies that building at scale brings with it and
| has virtually no risks attached. Financially, it's
| absolute irresponsibility to go nuclear.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK253929/
|
| [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/ch
| ernobyl...
|
| [3] https://taz.de/Finnischer-Reaktor-geht-ans-
| Netz/!5829751/
|
| [4] https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/ener
| giewend...
|
| [5] https://renewablesnow.com/news/construction-starts-
| on-800-mw...
|
| [6] https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/DE/Parlamentarische-
| Anfragen/2...
|
| [7] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volllaststunde
| tjansen wrote:
| You can't compare the price of a wind park with the price
| of a nuclear power plant, because the wind park does not
| offer base load. A wind park without base load is pretty
| useless. Base load is far more valuable. So if you say a
| power plant costs 12 billions, it is a steal compared to
| a two billion wind park. Most people will rather have
| electricity 24/7 than occasional electricity for 1/6th
| the price.
|
| Beside that, in another comment you had a long list of
| things you say is required to make EE feasible. You need
| to include the price of all these things in your
| calculation.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You can't compare the price of a wind park with the
| price of a nuclear power plant, because the wind park
| does not offer base load.
|
| Agreed that base load is valuable... but why not go and
| _reduce_ the amount of base load by both directly saving
| on load (e.g. by insulating houses or getting rid of
| advertising) and by making the base load that absolutely
| remains more flexible (e.g. by upgrading to a truly smart
| grid that can dynamically regulate consumption of loads)?
|
| And for what it's worth, you can additionally also go and
| build even more wind energy. In times of ample wind, the
| now infinitely cheap electricity can be used in
| electrolysis to generate hydrogen as a base chemical for
| the industry and fuel for those very few applications
| that definitely need a combustion process (e.g. glass and
| metal foundries).
| tjansen wrote:
| All these things are not enough. In 2015, there was an
| hour when wind power only generated 0.2GW. Hydro and
| biomass will probably never exceed 10GW combined. Even if
| you radically reduce the electricity needs down to, let's
| say, 35GW, you would still have a gap of 25GW. You can't
| build enough wind power to get this on a day without
| wind. You need another power source.
| tehbeard wrote:
| The only people who are more "trust us, it's just around
| the corner" than fusion folks are the renewables only
| folks and their hair brained schemes to avoid the base
| load question.
|
| Complicating the grid with smarts, given how well that's
| gone with IoT?
|
| We've thrown a low carbon option under the bus because of
| sloppy Soviet engineering.
|
| The coal and gas we are stuck with due to "greens" no
| nuclear stance has caused more harm to humanity than our
| sum total nuclear incidents, even counting non power
| incidents such as orphaned radiotherapy sources or
| ignoring procedures at irradiation facilities.
| [deleted]
| hnbad wrote:
| I'd say it's the fault of neoliberalism (which certainly
| has a foothold in parts of the CDU/CSU and all major
| parties really, not just the FDP) that most infrastructure
| projects of the past decades have been limited to a few
| failed prestige projects (powerlines just aren't as sexy as
| a massive airport nobody can use) but it's the fault of the
| Greens (not specifically the party but the general
| political movement it stems from) that we're at a point
| where we are stuck with coal because nuclear is no longer
| an option.
|
| I'm not saying it's bad they protested nuclear. Nuclear
| needs to go, too. It's just bad that they hyperfixated on
| nuclear because it's easier to scare people about it and
| that they didn't ensure we get rid of coal first. Scaring
| people about nuclear was child's play after Chernobyl if
| the threat of the Cold War wasn't enough (as the public
| already conflated nuclear power and nuclear weapons). The
| coal industry's political power is much greater in Germany
| tho and taking it on would have meant finding a way to
| bridge the cultural gap between blue collar Kumpels and the
| more college educated Birkenstock crowd.
|
| Hopefully FFF and XR are finally doing some of the work now
| but sadly the opposition has also gotten better at its game
| and that Kumpel at his Stammtisch beer will most likely
| make bad jokes about "Greta" despite not batting an eye if
| you ask him to sign a petition to shut down all nuclear
| plants.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| I really believe Neoliberalism has kneecapped the West,
| our infrastructure is basically stuck in 1980's, which is
| when the ideology took hold.
|
| In UK, since we privatised water companies, they have not
| built a single new reservoir, they are basically
| operating 30 year old infrastructure, dumping sewage in
| rivers and paying themselves dividends in the billiona
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We don't need nuclear. Even with decades of conservative
| sabotage, we generate ~41% of our electricity needs [1]
| on a renewable basis. Imagine we had used the last
| sixteen years to go all-in on renewables - we wouldn't
| need to kowtow in front of _any_ dictatorship. No Qatari
| gas, no Russian or other dictatorship uranium, nothing.
|
| [1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/klima-
| energie/erneuerb...
| tjansen wrote:
| The amount of electricity generated over the course of a
| year is irrelevant without storage. We could generate
| 1000% of our energy needs and still not have enough, if
| we generate 2000% in summer and 0% in winter.
|
| We need to generate 100% of our energy needs every single
| hour. Renewables are practically incapable of doing this
| on their own. They can reduce the use of fossil fuelds
| (or nuclear power), but not replace them.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > We need to generate 100% of our energy needs every
| single hour. Renewables are practically incapable of
| doing this on their own. They can reduce the use of
| fossil fuelds (or nuclear power), but not replace them.
|
| Install enough windmills across the entire coastal areas
| of Europe, add thousands of kilometers long cross-
| continental UHVDC links like China does [1] and even
| winter won't be a problem.
|
| Besides: using biomass / biogas fuel for conventional
| burner plants is climate neutral, and the supply is
| enough to cover half of the deliveries of Russia [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
| voltage_electricity...
|
| [2]
| https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/biogas-
| stat...
| dontlaugh wrote:
| China's energy policy is indeed one of the few rational
| ones. But besides vast improvements in renewables,
| transmission and storage, China has also invested in new
| better nuclear designs.
| tjansen wrote:
| > Install enough windmills across the entire coastal
| areas of Europe,
|
| That's completely unrealistic. There are times when in
| all of Europe there is little to no wind. Certainly not
| enough that one region can provide enough power for all
| of Europe. Maybe it's possible in China, I don't now
| their climate, but even they are planning to increase the
| number of nuclear power plants.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We need a complete transformation of our power usage in
| any case, both to save energy demand and to make the grid
| more flexible:
|
| - insulate buildings so that they better retain heat.
| This one is massive - over a third of all energy
| consumption goes towards buildings [1]!
|
| - promote heat pumps (either to air or ground) because
| these are far more energy efficient for air conditioning
| and hot water generation
|
| - help poorer households to save energy - especially
| those who can't afford to replace their 20 years old
| fridge which consumes over double the power that a modern
| appliance needs [2].
|
| - resilient grids with photo-voltaic energy generation on
| every roof and distributed battery storage
|
| - _smart_ grids that can (dis)incentivize large loads
| like water heaters or electric vehicles automatically
| based on grid generation capacity
|
| - more incentives for high-energy consuming industries to
| act as a dynamic power sink or to operate only in times
| where energy is plentiful
|
| - shut down street lights at night or make them smart to
| only be alight when needed - lighting consumes about 0.7%
| of the total power consumption [0], but as it runs at
| night where solar power is offline by definition, its
| impact on base load is worse.
|
| - completely ban advertisements using lighting at night
|
| Ideally, we would have continuous renewable or at least
| climate neutral-ish generation power (geothermal, tidal,
| running water power, biogas and waste incineration and
| whatever is the sum of the lowest-ever-available-wind
| power) to cover the base load, and have consumers smartly
| adapt on current electricity prices.
|
| [0] https://www.strassenbeleuchtung.de/index.php/technik/
| 34-grun...
|
| [1] https://www.dena.de/themen-
| projekte/energieeffizienz/gebaeud...
|
| [2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale.nrw/sites/default/fil
| es/2022...
| FredPret wrote:
| Ban ads at night? Insulate our houses even more? Turn off
| the street lamps? All so we can run our civilization on
| literal windmills? When we have nuclear that is both
| safer and cleaner than this ancient technology?
| Incredible.
|
| It's like you're not really pro-climate, but trying to
| accomplish the secret objective of limiting the scope of
| human existence. I am reminded of the anti-human
| religious folk who see humanity as a sinful scourge.
| tjansen wrote:
| Just a few comments:
|
| - the things you list are insanely expensive (just keep
| that in mind next time you say that nuclear power is
| expensive... you also need to figure these costs in when
| comparing to EE, because you wouldn't need to do this
| with nuclear)
|
| - PV with battery storage is great for autarky and
| reducing fossils, but won't reduce the need for base load
| after a week without sun in winter, when all the
| batteries are empty..
|
| - things like heat pumps that replace fossils will
| increase electricity consumption. I think current
| estimates are that electricity consumption may increase
| 50-100%.
|
| - there is just not a lot of potential for additional
| renewable base load in Germany. Bio gas, hydro,
| geothermal.. they are all pretty must at their limits.
| there is just no way around either burning fossils, using
| nuclear or having an insane amount of storage.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > - the things you list are insanely expensive (just keep
| that in mind next time you say that nuclear power is
| expensive... you also need to figure these costs in when
| comparing to EE, because you wouldn't need to do this
| with nuclear)
|
| We absolutely need to do this _anyway_ and fast, because
| there will not be any massive amount of new nuclear power
| going online - even if we were to start out a buildout
| offensive in nuclear plants, it would take ten to fifteen
| years at best, and we need to conserve as much energy as
| we can in the meantime.
|
| > - PV with battery storage is great for autarky and
| reducing fossils, but won't reduce the need for base load
| after a week without sun in winter, when all the
| batteries are empty..
|
| Which is why industry needs to be incentivized to shut
| down in such times. China does it by force, we can offer
| financial incentives.
|
| > Bio gas, hydro, geothermal.. they are all pretty must
| at their limits. there is just no way around either
| burning fossils, using nuclear or having an insane amount
| of storage.
|
| Biogas has a lot of potential, as well as geothermal. We
| just _need to get going_ after 16 years of sabotage by
| the conservatives.
| tjansen wrote:
| > We absolutely need to do this anyway
|
| No. Only if we want to be the only major country in the
| civilised world that doesn't use nuclear power despite
| having not enough hydro power.
|
| > would take ten to fifteen years at best,
|
| This is extremely optimistic for wind power, and even
| more for rebuilding the electricity grid. Even if you can
| somehow shorten the planning processes: We are in the
| middle of a workers shortage and a supply-chain crisis.
| Who should build all these wind parks? And all the other
| things you listed, like building isolations and heat
| pumps. Shut down universities and require everybody to
| work in construction for a couple of years?
|
| > we need to conserve as much energy as we can in the
| meantime.
|
| Why? What's the outcome? Kill the economy? Who should pay
| for all these things?
|
| > Biogas has a lot of potential, as well as geothermal.
|
| Biogas needs agricultural land and thereby competes with
| food, and thus has other implications. Geothermal would
| be nice to have, and I think everybody agrees on that,
| but it's going nowhere. And as far I know not only in
| Germany, but everywhere.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "look at France just how catastrophic nuclear power
| actually is"
|
| I assume you are referring to power plants that has to shut
| down due to low water levels?
|
| If the powerplant is designed with a source of eater in
| mind, it will have tp shut down when the water is gone. It
| does not matter if the plant is oil, coal or nuclear.
|
| Plenty of nuclear powerplants use seawater for cooling, and
| none of them had to shutdown.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > I assume you are referring to power plants that has to
| shut down due to low water levels?
|
| It goes way worse than the drought. For the sake of not
| spamming around the same text, I consolidated the list of
| issues here in a sibling comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32605337
|
| > Plenty of nuclear powerplants use seawater for cooling,
| and none of them had to shutdown.
|
| Plants at the seawater border are vulnerable to floods as
| a result of extreme weather conditions, we've seen the
| consequences of that in Fukushima. Additionally, being
| close to the sea means the plants are vulnerable to the
| rise of sea water, which is a risk for the future.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the problems with France? If I were in
| government in France I'd be thrilled with nuclear power as
| an investment right about now
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Can you elaborate on the problems with France?
|
| 80% of their power is generated by nuclear. Of their
| nuclear plants, way over half the fleet has been offline
| for months because of inspections and sometimes
| substantial damages from age-related corrosion issues
| [1], and the other half is severely limited or cut off as
| well because the rivers that they depend on for cooling
| can't keep up [2]. And since the entire continent is a
| single synced grid, _someone_ has to cover the gap, and
| that 's German gas peakers [3].
|
| Unfortunately, European energy markets operate at the
| "merit order" principle [4] which means that the
| _highest_ bidder on the spot market sets the price for
| everyone else - which means while gas peaker plants
| generate extremely expensive energy for France, the
| operators of any other type of plant get the exact same
| high price leading to _billions_ of euros in excess
| profit for them [5].
|
| France also has another problem, and that's the EPR
| design that has led to severe budget and time overruns.
| Not just generic issues, but massive design defects [6].
| They bet on Flamanville replacing a bunch of the aged
| plants, the bet failed, and no one knows when that
| reactor will finally come online. Flamanville was
| projected to cost 3.3 billion euros and be ready in 2012
| - current estimates are at 12.7 billion euros at the
| least and a start in Q2/23 [7], and other EPR projects
| are just as bad.
|
| [1] https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220825-france-
| prolongs-...
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/03/edf-
| to-redu...
|
| [3] https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-
| wuerttemberg/suedbaden/w...
|
| [4] https://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/merit-order-wie-
| ein-gut...
|
| [5] https://www.derstandard.de/story/2000137852348/gas-
| und-oelpr...
|
| [6]
| https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1645421/energy-
| crisis...
|
| [7] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/edf-hopeful-
| end-sigh...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Long term, the merit order makes sense.
|
| All those plants make the max price, so if you can think
| of a way to cheaply generate power when it is expensive
| you get paid the high gas price up until all gas is
| removed from the market.
|
| Short term, if a war or embargo is driving up gas prices,
| it still makes sense to charge high prices, because that
| gives people an incentive to not use electricity and so
| saves on the restricted resource.
|
| But, this will really hit the poor or businesses that use
| a lot of gas through no fault of their own.
|
| Since we are all in this together, the people earning the
| extra money should get it redistributed to the people.
| But some rich and powerful people think that sets a bad
| precedent, so they'll try to make poor people suffer as
| much as they can before doing it.
| extropy wrote:
| Are you sure all plants get to sell at spot price?
|
| Doesn't that encourage collusion to generate artificial
| scarcity - all participants benefit from it?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Yes, this is actually why the Tesla Big Battery in
| Australia was so cost effective, it stopped gas plants
| from manipulating the prices:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/how-
| tesla...
|
| > The big gas generators - even though they have 10 times
| more capacity than is required - have systematically
| rorted the situation, sometimes charging up to $7m a day
| for a service that normally comes at one-tenth of the
| price.
|
| > (You can read reports on how they do it here, here and
| here, and for a more detailed explanation at the bottom
| of this story.)
|
| > The difference in January was that there is a new
| player in the market: Tesla. The company's big battery,
| officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve, bid into
| the market to ensure that prices stayed reasonable, as
| predicted last year.
|
| > Rather than jumping up to prices of around $11,500 and
| $14,000/MW, the bidding of the Tesla big battery - and,
| in a major new development, the adjoining Hornsdale
| windfarm - helped (after an initial spike) to keep them
| at around $270/MW.
|
| > This saved several million dollars in FCAS charges,
| which are paid by other generators and big energy users,
| in a single day.
|
| > And that's not the only impact. According to state
| government's advisor, Frontier Economics, the average
| price of FCAS fell by around 75% in December from the
| same month the previous year. Market players are
| delighted, and consumers should be too, because they will
| ultimately benefit.
|
| Of course, just decent regulatory oversight can stop this
| kind of thing too, but fossil fuel producers seem to be
| really against that kind of thing for some reason.
| YawningAngel wrote:
| Thanks, those are very cogent criticisms I wasn't aware
| of and I appreciate you taking the time to source them
| thoroughly
| hnbad wrote:
| To be fair, the problem with nuclear power in Germany is bigger
| than that the existing nuclear plants are being shut down. It's
| actually a good idea to shut them down eventually as they're
| old and inefficient. Calling them "fully functioning" is a bit
| of a rose tinted glasses type of situation.
|
| The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more recent
| nuclear power plants due to public pressure and instead just
| extended the lifetimes of the existing ones for decades to
| compensate. We could have built better and SAFER nuclear power
| plants but because that would have lost voters we instead had
| to extend the lifetimes again and again.
|
| All polluting industries have their own tactics to deflect
| public attention. In Germany coal succeeded at deflecting that
| attention towards nuclear. The Ruhr region has a romanticized
| nostalgia for its history of coal mining whereas most people
| associate nuclear power with Chernobyl (or more recently
| Fukushima, which really just culturally echoed the existing
| memories of Chernobyl), the nuclear bombings of Nagasaki and
| Hiroshima and the threat of global thermonuclear war while
| being smack in the middle of the Iron Curtain (almost
| literally, with the Berlin Wall separating both sides of the
| conflict).
|
| I don't know to what extent the coal industry is actually
| involved in this, but there is an almost patriotic attitude
| towards coal plants in contrast with the horrified panic
| surrounding nuclear. Meanwhile solar is mostly seen as a way to
| cut down on electric bills by installing pannels on your own
| roof and wind power is a "blight on the countryside" and
| "health risk" (because of noise pollution, strobing shadows and
| of course killing migratory birds). Some of this seems to be
| finally changing but the "man on the street" will likely still
| prefer coal over all other forms of energy for no good reason.
| lispm wrote:
| > The bigger problem is that Germany doesn't have any more
| recent nuclear power plants due to public pressure
|
| France hasn't either and they don't have public pressure
| against it. The are still trying to build a single one, being
| a decade late and billions more expensive.
|
| > or more recently Fukushima, which really just culturally
| echoed the existing memories of Chernobyl
|
| Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in the Ukraine
| which is literally under fire from Russia.
|
| We are not far away from a new Fukushima, but this time in
| Europe.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/both-working-
| reactors-o...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/25/zaporizhzhia-n.
| ..
| fuoqi wrote:
| >Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in the Ukraine
| which is literally under fire from Russia.
|
| It's hilarious how the Western politicians and mass media
| seriously blame Russia for shelling a nuclear plant which
| it controls for a number of months. And a lot of people
| either blindly trust this narrative, or intentionally
| spread misinformation with the sole goal to demonize Russia
| as much as possible. It reminds me how Donetsk rebels were
| blamed for shelling of civilians in territories which they
| control.
|
| It clearly shows how far we are in the post-truth world.
| Even a tiny bit of critical thinking is enough to
| understand who truly does the shelling, but titles like
| "Ukrainian Army shells a nuclear plant" are too
| inconvenient for the current political climate.
|
| As far as I know, the goal of shelling (which for the time
| being does not target the reactors or the spent fuel
| storage) is to discourage Russia from disconnecting the
| Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from the Ukrainian grid and
| connect it with the Russian grid instead.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| > And a lot of people either blindly trust this
| narrative, or intentionally spread misinformation with
| the sole goal to demonize Russia as much as possible.
|
| No one needs to demonise a country that commits genocide
| and has its military rape children, the Russians are
| plenty good at demonising themselves.
|
| > As far as I know, the goal of shelling (which for the
| time being does not target the reactors or the spent fuel
| storage) is to discourage Russia from disconnecting the
| Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from the Ukrainian grid and
| connect it with the Russian grid instead.
|
| The goal of the shelling _is_ to disconnect the power
| plant, the Russians are shelling the plant to try and
| cause issues with the connection to the Ukrainian grid
| which they successfully did in the past couple days.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| But why don't they just cut the connection at the plant.
| Agreed about demonizing themselves, they do.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| > But why don't they just cut the connection at the
| plant. Agreed about demonizing themselves, they do.
|
| This assumes Russia is a rational actor, they could want
| to do it and try and have leverage to blame the
| Ukrainians they could want to do it and try and cause a
| disaster and blame the Ukrainians.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That's very rational, actually. Not very nice, though.
| fuoqi wrote:
| >No one needs to demonise a country that commits genocide
| and has its military rape children,
|
| "Genocide" became a meaningless word because it's used
| willy-nilly similarly to "terrorism". Even if we are to
| trust number of civilian deaths reported by Western and
| Ukrainian sources it's really far from being "genocide".
| IIRC in relative terms, the US invasion of Iraq with
| subsequent fight against ISIS is closer to "genocide"
| than the invasion of Ukraine.
|
| And as for "rape children", it's yet another blatant
| demonization. The lies became so toxic, Zelensky even had
| to fire Denisova, the person responsible for distributing
| most of such claims without properly supporting them with
| evidence. Most of "Russian soldiers rape children"
| articles you read in the Western media were citing
| Denisova.
|
| >The goal of the shelling _is_ to disconnect the power
| plant
|
| Oh wow... Are you incapable of critical thinking? Like at
| all? Russians can always physically cut wires in the
| territory they control.
|
| If they wanted, they could've easily bombed every
| substation in Ukraine with its missiles. But because they
| do have some humanitarian considerations, they don't do
| it (unlike some other countries). As we can see, Russia
| has no techincal trouble bombing stationary objects as
| far as the westernmost Ukraine.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| > "Genocide" became a meaningless word because it's used
| willy-nilly similarly to "terrorism". Even if we are to
| trust number of civilian deaths reported by Western and
| Ukrainian sources it's really far from being "genocide".
| IIRC in relative terms, the US invasion of Iraq with
| subsequent fight against ISIS is closer to "genocide"
| than the invasion of Ukraine.
|
| Genocide has a definition and even basing our assertions
| of just what Russia is admitting that they are doing they
| meet the definition of genocide, its not meaningless it
| just has a broader definition then most people know.
|
| You can read the definition of genocide from here.
|
| >>
| https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml
|
| >> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the
| following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
| or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious
| group, as such:
|
| >> Killing members of the group;
|
| >> Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of
| the group;
|
| >> Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
| life calculated to bring about its physical destruction
| in whole or in part;
|
| >> Imposing measures intended to prevent births within
| the group;
|
| >> Forcibly transferring children of the group to another
| group.
|
| You could argue about some of the points but Russia
| _proudly_ admits they are kidnapping Ukrainian children
| and forcibly relocating them to Russia. So they meet
| point 5 of the UN definition of genocide.
|
| > And as for "rape children", it's yet another blatant
| demonization. The lies became so toxic, Zelensky even had
| to fire Denisova, the person responsible for distributing
| most of such claims without properly supporting them with
| evidence. Most of "Russian soldiers rape children"
| articles you read in the Western media were citing
| Denisova.
|
| There are multiple counts of different atrocities that
| the Russians had committed if you want to discount the
| child rape go for it, but we plenty of evidence of Russia
| raping plenty of people in Ukraine.
|
| > Oh wow... Are you incapable of critical thinking? Like
| at all? Russians can always physically cut wires in the
| territory they control.
|
| Are you incapable of discussing something in a civil
| manner?. Please read the guidelines for hacker news
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| > If they wanted, they could've easily bombed every
| substation in Ukraine with its missiles. But because they
| do have some humanitarian considerations, they don't do
| it (unlike some other countries). As we can see, Russia
| has no techincal trouble bombing stationary objects as
| far as the westernmost Ukraine.
|
| Yes the country that is levelling cities, kidnapping and
| forcibly deporting children, and raping women (and
| allegedly children) has 'humanitarian considerations'.
|
| Russia regularly uses civilian deaths as a part of its
| war machine they are trying to do it to Ukraine like they
| did it too Chechnya in Grozny. It's why they force
| civilians to stay in the cities they capture.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Hasn't Zaporizhzhia been under Russian control for a while
| now? Why would they be shelling themselves? That doesn't
| even make sense.
| _kbh_ wrote:
| > Hasn't Zaporizhzhia been under Russian control for a
| while now? Why would they be shelling themselves? That
| doesn't even make sense.
|
| Because the Russians are trying to disconnect the plant
| from the Ukrainian grid or cause a disaster they
| specifically said they could cause a disaster if they
| wanted to.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Currently we think about the nuclear fleet in the Ukraine
| which is literally under fire from Russia.
|
| The 1938 Yellow River flood (Chinese: Hua Yuan Kou Jue Ti
| Shi Jian , literally "Huayuankou embankment breach
| incident") was a flood created by the Nationalist
| Government in central China during the early stage of the
| Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid
| advance of Japanese forces. One million dead.
|
| So by that logic you should be against hydroelectric dams,
| becauae they've been used in warfare for centuries.
|
| One would think the chief problem in that equasion is war,
| not infrastructure
| phtrivier wrote:
| > they don't have public pressure against it
|
| There _is_ public pressure against nuclear, but it's at
| 50/50 vs support for nuclear. It has become a mostly
| partisan topic.
|
| > We are not far away from a new Fukushima, but this time
| in Europe.
|
| Except we technically _already_ had "Fukushima in Europe"
| 40 years ago, and for most people, life just went on.
|
| I agree that if anything goes bad a the Ukrainian plant
| (FSM forbids), the politicians who have been pro-nuclear in
| the past few years will have a hard time keeping face, and
| the sentiments would change, and the experts would spent
| some unconfortable interviews.
|
| However, I can not blame government for being even more
| scared at Union-wide blackouts than at a local incident at
| a plant.
|
| The latter is horrible, and puts you at the mercy of winds,
| but _has been managed in the past_.
|
| The former gives me worst nightmares (than the other
| scenario that also gives me nightmares.)
|
| Let's all remember it made _sense_ to live in Pompei in 79.
| lispm wrote:
| > but it's at 50/50 vs support for nuclear
|
| where is the pressure in France against nuclear? I can
| remember civil war like situations at construction sites
| in Germany years ago. A political movement that spawned a
| new party which now is, again, in a ruling coalition.
| BurningPenguin wrote:
| > there is an almost patriotic attitude towards coal plants
|
| As a German, i'm wondering where you got that idea from...
| Because pretty much every poll i know of, is in support of
| turning off coal plants.
| jamil7 wrote:
| I think both can be true and it might be more region
| specific. My girlfriend was born in the Ruhrgebiet and a
| lot of her family and friends family worked in the coal
| industry and were well taken care of when the plants were
| shut down. While they're not pro-coal or wouldn't poll that
| way I think there probably is more of a sentimental
| connection to it than to nuclear which that generation
| tends to associate with Chernobyl.
| cardanome wrote:
| The German Green Party was basically founded on anti-nuclear
| sentiment. The older members see it as their absolute life goal
| to stop nuclear power. They would rather see everything burn to
| the ground than change their mind.
|
| As long as they are in government any compromise will be
| difficult.
|
| Also, the situation in Germany is much worse than people from
| the outside think. Our best-case scenarios actually plan for
| pretty brutal energy saving cuts. People will be fully expected
| to wear multiple layers of clothing in their own homes because
| apparently having a warm home is now considered a luxury.
|
| Other than hoping for a early peace in Ukraine I don't really
| anything that could solve the issues. I guess we will just have
| to tough it out.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| You make it sound like it's just the greens. In reality, it
| was a conservative Christian Democrat lead government that
| decided to get rid of nuclear power. Together with SPD, the
| socialists. Both are moderate parties and quite
| representative of the German attitude towards nuclear. There
| hasn't been a government without either SPD or CDU leading
| it. No other party has ever supplied a chancellor in post war
| Germany. And you'd be wrong to assume FDP is very pro-
| nuclear.
|
| The current government features SPD (labour), the Greens, and
| the FDP (conservative). They have their work cut out but it's
| not an impossible job.
|
| Nuclear might get a temporary and short extension of life in
| Germany but that 8GW is not going to matter a whole lot
| relative to the tens of GW of gas that are used for
| electricity and the many GW more that are being used for
| heating. The numbers just don't add up. Short term it helps
| as a stop gap solution but long term there's a need for many
| tens of GW of additional capacity. Most of that inevitably is
| going to be wind and solar. Gas is a complete non starter at
| this point. And coal is quite expensive and coal supplies
| also are a bit tricky as most of that actually also came from
| Russia.
|
| The Ukrainian crisis is basically succeeding in making the
| Germans go cold turkey on gas and coal in a hurry. It's going
| to be disruptive and expensive but they are going to get it
| done much earlier than they were originally planning even a
| year ago. The disruption will be mainly to industry which
| will suffer most of the consequences of high prices and
| limited availability of gas. However, that will cause
| industry to respond by investing in reducing their dependency
| on those energy sources. Once that takes effect, the
| transition is permanent. Probably, ten years from now, most
| coal production in Germany will be gone; most gas heating and
| electricity will be gone and what little remains will be
| powered using expensive imports. Some of which might still
| come from Russia.
| cardanome wrote:
| > Most of that inevitably is going to be wind and solar.
| Gas is a complete non starter at this point. And coal is
| quite expensive and coal supplies also are a bit tricky as
| most of that actually also came from Russia.
|
| Wind and Solar have the drawback of not being a constant or
| reliable source of energy. Yes, they provide cheap and
| clean energy but not always when you need it.
|
| Yes, the solution would be to save the energy when you need
| it BUT we don't have that, yet. I really hope we will
| figure something out but we need not face reality: The tech
| is not there yet. It might take decades that we don't have.
|
| This is so frustrating to argue with people. Like, I really
| like your optimism but we don't have a saving solution. We
| have some ideas but scaling them up towards the scope that
| we actually need is not easily done.
|
| I really wish you were right but the facts don't add add.
|
| > However, that will cause industry to respond by investing
| in reducing their dependency on those energy sources.
|
| Since when do they know that they should be transitioning
| to other sources? Decades? What have the done? Nothing.
|
| As long there are other countries with cheap gas I am not
| so optimistic. Yes, some will make the transitions, other
| will move production to other countries and lot's of them
| we will simply lose. The next years will be brutal.
|
| Only when the international community actually starts to
| take climate change and dependence on gas more serious will
| we see some change.
| someguydave wrote:
| > The German Green Party was basically founded on anti-
| nuclear sentiment.
|
| As an American it is not hard to see how these hardened anti-
| nuclear activists in Germany benefit Russia. It is also not
| hard to see the close political and historic proximity
| between the Soviet Union and the Green party.
|
| It seems that average Germans do not make that connection.
| Why?
| foepys wrote:
| This is revisionist history and your completely false
| accusations put it near Russian propaganda territory. I
| challenge you to find even a single proof for what you
| wrote.
|
| The Greens were the only party calling for embargoes
| against Russia to stop importing Russian gas all together
| in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. They also opposed Nord
| Stream 2 from the beginning. They inherited the clusterfuck
| the conservatives left them when they got elected in 2021
| and now have to deal with what they have.
|
| The conservatives killed the German solar industry (world
| leader at the time in the 2000s) and also killed the wind
| turbine industry shortly after. Reason? China was cheaper.
|
| The Greens were also the first to call for weapons for
| Ukraine while other parties struggled to even make
| statements.
| someguydave wrote:
| Russian propagandists would accuse Russia of secret
| interference in European politics?
|
| Of course evidence on these matters is going to be hard
| to find.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/19/russi
| a-s...
| foepys wrote:
| Your "proof" is not supporting anything.
| Environmentalists can be anybody.
|
| Russia didn't want Germany to utilize fracking gas
| because this would mean that Germany doesn't need Russia
| anymore. The Green party opposes _any_ gas where
| possible. Just because Russia financed a few fringe
| groups doesn 't mean that the Green party is in bed with
| Russia.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/nord-
| stream-2-die...
|
| This clearly proves that in June 2021 the Greens already
| predicted what would happen in 2022 and opposed the
| opening of Nord Stream 2 because of geopolitical and
| security risks.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| > Other than hoping for a early peace in Ukraine I don't
| really anything that could solve the issues. I guess we will
| just have to tough it out.
|
| Don't worry. The government is setting up all the right
| parameters for a revolution to replace them. Large parts of
| Germany, especially in the already government-critical east,
| are dependant on gas. Let October be the first cold month
| that hits us ... and the first grandma who decides she can't
| afford heating and freezes to death at night will make a
| splendid spark that will topple our pro-Ukrainian resolve.
| someguydave wrote:
| So you think Germans will not blame Russia for problems
| caused by the lack of Russian gas?
| cardanome wrote:
| Russia claims it would deliver as much gas as we need if
| we were to open Nordstream-2 though.
| someguydave wrote:
| The same Russia invading Europe on its eastern borders?
| Hasn't dependence on Russian gas earned some suspicions
| among ordinary Germans?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| Actually, Russia has a track record of being a reliable
| provider of gas in worse situations than we are in today,
| reaching back to times when the Cold War was at its
| hottest. Outside of big media and some very
| ideologically-kosher circles, public opinion seems to be
| 'leave us our peace about that whole war business, make
| sure energy prices are sinking to an acceptable level
| again', with the mood becoming more explosive with every
| news article that tries to get us into the NATO party
| line.
| locallost wrote:
| The electricity you don't spend is electricity you don't need
| to produce. We don't really need electricity, we need to do
| useful stuff with it. Doing laundry with electricity is useful,
| as is having a computer network. Are massive glowing screens in
| the middle of the night useful? That would be a very long
| discussion, but I say no because any local usefulness is
| outweighed by their negative impact overall.
|
| Saving electricity is just as useful as adding new capacity,
| and it's faster, cheaper and easier. As a comparison, the US
| spends about twice as much electricity as Germany per capita
| [1].
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici...
| hbossy wrote:
| Actually they are as you need to maintain some base load on a
| grid.
| _ph_ wrote:
| No, only if your grid is composed of "slow" power plants,
| you have to. That is why for a long time, all night-time
| energy usage was encouraged, to raise the base load.
| Ironically the outcome is used as an argument against
| renewables as it "but what about the base load"? :p
|
| And if not completely dominated by slow power plants, there
| is always enough load on the grid to keep it stable.
| Especially in a day and age where there is a lot of
| storage, which can absorb some excess power production.
| locallost wrote:
| If I understood correctly, I don't think it's a good idea
| to waste energy to cover base load. It can be used for
| useful things instead.
| swah wrote:
| Here in Brazil, as everywhere, there are some ultra bright signs
| now - even gas prices - that are as annoying to me as hearing
| loud music in a otherwise calm place. Yet no one gives a f* about
| this.
|
| I wonder if most people don't even notice this?
| anentropic wrote:
| If it was up to me I'd just ban outdoor advertising outright
| BirAdam wrote:
| Especially on roadways. Ppl suck at piloting vehicles, we
| shouldn't be purposefully giving them distractions ffs.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why stop there, just ban it inside too.
| cbxyp wrote:
| This will increase car accidents. Call it a guess.
| hnbad wrote:
| How?
| jansan wrote:
| This is a cult. Government is implementing micromanaging measure
| which may reduce energy consumtion by 1%, but on the other hand
| they do not want to extend the lifetime of nuclear reactors for a
| few years to help transition, because those 3% that they
| contribute are not worth it.
| yrro wrote:
| They should do both
| louwrentius wrote:
| That 1% would really matter a lot so that's an argument in
| favor.
|
| All the smaller things add up too.
|
| Nuclear is back on the table in Germany afaik. Not sure if they
| really will backtrack, but even if they mess up the nuclear
| thing, this signage decision is 100% a good thing.
| martin_a wrote:
| > Nuclear is back on the table in Germany afaik.
|
| Not really, no. Just some irrelevant talk, not even the power
| companies want to keep those things running.
| contravariant wrote:
| I don't care, any time those billboards aren't flooding their
| immediate area with advertising and light the better.
| malermeister wrote:
| Dude 1% being wasted on annoying your citizenry and creating
| light pollution is a huge deal. How is that micromanaging?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This is an affective rationing of electricity at night when
| demand is lower. So this is a worrying development and feels like
| managed decline and a testament to the catastrophe that is the
| German energy policy...
| peaslock wrote:
| How much electricity can plausibly be saved this way? And how
| does that compare to the energy required to reprogram and
| possibly renew all these signs?
| kreco wrote:
| You also need to consider all the _future_ signs as well in the
| equation.
| morsch wrote:
| About 113 GWh, apparently. Total power usage is 400-500 TWh. So
| a drop in a bucket, but many of these measures will add up to a
| couple of percent.
|
| No idea how much energy it takes to reprogram/renew the signs.
| If they just turn them off, very little, I suppose.
| martin_a wrote:
| > How much electricity can plausibly be saved this way?
|
| About third of what was used before.
|
| > And how does that compare to the energy required to reprogram
| and possibly renew all these signs?
|
| That's cost of doing business and a one-time thing.
| peaslock wrote:
| > About third of what was used before.
|
| How much is that as a fraction of the total electricity
| consumption?
| martin_a wrote:
| According to the source linked in the top comment, we are
| looking at a total consumption of 113.000 MWh per year for
| those displays. One third of that is at least around 30.000
| MWh of saved energy.
| peaslock wrote:
| So 0.005% at 560 TWh total consumption.
| martin_a wrote:
| Well, in that case we shouldn't improve anything as long
| as children are starving to death in this world. That
| should be our only and biggest "bug" to fix. Feel free to
| recommend another one, but we'll pause all other
| improvements meanwhile. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| lament76 wrote:
| How about not jeopardizing the economy by ever more
| constraints and instead investing in better energy
| technology?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Maine banned all billboard style advertising decades ago.
| Our economy functions just fine thank you.
| [deleted]
| tpmx wrote:
| The action is super visible though. Sometimes that's the
| most important thing. /s
| megous wrote:
| Savings start with all non-essential things first.
| defrost wrote:
| A lot.
|
| A coder peddling the entire time required to adjust the timing
| would be lucky to power a single billboard for a night.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Digital billboards use thousands of watts, overall, that's
| several times the energy consumption of a typical household,
| the power bill is thousands of euros a year.
|
| So I guess that's worth it, even if some additional hardware is
| required.
| grnmamba wrote:
| The South Africanization of Europe is going along nicely.
| muhehe wrote:
| Lowering energy consumption is a neat goal, but most of these
| billboards should be outright banned for many other reasons.
| hnbad wrote:
| The headline is a bit confusing. Looking at the article, the
| regulation was written in Germany but is passed by the EU
| (suggesting this will not only affect Germany but also other EU
| member countries that implement it?) and it is not just about
| "digital signage" but all illuminted displays in public spaces
| that aren't necessary for regulating traffic. So this would
| likely also affect neon signs and illuminated non-digital
| billboards.
|
| The part about there being confusion in whether this applies to
| shop windows likely also is more about whether this applies to
| LED displays and showcases in shop windows because they're
| technically not "in a public space" due to being in the shop but
| would clearly be affected if they weren't.
|
| The headline had me wonder why shops would have to turn off the
| e-ink displays on shelves indicating the prices of items after
| 10pm given that most shops that have them (e.g. supermarkets) are
| closed by that time anyway. The massive LED walls you see in big
| cities like New York are so rare in most of Germany I didn't
| think of them when I read "digital signage".
| immibis wrote:
| e-ink displays are electronically controlled passive displays
| that use zero power to retain an image. Refreshing them to
| blank every night and back to the price tag every morning
| would, in fact, be a waste of power. That's why these price
| tags are able to be powered by single coin cells.
| ErneX wrote:
| Exactly, in Spain the mandate for shops to turn off lights from
| 10pm started August 10th
| yrgulation wrote:
| "suggesting this will not only affect Germany but also other EU
| member countries that implement it?"
|
| yes, usually germany leverages the eu into pushing other
| countries in doing what it wants. such is the eu.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| The ads angle, in my opinion, is the least important piece of
| this news.
|
| What shocks me really is how Germany, one of the (if not THE)
| most advanced societies on Earth, came to a point where it can
| not produce enough energy to sustain it's needs.
|
| Western civilization has a masochistic saviour complex, and will
| freeze to death in winter in the name of "saving the world". I,
| living in a 3rd world country, can only look and fear whats
| coming in the future.
|
| If the germanies of the world decide to voluntarily fall, who
| will become the superpowers in the next decades/centuries? It's a
| bizarre stupidity contest.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Germany (and not only) is only wealthy by extracting vast
| amounts of wealth from other countries. This is done through
| unequal exchange, like poorly paid immigrants in Germany,
| ownership of factories in other countries with low wages,
| extracting resources at tiny prices from other countries,
| giving out loans at usury rates to countries who have been made
| to have no other choice, etc.
|
| Germany is failing to generate enough energy because the system
| of exploitation it is based on is beginning to fail under its
| own internal contradictions.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| What a load of BS. Of the top of my mind:
|
| -Germany pratically "invented" 100% of the chemistry we use
| today. Pharmaceuticals, industrial chemistry, you name it.
|
| -The fertilizer revolution that made it possible for today's
| 8 billion humans to exist.
|
| - Rocket science, and jet propulsion technology, that made
| the world the small thing it is today.
|
| - The internal combustion engine, that made it possible to
| cheaply deliver the food the fertilizers made cheap...
|
| Germany is rich because it's people are industrious and
| smart. What the hell, why does entitled 1st world millenials
| have become soviet lunatics?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| German workers did all that, while they themselves are
| exploited by German capitalists. The same capitalists then
| extended their exploitation to other countries, where they
| could get away with even worse. I recommend you read
| Lenin's Imperialism.
|
| I'm from a poor country, still exploited by Germany,
| Austria, France, Britain, Italy, Hungary, the US, etc. My
| country used to have collective control over resources and
| industry, but that was destroyed in 89 and we were forced
| to privatise, deregulate and be in debt again.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| It was "destroyed" by whom really? I thought the
| collective control of "the means of production" was such
| an amazing thing that it could never lead to the
| "destruction" of a society that engages in it, who would
| have imagined.
|
| I'm also from a poor country, but at least down here the
| powers that control everything weren't dumb enough to let
| this place become a collectivized wasteland.
|
| Being poor is alright, at least here you can work hard
| and give a better life to your kids than your parents
| were able to give you.
|
| Just like you know what, the cities that have a large
| population of german immigrants down here do. These
| cities have in general a GDP per capta that is 3 times
| larger than the average GDP in my country. It seems like
| those guys are just industrious, smart, and have a
| culture of hard work you know, who would have thought...
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Most countries actually grew tremendously with
| collectivisation. My country got electrified, food
| production was vastly increased, industry was developed,
| large numbers of homes were built, etc. It's just that
| they started from very poor in the first place and
| developed in spite of foreign aggression by much richer
| countries.
|
| Rich countries force poor countries to do things all the
| time. There's propaganda, coups, sanctions or even
| outright invasion. Some countries manage to resist, like
| Vietnam. Others don't, like Eastern Europe or Libya.
|
| The problem isn't German workers. The problem is the
| economic system which subjugates workers in general and
| workers in poor countries in particular.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| So who destroyed your country in 89? Maybe it was the
| economic system that subjugated the workers? I'm lost
| here. And I'm done, discussing politics/economics on the
| internet is the dumbest thing anyone can do, every 2 or 3
| years I make this mistake. Have a nice life.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Germany is well able to produce enough energy to sustain its
| needs. It actually had to produce quite a surplus this year so
| far to support the European grid as a lot of French nuclear
| power plants had to be shut down for unscheduled maintenance
| and due to the drought. But of course, gas is scarce, as Russia
| is only supplying a fraction of its normal supply, so there is
| a lot of reason to be energy efficient. Also, as a consequence
| of the shortage, energy prices are quite up. If there was ever
| a time to get serious about saving energy, now would be it.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > Germany is well able to produce enough energy to sustain
| its needs
|
| > But of course, gas is scarce, as Russia is only supplying a
| fraction of its normal supply
|
| So what energy can Germany actually produce on it's own?
| Because this just makes it sound like Russia is doing the
| actual work here.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Depends on what you call "producing energy". Germany is
| generating enough electricity for its needs. Of course,
| that depends on importing fuels, like for most other
| countries, including the US. But it is already able to
| generate 50% of the electricity by renewables, which is
| rather high amongst the industrial nations.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| without a real army and without power... what did the Germans do?
| I would have thought that they are smart and efficient people.
| yrgulation wrote:
| The people are smart, but the country is not.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| > This means out-of-home advertising displays at bus stops, train
| stations and in underpasses could still be operated according to
| invidis managing director Florian Rotberg. "Most contracts
| explicitly require outdoor advertising companies to operate
| backlit city light posters and screens well into the night to
| provide passengers with more security in the waiting area. Autumn
| will show whether and how the exemptions will be used," he said.
|
| Most contracts require lighting because otherwise people can't be
| spammed with ads without their consent at night and they're
| pretending it's for public safety. I hope whoever decides on this
| comes down hard on them for having the audacity to pretend
| lighting from ads is anywhere close to helping public safety.
| They can get bent about contracts, contracts do not supersede the
| law.
| [deleted]
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Well, I'd be selling any stock you had in Stroer, they dominate
| German OOH advertising.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| It isn't the ads, really: They are realistically speaking of
| lighting in bus stops, underpasses, and train stations.
|
| Lighting in those areas, which tend to be dark or populated,
| helps folks feel safer. Taking away the ads makes these places
| darker, and I can understand not suddenly having nervous folks
| not take the bus or train.
|
| Though, I agree: They can get bent about the contracts. The
| proper response is to install proper lighting without the ads.
| Hopefully this is in the works.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| It's not only for safety for the passengers. The light also
| helps the driver to see the bus stops and stations.
| Especially bus driver who often switch routes seem to have
| demand for this.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Still, emitting light through a thick diffuser and a poster
| is not as efficient as just putting up a light.
| vasco wrote:
| If you put a poster in front, the poster pays for the
| light.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Agreed completely. As I said in the last bit: The proper
| solution is to put up proper lighting.
| nano9 wrote:
| I can see this degenerating into some sort of efficiency
| metric that will be engineered around. For instance, it
| wouldn't be too hard to take the Google logo and make it
| a proper "light" with some LEDs. Or simply write out the
| name in white LEDs.
| adrianN wrote:
| Those areas are explicitly excluded from this.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Yeah, the person I replied to quoted it and was upset about
| it. I was replying to their reaction.
| Bewelge wrote:
| Those areas are the only areas I can think of that have LED
| signs in Germany though. Of course not entirely sure but I
| don't think there's a single one of those large LED screens
| (like the ones on time square) in Hamburg. Maybe
| Berlin/Frankfurt have some?
|
| Unless I'm completely blanking on these signs being used
| elsewhere, excluding the bus-stop signs sounds like this
| will not have any noticeable effect apart from providing a
| nice sounding headline.
| DocTomoe wrote:
| In very rural southern Germany, I know several
| electronics stores who have 7x4-meter panels, and I know
| a spot where they are mounted to a mast next to a federal
| road (with farmland around it). People always think
| "Times Square", but ultimately, the problem is bigger for
| the displays are smaller.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >but I don't think there's a single one of those large
| LED screens (like the ones on time square) in Hamburg
|
| yes, I also did not notice any of those here in Hamburg.
| there is a smaller one in Harvestehude; even those are so
| rare that I clearly noticed this one.
| adrianN wrote:
| Berlin definitely has some.
| soco wrote:
| So basically the authorities outsourced a part of public
| safety to the ad companies?
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Pretty much. The article says that the contracts require
| the lighting so that the area is illuminated. I'm gonna
| guess, however, that they wouldn't keep up the lighting if
| it weren't required.
|
| Which really isn't so surprising, considering how pervasive
| advertising is in many societies.
| soco wrote:
| Agree, the contracts require the _lighting_ , not the
| _advertising_.
| yourusername wrote:
| It goes further than that. They outsourced public
| transportation to private companies and those private
| companies outsourced the busstops to ad companies. At least
| here the bus shelters are owned by ad companies.
| soco wrote:
| Public lighting is still another topic, I thought.
| Because many things are done by private companies (most?)
| but still those are mandated to provide a certain quality
| of service.
| Bewelge wrote:
| Often the entire bus stops are financed by those
| advertising there. At least that has always been the
| argument against finally disallowing tobacco/smoking ads in
| Germany because then smaller communities would (allegedly)
| not be able to finance these things.
| soco wrote:
| So they could not get any other advertiser blurb on those
| panels? Difficult to believe.
| Bewelge wrote:
| I'm sure that some communes might struggle paying for
| something that's been paid for by someone else in the
| past but the argument really lacks if it's used to
| justify keeping tobacco ads around.
|
| Like you said, other advertisers would probably happily
| replace them and even if that's not the case I think a
| country as wealthy as Germany should be able to find some
| way to finance bus stops ;-)
| kmlx wrote:
| > they're pretending it's for public safety
|
| > to pretend lighting from ads is anywhere close to helping
| public safety
|
| i thought it was a known fact that more light during nighttime
| equals more safety. there's a reason violent crimes happen on
| low lit alleyways. not that germans are actually out and about
| after 6pm :)
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Having lit signs turn off at certain time seems like a good idea
| to me. Reduce power and light pollution at the same time. What
| are the cons?
| askinforafriend wrote:
| zahma wrote:
| I mean I guess this has energy-saving potential, but isn't it
| just nice to have some darkness for the environment's sake? It's
| pretty awful living in such brightly lit places that have
| psychological effects on humans and animals alike. For example in
| humans light pollution alters our melatonin hormonal levels, so
| sleep is impacted. It can also thwart animal migration.
|
| https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/light-poll...
| lxgr wrote:
| Having lived in close proximity of an especially
| bright/large/flashy sign, I'm very much in favor of the ban.
| phartenfeller wrote:
| Here in Germany, there was recently a leak in the news. It said
| that a single LED sign consumes as much energy as 10 single
| households[0]. Of course, the companies don't want to give any
| official information. That is pretty high for no real value for
| society in my opinion...
|
| [0] https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/technologie/led-
| reklame...
| mlindner wrote:
| What's the alternative with some high power lights aimed at a
| non-LED sign? I'd expect for similar brightness the power usage
| is going to be almost the same. Maybe even more because you're
| relying on reflected light rather than emitted light.
| sidkshatriya wrote:
| > That is pretty high for no real value for society in my
| opinion...
|
| There is a widespread belief that Advertising serves no purpose
| to humanity.
|
| Advertising is like anything in life: In high doses it is
| harmful. In lower doses it is useful. If there are regulators
| in your country that prevent advertisers from making false
| claims, even better.
|
| Advertising has helped me hone onto products and services in my
| whole life that I've found useful. Many times I would have not
| been able to find the product or service if it were not for
| that advertisement. [You could claim that I was "brainwashed"
| into buying that product but that could be applied to any
| interaction in life. For example, if my spouse convinced me to
| do something, it usually means the logic was sound and it is
| highly unlikely that I was brainwashed to do her bidding].
|
| No one likes being aggressively marketed to. No one likes being
| duped. But there is a space for advertising that is gentler,
| honest and educational.
|
| Think of advertising as a way of companies to say "Hey! here's
| something we're proud of -- please have a look. By selling to
| you, the customer, we can make a profit and you can get the
| benefit from our product". Advertising can be a win-win.
|
| Advertising can allow manufacturing at scale. It has helped
| bring about many the marvels of technology that would have cost
| millions of dollars a few decades ago to be just a few hundred
| (e.g. our laptops that are more powerful than supercomputers of
| of the 1990s). Without advertising many companies may not have
| reached the sales volume to keep bringing down costs year after
| year.
|
| I could go on. Adverting is useful. Bad actors must be weeded
| out. However, Advertising in itself is useful.
| phartenfeller wrote:
| Good point, ads can be really useful. For me, the question is
| how much we are exposed to it, in which context, and the
| transparency about things being ads.
|
| Examples: - Obvious ads vs. sneaky product placements - There
| should be spaces/times without ads allowed
|
| Another thing that makes me wonder is big know companies
| (soda for example) constantly making ads. This is not the
| case of "Hey we made something new" as literally everybody
| knows the product for years. This constant cognitive exposure
| has some similarities to propaganda. We are not allowed to
| forget them.
|
| > But there is a space for advertising that is gentler,
| honest and educational.
|
| This pretty much sums it up really good.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > But there is a space for advertising that is gentler,
| honest and educational.
|
| There is no such thing as honest advertising. The conflict of
| interest is inherent. The best information comes from third
| parties but even that gets corrupted by advertisers
| eventually.
|
| > Think of advertising as a way of companies to say "Hey!
| here's something we're proud of -- please have a look.
|
| When I want companies talking to me about products, I'll
| visit their website or I'll open their store app. In those
| cases it's not even advertising but _information_. I asked to
| see the products. Advertising is by definition an intrusion,
| uninvited.
|
| Most of the time I don't want companies talking to me about
| offers. Their insistence is abuse.
|
| That ideal of advertising you described is virtually non-
| existent. It's generally manipulation of the lowest sort
| concocted by sociopathic people.
| samatman wrote:
| > _There is no such thing as honest advertising. The
| conflict of interest is inherent._
|
| This is obviously untrue. Not only can a merchant engage in
| only honest advertising, there are those who do.
|
| There's a conflict of interest every time a married man has
| a drink with an interested woman. That doesn't mean he
| cheats.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| This assumes that there are new useful products out there.
| There might be, but I don't see ads for any. I see ads for
| overpriced shit all the time.
| atwood22 wrote:
| > Think of advertising as a way of companies to say "Hey!
| here's something we're proud of -- please have a look.
|
| Do you like being approach on the street by solicitors?
| Personally, I hate it. When I'm walking, I appreciate
| undisturbed personal space. I feel the same way about
| advertising. I don't care that the company is proud. I want
| my personal space undisturbed. You can show me something if I
| ask, but to assume I care to see anything you have to offer
| is rude.
| amelius wrote:
| > There is a widespread belief that Advertising serves no
| purpose to humanity.
|
| It's worse than that. Advertising persuades people to buy
| ever more stuff they don't need, thereby causing enormous
| damage to the planet. Advertising is among the top of things
| we should ban to reduce climate change.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| > However, Advertising in itself is useful.
|
| Total disagree. New trends, improvements communicate itself
| one or the other way. If I want a new X, I'd rather research
| on my own, best are objective tests, or worse then selective
| advertisements I choose to view.
|
| Even non-aggressive mild advertisements that just try to
| snatch my attention involuntarily are just not needed and a
| pain. The world could be much better without that crap.
|
| I don't buy the argument that advertisements were necessary
| for manufacutring at scale, any source?
|
| > Think of advertising as a way of companies to say "Hey!
| here's something we're proud of -- please have a look.
|
| Erm wtf what, no, just no, leave me alone please. I want to
| find you in a dedicated magazine / tests / reviews if your
| something is something I currently want, otherwise this
| attention grab is hostile.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _There is a widespread belief that advertising serves no
| purpose to humanity._
|
| This is highly political and that 'belief' is indeed often
| ideological.
|
| Free flow of information and awareness of products and
| services on offer is an important aspect of an open society
| and free market economics.
| andrepd wrote:
| Free flow of information is when big companies can wage
| psychological warfare on you without your consent.
| throw827474737 wrote:
| You cannot just put free flow of information on a par with
| awareness of products and services, lol?
|
| And the latter is fully achievable still without everything
| that is "advertising" today.
| r_hoods_ghost wrote:
| And beliefs that an open society, free flow of information
| and free market economics are good things are of course
| highly political and strongly ideological. They are just
| largely uncontested (at least amongst the types of people
| who read hn)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _They are just largely uncontested_
|
| I think this has a lot to do with the _fact_ that the
| alternatives that have been tried have historically been
| either failures or catastrophes.
| andrepd wrote:
| So much to be said about that trope... Are there
| seriously people who still believe in TINA? What a bleak
| way to see the world.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I'm curious about what alternative you have in mind if
| you think that living in an open and free society is
| bleak.
| andrepd wrote:
| But I don't think that the current society is open and
| free. It is _open-er_ and _freer_ than what it replaced.
| It is also open-er and freer than some proposed
| alternatives. It is _not_ the best, most open, and most
| free society that could ever be conceived.
|
| I don't like political arguments on hn but if you're
| truly interested I can try to summarise them when I get
| home later.
| igorkraw wrote:
| There is one thing that extremely easy way to retain the
| "benefit" you claim: make advertising opt-in. Truly,
| continuously opt-in. Every time there is an ad, you have to
| tap "yes, I'd like to see it" (or "yes, show all ads for this
| movie", but not across movies). If there is truly advantages
| to ads, people will choose to see them.
|
| I'd go even further: have different platforms compete as "and
| serving" places, basically opt-in targeted advertising sites.
| They aren't allowed to use any external data, just a
| questionnaire and your behaviour on the platform, and the
| user must choose to go to the site by entering it into their
| browser or looking it up on Google. No ads anywhere else.
|
| If ads are truly as beneficial as you describe, people will
| go for it. Let the market decide whether ads are good for the
| consumer
| nicoco wrote:
| But lying, manipulating your emotions, etc. are efficient
| ways of doing ads. If something is OK when done poorly and
| harmful when optimised, maybe it was a bad thing in the first
| place?
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| Well, how about opening an online plattform for advertising
| then?
|
| Stopp invading my space (public spaces, software, websites),
| and put ads there for people that are interested in being
| suggested products they might like. And, instead of tracking
| all my activity, put a form that I can fill out with the
| details I am comfortable with.
|
| Not gonna happen, because they're paying people and companies
| to annoy you with the ads almost nobody wants to see
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > But there is a space for advertising that is gentler,
| honest and educational.
|
| I don't disagree, but there are a few points that I see
| differently.
|
| First of all, I think that what you're looking for is
| promotion, that is based on someone or some entity promoting
| your products and services, putting their face on it and
| leveraging their reputation of connoisseur of the matter at
| hand. It's based on trust and works best especially for tech
| products
|
| Nobody buy smartphones based on adv, well except iPhone users
| that buy the brand iPhone - that could be seen as a
| confirmation of the trust based promotion, they trust Apple
| -, people watch reviews on YouTube channels that they trust.
|
| Advertising is low effort. it's usually someone writing a
| script for you, pretending to be you, that it is the company
| that is talking directly to you, but it's in fact an agency
| that wrote a claim and a story to tell, to actually sell, not
| promote, the service or product in question by exploiting
| your feelings.
|
| Secondly, I don't believe that advertising made laptops
| affordable, research did.
|
| Super computers still cost millions and are an order or two
| of magnitude more powerful than you regular laptop of today.
| yunohn wrote:
| > Nobody buy smartphones based on adv
|
| What?? If there ever was proof that HN is completely
| clueless about reality not empathetic of their fellow
| humans. Ads are not brainwashing.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > What?? If there ever was proof that HN is completely
| clueless about reality not empathetic of their fellow
| humans
|
| The simple answer is that the real disconnect is thinking
| that since someone comments on HN, he is some kind of a
| mythical creature.
|
| I am a middle aged man from Italy that saw mobile phones
| birth when was 20 already.
|
| Don't assume that your experience is my experience.
|
| Nobody I know closely knows what HN is, they ask me what
| phone to buy or which laptop, because I've always been
| the "techie" of the family/group of friends and because
| they care about not wasting their money but can't
| navigate the bullshit they see in the ads.
|
| I guess that "blast past fast" or "do what you can" don't
| really say anything about the device true capabilities
| and why one should spend their money to buy it.
|
| unless the reason is "I will buy whatever rich people
| buy" or "I like the colour of this one"
|
| Of course the iPhone ads work, because they don't promote
| the phone, they sell a way of life, a lifestyle, their
| target is the "cool kids" that want to be "content
| creators" and that appeals to their desire to be part of
| what is fashionable among their peers, but that's exactly
| what brainwashing is.
|
| Ads is brainwashing and it's scientifically weaponized
| against the reference target.
|
| repetita iuvant: they don't promote the product, they
| exploit your sentiments, desires, fears, whatever works,
| to make you buy the product. But are actually a bunch of
| lies.
| megous wrote:
| Consumers can be served better by independent review of
| products in magazines, etc. Or if you really want to by
| catalogues put together by sellers. (I used those when I was
| younger quite a lot to discover and buy new things.)
|
| The random road signs for biggest bank in the land, or one of
| the three telecom companies in the land, or for things like
| well known beverages is quite ridiculous. Almost everyone
| knows these companies exist already.
| andrepd wrote:
| > But there is a space for advertising that is gentler,
| honest and educational. Think of advertising as a way of
| companies to say "Hey! here's something we're proud of --
| please have a look. By selling to you, the customer, we can
| make a profit and you can get the benefit from our product".
|
| I cannot recall one _single_ advertisement I ever saw in my
| life, other than some institutional /non-profit ads, which
| remotely fits that idyllic description. So it's really a moot
| point. "What if advertising were just calm factual
| information", well but it's not! It's definitely not! It's
| psychological warfare of moderate-to-high intensity. So what
| use is pretending it's something it's not? It's very
| disingenuous to pretend it can ever be "gentle, honest, and
| educational" (lol)
|
| I also don't see how advertising is responsible for chip
| mass-production and Moore's law.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Are you thinking strictly in terms of massive, multi-
| national companies? For myself, it would be far more handy
| if I had seen ads for local plumbers, chimney repair,
| barbershops, etc. I try to support my local economy
| whenever I can, and I don't mind paying a premium for
| smaller shops since they _usually_ do a better job, or are
| at least incentivized to do so.
|
| When it comes to something like buying a car, I _don 't_
| want to be advertised to since the manufacturer of that
| product 1) isn't a part of my community and 2) isn't
| supported by the people in my area.
|
| I can absolutely think of cases where I would have liked to
| know what services are available for specific products,
| like chair making, or a project I have in mind, rather than
| having to ask around to figure out who even does it in my
| area. Obviously, I would still have to do some research to
| figure out if the person advertising is any good, but the
| fact that a small business has a budget for advertising is
| a very positive indicator that they are _at least_
| professional enough to have some revenue.
|
| Advertising, when it relates to something a small business
| can exist within, reduces the amount of time and effort I
| have to put in to seeing how many competitors are in that
| space. It's not something that I'm thrilled about, but it
| does have benefit within certain circumstance.
| alexb_ wrote:
| >I can absolutely think of cases where I would have liked
| to know what services are available for specific
| products, like chair making, or a project I have in mind,
| rather than having to ask around to figure out who even
| does it in my area.
|
| We had this, it was called phone books. And I guess a
| phone book is technically advertising, but there's
| clearly a difference between info and manipulation.
| amelius wrote:
| Yellow pages, also.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_pages
|
| I don't mind advertising whenever I am actively looking
| for something.
|
| What I have problems with is seeing ads when I don't want
| to see them.
| puchatek wrote:
| Yeah I'm happy to throw out that baby with the advertising
| bathwater. Fuck it, I'll even break the news to the few
| friends in advertising that society has decided to evolve and
| that their services won't be needed any longer. But
| unfortunately, ads are how people prefer to pay online so
| we're stuck with it.
| sorenjan wrote:
| They can also be RF noise nightmares because of the PWM they
| do.
| Beltiras wrote:
| I'm quite sure brand advertisers will not concur.
| malermeister wrote:
| And they can go fuck off if they don't.
|
| We're in a crisis and they want to waste energy we might need
| for heating households to manipulate people into buying shit
| they don't need?
|
| That's not exactly a position that'll get them a lot of
| sympathy.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > to manipulate people into buying shit they don't need?
|
| This is encouraged by our system, switching off screens at
| night won't change it. Attack the root cause not the very
| last symptom
| malermeister wrote:
| Attack it on all fronts.
| freilanzer wrote:
| Why not both? Energy can be saved here that is needlessly
| wasted.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It barely delays the inevitable, it's less than a drop in
| the bucket, everything you gain there will be instantly
| counteracted 10 fold somewhere else because we don't want
| to face reality.
|
| But sure, let's stop using plastic straws and switch off
| our routers at night while we continue absolutely
| ravaging this planet
| freilanzer wrote:
| This is part of "ravaging our planet". And if it will be
| counteracted then everything is useless anyway.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Of course, this is why the law is needed.
| phartenfeller wrote:
| Of course. Same with tobacco and oil companies working
| against transparency for smoke health risks and climate
| change.
| loonster wrote:
| A large portion of the advertising is to get people to
| switch brands. A smaller portion is to get new customers.
| Banning advertisement increases the profits for the already
| established brands (for at least the short term).
| andrepd wrote:
| I find that hard to believe, since most advertising is
| done by bigger brands.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Like higher quality / cheaper prices wouldn't spread by
| word of mouth... if anything advertising behemots are
| keeping actually improved products out of the spotlight
| by selling us whatever pays most in advertising costs,
| regardless of externalities.
| morsch wrote:
| Average power usage for a 1 person household in Germany is 1300
| kwh/year (roughly, numbers vary, but not to a degree that it
| matters).
|
| That's about 150W sustained. So 1500W for a large sign, that's
| like 150 high power LED light bulbs, I guess that checks out.
|
| Anything that reduces ads in the public sphere is fine by me.
| emn13 wrote:
| 1500W of LEDs is... rather bright; on the order of 150000
| lumen. I guess there will be significant losses perhaps, but
| I sure hope most signage is using a lot less than that.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| For context, this is what 100W of LED looks like [1]. Those
| signs don't come anywhere close to this.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsrAV1Qh4fs
| morsch wrote:
| That's what it looks like when you have a small module
| and put it in a flashlight. What does it look like as a
| 15m2 billboard?
| polycaster wrote:
| Not sure where this number comes from.
|
| Statistisches Bundesamt says it's 1,958 kwh.
| https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-
| Environment/Enviro...
|
| Interestingly, for 2 person households they state 3,196 kwh
| and for 3+ person households 4,919 kwh. Energy consumption
| scales worse than I expected. I assumed there would be more
| synergy in shared households.
| pvorb wrote:
| My household has seen 1800 kWh of electricity consumption
| in 2021, a year in which I worked a full-time job on a
| computer and two displays at home. So did my wife. We have
| two little children.
|
| While we might not be close to the average consumption in
| Germany, because our house is quite new, I'm regularly
| wondering what other households are doing with that much
| energy.
| morsch wrote:
| I googled it. Your source is much better. But it's in the
| same ballpark, anyway.
| carlmr wrote:
| 2 person household without much saving is ~1500kWh in my
| experience.
|
| LEDs and laptop instead of desktop computers lowered these
| stats quite a lot for me. I'm sure if I bought a newer
| fridge it would also help.
| xxpor wrote:
| 1500... per year?
|
| I use more than that by myself per month. Granted, I have
| all electrical appliances, heat, and a car, but even
| without those I have to imagine I'd still use
| significantly more.
|
| Thank god for being on hydro I guess.
| morsch wrote:
| That's got to be your car, otherwise the number is insane
| for one person. Maybe check if something is drawing more
| power than it should.
| gumby wrote:
| Interesting that the equivalent in the US is about 10,000
| kWh p.a. The delta is so large I thought there might have
| been a monthly/annual confusion.
|
| I have lived in both countries and it didn't _feel_ like
| there was much of a difference in electricity consumption.
| jansan wrote:
| Your source includes "Electricity for heating, hot water".
| Maybe this includes households using heat pumps for
| heating, so this could explain the difference?
| proto_lambda wrote:
| Not just heat pumps, but also electric water heaters,
| which are standard issue for older apartment buildings
| (those without central hot water).
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And also probably the single least efficient source of
| heat for a home. An apartment using resistive heat
| instead of a heat pump should not be allowed anymore.
| locallost wrote:
| That's pretty crazy. We used to spend 1400 KWh as a family
| of three. Didn't check the latest numbers as a family of
| four, but I don't expect a lot more. We even cook / bake a
| lot. What on earth are people spending electricity on?
| chrisandchris wrote:
| How do you heat your appartmen/house? There might be
| quite some differences between oil, gas or heat-pump. I'm
| not sure whether these numbers include/exclude that part.
| polycaster wrote:
| > What on earth are people spending electricity on?
|
| I guess there are just a lot more appliances in use today
| and we're more lazy.
|
| When I, approaching my 40s, compare our household with my
| parents household when I was a child there a various
| notable changes in habits:
|
| - My mother hang the loundry to dry. We seldomly do this
| anymore, instead we're using a dryer. These things are
| insanely power-hungry.
|
| - Electronics for entertainment and communication: A
| landline phone, a TV (for the evening news), a radio +
| casette player. Now I'm powering/charging at least 10
| devices (like mobile, laptop, smart watch, tablet) at any
| given time.
|
| - When dark outside, about 3 100W light bulbs would
| illumate the living space for 5 people. Now we have
| ,,power-saving" LEDs. But a lot of them. So many, I can't
| even compare them.
|
| - When it was hot, well, you endure it. Now we have three
| ventilators (others start to use ACs, which has always
| been a very awkward thing to do in Germany).
|
| Edit: I come to think, while a lot has to do with being
| lazy, another lot has to do with being selfish. Things
| like hanging the loundry. We use the dryer, so we safe
| time to do more productive things like working on our
| careers.
| boredumb wrote:
| Why are ACs awkward in Germany?
| [deleted]
| jhoechtl wrote:
| Because they are power-hungry and everyone knows that.
|
| More generally because the climate in central Europe is
| not like Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, California but
| hospitable during the summer season without AC.
|
| AC makes it more comfortable during hot days but it is
| still doable without.
|
| This is only true for private households. Since 10 years
| ACs are widely used in a business environment.
| samatman wrote:
| Germans should be using heat pumps for their homes
| anyway, it can't be beaten for efficiency. Every time I
| mention this there's someone who doesn't know that heat
| pump systems don't require excavation: they don't.
|
| This gets you air conditioning literally for free, and
| you get to be the one to frown at your neighbors for
| continuing to burn something to stay warm.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Only if you get an air-to-air heat pump, commonly called
| air conditioning.
|
| Air-to-water heat pumps still only change the temperature
| of water, which is practically only useful for heating.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Are they more power-hungry than heat? A window unit can
| be used in the room you sleep in, and if you've done a
| reasonable job at reducing leakage and insulation , and
| reducing light ingress (external shutters, etc.) can be
| pretty efficient. Even in San Diego with the sun bearing
| down on my flat we managed to have a pretty low load
| factor on our window AC to keep it around 24-25C at
| night.
| SuperQue wrote:
| Except, modern AC is pretty efficient. I have a decent
| monoblock cooler in our apartment in Berlin. I also have
| a 1-second sampling power meter. The AC unit uses about
| 700 watts when active cooling, but of course it cycles so
| that's not all the time. We also only run it when it's
| 30+ during the daytime.
|
| Overall, it's only added about 15-20kWh to our monthly
| usage. (2-person household, about 200kWh/month average)
| polycaster wrote:
| Which brings us back to the original question:
|
| > What on earth are people spending electricity on?
|
| It's exactly that. An AC, probably one additional
| appliance among others, adds another 10% to the total and
| somehow we manage to frame this as efficient and thus the
| right thing to do.
| Tagbert wrote:
| That seems an entirely reasonable incremental usage. In
| particular when the using A/C allows you to sleep and not
| running it means you get too little sleep and of poor
| quality. When the nights at 30-35C and the humidity high,
| an A/C can be a blessing.
| tartoran wrote:
| Meanwhile during the summer momnths offices in the US
| turn on the AC to such low temperatures that one needs to
| put on a sweater.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Remember that when you're too hot in an office, there's
| really nothing you can do about it and you just have to
| suffer. At least you have the option to do things like
| put on a sweater when you're too cold. Given that, it
| seems to make sense to keep the office at the coolest
| temperature preferred by anyone in it.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I like your logic And like lower temperatures when
| working. The idea that someone would ask for the whole
| company to be set at the temperature they want and
| everyone else wears a jumper quite funny.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My girlfriend strongly believes this comes from
| "patriarchal society" and specifically a "study" that
| said office thermostats are set based on an old formula
| designed in like the 60s and that only looked at how HVAC
| interacted with men.
|
| I thought the idea that offices set thermostats to an
| actual standard instead of just whoever cries the loudest
| or has the most power to be almost laughable, so I looked
| for the "study" she got it from. Indeed, I don't remember
| the details, but the governmental bureaucracy involved in
| recommending HVAC did actually use a formula that was
| obsolete and didn't consider women. However, there was
| zero evidence in the study that anyone actually used that
| formula in consideration of anything.
| korse wrote:
| Also, traditional landline phones (no hands free short
| range radio etc) draw power from the telecom central
| office. They aren't on your standard grid so you are
| effectively paying for that electricity on your phone
| bill.
| gmac wrote:
| I find people's continued use of tumble dryers pretty
| surprising.
|
| The air will do it for free!
|
| We have a space-efficient drying rack so we can dry
| indoors.
| mijamo wrote:
| Air drying clothes indoor is pretty bad. It is slow,
| takes space, and leaves textile in a bad state (at least
| for cotton and wool). Drying outside is good but not
| possible everywhere and not always. Also things like
| sheets and towels really should not be left to dry
| indoor.
| mathieuh wrote:
| I live in a place where it rains all the time and the
| driest month in terms of humidity is 80%, sometimes if I
| can't hang things outside clothes take so long to dry
| inside that I end up having to wash them again because
| they start to smell
| simiones wrote:
| It greatly depends on where you live, and season. In my
| apartment in Bucharest, especially during the summer,
| clothes dry indoors in ~4h, and a bed sheet takes maybe
| 6h. In the winter, the time is usually double.
|
| Still, drying clothes indoors has no ill effects, I have
| no idea where you got this. It's definitely better than
| exposing them to high temperatures like in most apartment
| tumble driers.
| krisoft wrote:
| > during the summer, clothes dry indoors in ~4h, > drying
| clothes indoors has no ill effects
|
| Maybe the first is why you think the second is always
| true? Where I live if I just leave laundry on a drying
| rack it won't dry for days, and once it is dryish it
| already smells stale and mouldy.
|
| I'm glad that it works for you, but maybe the advice
| differs based on location, climate, maybe even
| architectural choices.
| morsch wrote:
| That's literally what they said in their first sentence.
| depressedpanda wrote:
| > Air drying clothes indoor is pretty bad [because it]
| leaves textile in a bad state (at least for cotton and
| wool).
|
| > Also things like sheets and towels really should not be
| left to dry indoor.
|
| Can you elaborate on both statements? I currently leave
| everything, including sheets and towels, to air dry
| indoors.
| emn13 wrote:
| Not the OP, but indoor drying in winter at least where I
| live has the issue that (a) it tends to be so slow that
| the wash sometimes starts smelling stale, (b) it's just
| extracting heat from the house by evaporation, so it's
| going to raise your heating bills anyhow, perhaps? (c)
| you might end up having issues with indoor humidity, such
| as moldy walls.
|
| Heat pump or condensing dryers may well be a better
| option.
|
| Almost certainly the perfect solution will be
| situational. I mean, if your house is too dry in the
| winter, a bit of extra humidity might even be a feature,
| after all...
| tpxl wrote:
| > you might end up having issues with indoor humidity
|
| Winter air tends to be much drier than summer air, so
| much so that my bath towels dry on the rack in the winter
| overnight, but may stay damp for a whole day in the
| summer.
|
| That said, water will condense at heat bridges
| (?)(poorly/not insulated parts of the wall) in the
| winter, causing mold, if the place is poorly insulated.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Winter air tends to be much drier than summer air
|
| Where I lived before, that's still 80% (usually 90-95% in
| summer)
| hexane360 wrote:
| That's relative humidity, not absolute. Absolute humidity
| has an additional Arrhenius
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation)
| factor. For instance, 100% relative humidity at 40 C is
| 51.1 g/cm^3, while at 20 C it's only 17.3 g/cm^3.
| jansan wrote:
| You can also shower in the rain. I have seen people doing
| it in the 90s in Hannover on the occupied
| "Sprengelgelande".
| Symbiote wrote:
| Clothes and bedclothes dried outside are much nicer than
| the same dried in a tumble dryer.
|
| I don't have space (I live in an apartment), but I
| regularly did this in England. It takes slightly more
| time to hang them out vs. stuff them in the dryer, and
| (in England) you need to keep an eye on the weather, but
| they end up smelling fresher.
|
| A good dose of UV light probably helps.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| UV is also great at making some food stains disappear.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Home server PC at around 100W. That adds a surprising
| amount, on it's own that's getting close to 1000KWh to
| run for a year.
|
| And then there's the main PC setup, running maybe 12hrs a
| day (inc. WFH). And that was build for gaming, so it's
| quite power-hungry, especially when the GPU is kept busy,
| working on Unity projects.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| But _on average_? Does the average person have a home
| server? A desktop PC?
|
| I don't know any non-techy person who isn't using a
| laptop exclusively, and then pretty rarely, as most
| things nowadays happen on the smart phone. AC is non-
| existent in Germany. So I'm really curious. I have a 24/7
| Homeserver and laptop, and am at ~1200kwh a year.
| ben_w wrote:
| I'd agree normal people don't have those things, but also
| add that things not mentioned -- e.g. TVs, ovens, and
| fridge/freezers -- will add up. At such a low average,
| even lighting will contribute non-negligibly.
|
| Two questions though: how common are TVs in Germany? And
| how common is electric hot water for showers/baths? My
| sample size is pretty small (and mostly limited to
| Berlin).
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| I'd say TVs are still the norm, my social circle is 30~50
| and o think everyone got one, for streaming mostly. As
| for the older generation it's also still a thing you just
| need to have. As for sizes, I think they've also
| increased over the last decade or two, but at least in
| the cities if you're limited to a smaller place I think
| people go for 40 rather than 50 inches. Can't really
| speak for the younger generations, but I feel they're
| more comfortable watching stuff on their phones, college
| students probably also due to financial or space reasons.
|
| Hot water mostly comes from central heating with gas,
| some homes in my city have district heating. At least up
| until now, electric heating, be it for water or the whole
| apartment was way to expensive so that you'd only
| consider that if you really have no other choice, for
| example, an old building from 100+ years ago with
| retrofitted central heating might have an electric water
| heater for the kitchens as they only did the bathrooms.
| Xylakant wrote:
| The numbers cited here included electricity for warm
| water and heating. Both are outrageously energy-
| intensive. The figured for electric appliances only are
| roughly in line with yours.
| dekleinewolf wrote:
| '3+' covers 3, but also 4, 5, 6 and 7. That average really
| doesn't tell you much on how it scales.
| csnweb wrote:
| It definitely can scale much better, we are using around
| 1800 kWh (2 parents, 1 small child) and I think it's safe
| to say going below 1300 for one of us would be hard,
| especially when working from home. But we live in a flat
| and there are many 2 or three persons households in a whole
| house, probably with several computers and may be even tvs
| and certainly more lights. May be you do save a bit on
| cooking and the fridge, but cleaning things should roughly
| scale linearily.
| number6 wrote:
| Kids will make your washing machine run constantly; and
| the dryer...
| moffkalast wrote:
| Everyone lauds LEDs for being super energy efficient, but the
| reality is that they really aren't. It's just that they are
| being compared to even worse light sources that were so bad
| at efficiency it's hard to really grasp how much they sucked.
| tencentshill wrote:
| suction wrote:
| sexy_panda wrote:
| Is there a more efficient way of producing light? Because I
| don't know of any.
| aimor wrote:
| I read a neat article recently that talked about the
| "Dubai Lamp". They're lightbulbs that Philips makes for
| Dubai that are twice as efficient as their standard LED
| bulbs. The difference is simple: LEDs are more efficient
| when run at lower power, so by increasing the number of
| LED elements in the bulbs and reducing the voltage across
| them you get 600 lumens for 3 W. For reference,
| California requires lightbulbs to operate at 80 lumens
| per watt or higher.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2021/01/17/leds-from-dubai-the-
| royal-li...
|
| Looks like they're bringing this idea to the rest of the
| world:
|
| https://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/consumer/p/led-
| bulb/87195...
| moffkalast wrote:
| It's the most efficient option we have, but that doesn't
| mean it's good.
|
| In the 1800s the steam engine was the most efficient way
| of producing work from heat, but that still didn't make
| it objectively efficient.
| avidiax wrote:
| The one that's the most neglected is natural lighting.
| Light pipes, solar collectors, and microprism window
| treatments are all available.
|
| The second thing is white paint. You need less outdoor
| lighting if the built environment absorbs less light.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| This does not solve the problem of filling city centers
| with huge company logos, adverts, signs for casinos or
| night clubs.
| tremon wrote:
| You're going to need very long light pipes to use natural
| lighting for your digital signage at night. Are you
| really sure that's a better option?
| xxs wrote:
| LEDs are super efficient, household LED bulbs retrofit for
| e14/e27 are just a terrible example of overdriven ones with
| bad lifetime. That has very little to do w/ properly
| constant current (not over) driven LEDs. (Edit overdriven -
| higher heat output and worse efficacy)
|
| The max efficacy woulod be 683 lm/w. Blue LEDs can reach
| 1/3 of the theoretical maximum.
| moffkalast wrote:
| The lifetime is pretty good when driven correctly to be
| sure, I was just talking about raw efficiency. Underdrive
| a led as much as you want, but you'll still lose half of
| your energy to waste heat. The heat will just be spread
| out more and be less noticeable on each chip.
|
| Like, I'm sure we can agree high power LEDs have gigantic
| heatsinks and fans for other reasons than cosmetic.
| andrepd wrote:
| LEDs can light a medium-sized room with <5W. That's
| incredibly energy efficient.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Not when you consider that it's still heating the room
| with 3 of those watts.
|
| If you asked me to build a house and I threw away more
| than half of the bricks you'd call me crazy. But when it
| comes to leds it's called "incredible efficiency". It's
| only efficient in comparison to the other options, not in
| any objective sense.
| shukantpal wrote:
| "Efficient" is a relative comparison. Any absolute
| threshold would be arbitrary anyway
| moffkalast wrote:
| Not really. Converting all the energy to work would be
| 100% efficiency, converting none of it would be 0%. It's
| an absolute measure.
|
| Now sure there are subcategories where 100% efficiency is
| the maximum theoretical efficiency (like the carnot cycle
| limit of 37% for heat engines), but that's already
| misleading info if not specified.
| puchatek wrote:
| If they are so inefficient then where does the wasted
| energy go?
| morsch wrote:
| Where it always goes, waste heat. In the case of LEDs,
| about 50% to 60% of the power draw escapes as heat. Of
| course, incandescents are much worse.
| xxs wrote:
| 70% near heat would the very very efficient blue leds,
| properly driven and all. below that, i.e. 50-60 is just
| theoretically impossible.
| xxs wrote:
| The wasted energy as per usual - heat/entropy. It's just
| that LEDs are the best we have.
| fyvhbhn wrote:
| I wonder what's the impact of online advertising as well.
| immibis wrote:
| Germany also has mechanical signs that mechanically scroll
| different posters past a (full-size) viewing window. Banning
| the electronic ones won't cause there to be less ads.
| xxs wrote:
| >1300 kwh/year
|
| this is extremely, extremely low. No heating, no cooling, no
| hot water, no car charging. A fridge alone tends to be over
| 400KW/h.
|
| Edit: polycaster listed close to 5kWh/year for 3+ household.
| 1person being 2k. So, extremely low estimate.
| legulere wrote:
| We are using 1000 kWh per year as a couple including hot
| water. With that we are very low in Germany, but even that
| is really without much optimization (though we lack some
| energy-intensive devices like a clothes dryer).
|
| Newer devices sold in the EU are relatively energy
| efficient. A typical fridge-freezer combo uses 150kWh.
| xxs wrote:
| >A typical fridge-freezer combo uses 150kWh.
|
| That would be a small <150L E class fridge, kept at 21C
| (with an air conditioner during the summer)
|
| Fridge efficiency has not increased much in the last
| decades (LG infamously had an efficient but horrendously
| unreliable 'linear compressor') - the only part that can
| increase efficiency is the time(s) it gets opened and how
| good seals the fridge has, and ambient temperature. Also
| smaller compressor by design cannot be super efficient.
|
| The newer devices part doesn't affect fridges all that
| much - vacuum cleaners have been limited, lightning
| requires LEDs (effectively) - which comes w/ its own
| issue of retrofitting, TVs (also relying on LEDs for
| backlight or OLED directly), power factor correction (for
| 75+W) and what not. Direct drive (brushless DC) and low
| temp washing for washing machines. Yet, there is no
| recent groundbreaking technology, it's just that the EU
| changed the efficiency labeling to prevent massive A+++
| stuff.
| morsch wrote:
| No, these are much larger fridges.
|
| https://www.otto.de/p/samsung-kuehl-gefrierkombination-
| bespo...
|
| 273l fridge plus 114l freezer, modeled power draw 134kWh.
| This is a premium product, a less expensive model
| (similar capacity) takes 166kWh.
|
| https://www.otto.de/p/samsung-kuehl-gefrierkombination-
| rl36t...
| [deleted]
| madduci wrote:
| As household made of 4 persons, with me permanently in
| Home-Office, have a consumption of roughly ~2300kWh/year,
| including heating, in Germany.
|
| Waschmaschine and Dryer are almost on a daily basis used
| (the dryer is used less during hot season)
|
| If you tend to buy energetic-efficient devices, your power
| bill is lower, in front of higher costs for the equipment.
| serpix wrote:
| I have major problems believing those numbers. Hot water
| alone eats up that much per year.
| fabian2k wrote:
| Hot water is often heated by gas, not electricity in
| Germany. Gas usage is counted and billed separately from
| electricity.
| jansan wrote:
| _~2300kWh /year, including heating_
|
| And how do you achieve this? What is your energy source
| for heating?
| madduci wrote:
| I have a local warm station (nahwarme) that heats water
| locally with electricity and it is connected to a remote
| heating station (Fernwarme).
| xxs wrote:
| There is a quote of the German Federal Statistical Office
| and the 3+ household is close to 5k.
| ln_00 wrote:
| no its not? From my own bills over the last ten years or
| so, this figure is pretty spot on.
|
| And I work from home on a gaming desktop...
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Heating is a separate cost, rarely electric. Cooling - did
| you know that Germans aren't big fans of A/C? Hot water -
| same as heating.
|
| Besides, in Germany we don't say "Car charging", we say
| "eat healthy and ride your bike".
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| With number 25 on cars per capita in the world and one of
| the biggest car industries and also obesity rates above
| average than EU.
|
| 'eat healthy and ride your bike' my ass
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >With number 25 on cars per capita in the world
|
| For one of the richest countries with one of the biggest
| car industries being only 25th is a great achievement in
| mobility. Yes, we could do better, but just compare it to
| the default country (#7 in car ownership, #2 if you
| exclude microstates).
|
| >obesity rates above average than EU
|
| 47th in the global ranking, after Iceland. And USA is
| right after Oceania. It depends on the perspective.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| It isn't about the absolute numbers (even though they
| aren't 'good' for Germany specially if you remove
| micro/extreme poor states), is the 'holier than thou'
| attitude from Germans. It's like an obese person going to
| the morbidly obese: 'here we don't stuff our mouths with
| food like you' while having no sense that they are just
| in a slightly better state than the ones they are
| chastising.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I do not understand your argument. We do not use personal
| cars as often as USA or some other countries, instead
| relying more on public transportation and bikes - as a
| result, electricity costs for transportation are quite
| low for individual households. What's your point? That
| less than 25% of population do not eat healthy and this
| is somehow relevant to the conversation?
| tmnvdb wrote:
| You compare yourself to the most car-dependent and obese
| OECD country and then congratulate yourself, completely
| missing that Germany is very car-dependent and obese, and
| it's not exactly improving.
|
| Also would not brag about public transport, - most of
| your rich neighbours do better.
|
| Chain smoker laughing at a lung patient.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I think you completely missed the point of what I was
| saying and replying in the middle of the thread is not
| helping here. Please re-read it again, your comment does
| not make sense. I did not congratulate myself.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| Among the EU, germans drive more km per car than anyone
| else except Austria (data from 2000, can't find newer).
|
| Among the EU, Germans rank 6th on car ownership per
| capita (2020 data).
|
| Going these together, and it shows within the EU, Germans
| are the on the top of km per capita and not 'we drive
| less than others' (except maybe the US)
|
| Your reply to someone asking about charging their EV(thus
| need to drive) was that in Germany that isn't a problem
| because there you eat healthy and cycle, which is a lie
| (you drive more than most/all of the EU). (as per cycling
| data, DE is 7th on daily usage of bikes in the EU, but
| couldn't find any data regarding number of kilometres
| though)
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Data from 2000 is missing two decades of economic growth
| in Eastern Europe and major EU-funded investments in
| infrastructure in that region. But let's assume, Germany
| is still high in the ranks. What does it prove? In Europe
| the life style from Dublin to Warsaw isn't that
| different: we often live in an apartment rather than in a
| house in suburb, we rely on public transportation and
| have great networks, using a bike is a norm in many
| cities etc. This all means that electricity budget of an
| individual household is unlikely to include EV charging
| at the moment. This will be different from USA, where
| having individual house and traveling by cars is often
| the only option. So, what's your point exactly?
| xxs wrote:
| It's still very likely Germans drive more - Germany is
| very decentralized (which is amazing, e.g. no grid
| locks), and it has one of the best railroads in the
| world... still has likely one the best highways as well.
|
| The only East European country that can possible change
| the stats would be Poland (but personally I don't believe
| that) - the rest are just too small.
| xxs wrote:
| >Heating is a separate cost, rarely electric.
|
| Of course, geothermal pumps are still a better option
| than most.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| You can call it geothermal, when it comes from
| underground pipes ;) District level heating still exists
| in some areas, also quite often there's a single oil or
| gas boiler for a multi-apartment building.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > this is extremely, extremely low. No heating, no cooling,
| no hot water, no car charging. A fridge alone tends to be
| over 400KW/h
|
| I have a fridge and my water is heated with electricity, I
| still end up at ~1500kwh per year, while working from home
| everyday.
|
| Electric heating and cooling is extremely inefficient and
| barely used in Europe.
| morsch wrote:
| Well, infamously, German households tend to generate heat
| using gas, and not electricity. AC is rare. EVs are rare.
|
| Either way, I wanted to know what the actual power draw of
| those signs is, and since it was given in multiples of a
| (German) single household, well, that's probably about the
| number they are working with.
| foepys wrote:
| > Well, infamously, German households tend to generate
| heat using gas, and not electricity.
|
| This often only applies to heating the rooms.
| Boiling/heating water for cleaning dishes and bathing is
| often done via electricity in a boiler.
| xxs wrote:
| Using gas is worse than use geothermal, unless you
| somehow have gas powered geo thermal pumps (and still
| worse than solar+geo thermal). So the energy use would be
| higher.
| seiferteric wrote:
| Yes which is why the 1300kWh/year is bogus. Gas usage is
| energy usage. If that is factored in it would be much
| higher I am sure.
| belter wrote:
| A small family fridge, with a F energy label (so pretty
| bad), will normally go for a total consumption of 270 kWh a
| year.
| rr808 wrote:
| > 1300 kwh/year
|
| Wow that is low. In most states in the South average
| household consumes that per month.
| https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/the-states-that-
| us...
| radicality wrote:
| Yeah that really surprised me. I live in a 1-bedroom in NYC
| and am almost at 1000 kWh/month, especially because of the
| recent heat waves.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > In most states in the South average household consumes
| that per month.
|
| That's what happens when you live in cardboard houses in
| the middle of a literal desert.
|
| In Europe more people live in better build houses or flats
| with centralised heating and no AC. I used 1500kwh last
| years while working full time from my living room and spent
| maybe 100 euros on heating
| dmitriy_ko wrote:
| Average American "cardboard house" is better insulated
| than average European brick or concrete house. Having
| heavy walls make your house feel "sturdy" but it has
| nothing to do with energy efficiency. A lot of houses in
| Europe are just brick or concrete with no additional
| insulation. In US it's it's rare to have uninsulated
| houses.
|
| In US more people live in very hot places like Texas and
| Arizona and people mostly live in single-family houses.
| Single-family houses obviously takes more energy to cool
| than "flats". Plus average American house/flat has twice
| the living area.
| tpmoney wrote:
| On the other hand, because of AC the American south also
| doesn't have swaths of people dropping dead when the
| daily temperatures rise above 80F. And considering that's
| a daily part of living in the US south for roughly 6
| months of the year, that's probably a good thing.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| The South (which means southeast in US parlance) would be
| cardboard houses in the middle of a literal swamp. The
| houses in the middle of a literal desert are in the
| Southwest.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I want to do 2 things here where i live in San Francisco, anyone
| have advice for me on where to start?
|
| 1 - I want to start or join a coalition of folks looking to get
| this implemented in California
|
| 2 - I want to contact the city/owner of the specific digital
| signs right outside my window of my apartment that are on 24/7,
| loud, and have their glass broken monthly and then wait for the
| glass to be replaced for weeks. It's a public hazard.
| mitch3x3 wrote:
| The term you are looking for is "sign code", and you can find
| info regarding the SF laws around this here:
| https://sfplanning.org/general-advertising-sign-program
|
| I don't know if you'll have any impact at all though regarding
| your situation. You're in a big city where this kind of stuff
| is part of life. Your best option is probably to move.
| fzfaa wrote:
| The normalisation of poverty in Europe would much funnier so
| watch if I didn't live here.
| immibis wrote:
| The earth is going to normalize "poverty" (aka not being able
| to drink 3 dead dinosaurs a day) one way or another. I'd rather
| live in a place where people are already living sustainably,
| than a place that constantly overshoots and then collapses when
| the resources suddenly run out.
| someguydave wrote:
| Immigrate to America, we have issues but we have a future.
| Germany is going to have some very dark years in the near
| future.
| malermeister wrote:
| How is getting rid of annoying ads at night "normalizing
| poverty"?
| fzfaa wrote:
| Because it's done in the name of energy savings and the only
| reason that we all have to save energy is so the political
| elites of the West can play Risk against Russia.
| malermeister wrote:
| We have to save energy to soften the blow of the climate
| catastrophe. The Russian imperialist aggression is just an
| additional selling point.
| fzfaa wrote:
| Saving energy means stopping growth. The West stopping
| growth while China, India, etc. grow uncontrollably
| because they don't give a crap about the stupid climate
| plight will be our downfall.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| India? Average Indian emits 1/10th of what an average
| american does!
|
| This is hypocracy, ignorance, and whataboutism
|
| China is on track to meet it's climate goals, 90% of
| electric busses in the world operate there, they have
| been top investor in renewables for many years. And they
| are still growing.
|
| Why do you never mention gulf states that emit 10 times
| more than an average french person does.
|
| Meanwhile UK has refused planning permissin for 24
| privately funded and paid for solar farms because they
| look ugly, banned onshore wind because it looks ugly and
| getting applorval for simplest construction project takes
| 4 years.
| RalfWausE wrote:
| No problem if china or india gives a crap about the
| climate... the climate very much too gives a crap about
| them so they will HAVE to do something if enough people
| starve and enough infrastructure is destroyed by
| catastrophes
| malermeister wrote:
| Who cares about India or China or whatever. They're all
| gonna die if they don't change their ways.
|
| The climate plight will be our downfall, but not because
| of silly squabbles like you describe, but because the
| mindset you have is inherently extinctionist.
|
| Uncontrollable growth is a characteristic of cancer, not
| something to aspire to.
| kmlx wrote:
| > We have to save energy to soften the blow of the
| climate catastrophe.
|
| this is the wrong take. you can have as much energy as
| you want. you just need better politicians.
|
| so your political actors failed. own up to it and replace
| them.
| immibis wrote:
| ... you believe it is the west's fault that Putin felt like
| genociding a bunch of people?
| dontlaugh wrote:
| It is definitely the West's fault for engineering the
| 2014 Euromaidan coup, which began a campaign of terror
| and death against trade unionists and the people of the
| Donbas region, which continues to this day.
|
| It is also Putin's fault for invading further, instead of
| merely protecting the Donbas republics as they asked.
| langsoul-com wrote:
| I hate this trend of taking away and then labelling it as good.
|
| Covid especially, used as excuse to give less for the same or
| more.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I hope that this will lead to more eInk-based deployment for
| digital signage, and ultimately bring down the cost due to the
| economy of scale.
| samwestdev wrote:
| It's just useless light pollution. Turn them off for good.
| tauchunfall wrote:
| >It said that a single LED sign consumes as much energy as 10
| single households.
|
| I guess it's good to reduce energy consumption where we can. And
| political decisions only work in small focused steps.
|
| I wonder what happens when they find out how much energy probably
| is wasted for advertisements on television and the internet.
| yitchelle wrote:
| It always intrigue me that eInk has not made bigger inroads into
| the digital signage market, especially for static images.
|
| Colour signage sell more products than Black and White? Probably.
| defrost wrote:
| Speaking of light pollution, here's a handy map:
|
| https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=3.78&lat=36.9075&lo...
|
| For contrast, see:
| https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/#zoom=6.42&lat=-26.3451&l...
|
| Great night skies, radio silent zone (for a chunk of the Square
| Kilometre Array) as a bonus.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > But the ban will not apply if the light emitted by displays is
| required to maintain traffic safety or ward off other hazards,
| and it cannot be replaced by other measures at short notice.
|
| So even the signs indicating what time the next bus comes would
| not be allowed?
| Tenoke wrote:
| I'd be glad to get less light pollution in Berlin (where I live)
| but I don't see that many signs anyway, so any benefits would be
| tiny. I also kind of like them at night (given that they are not
| ubiquitous), it makes a city feel much livelier than dark
| streets.
| potamic wrote:
| My city banned billboard advertising once. All of them digital
| and non-digital. It was fabulous and finally felt like a place to
| live. Sadly it did not last long and their revival only
| reinforced how refreshing their absence was. I think we do not
| realize the value of visual space and pay a heavy price when we
| decide to monetize it.
| immibis wrote:
| The city should require 98% of billboard advertising to go to a
| citizen's dividend - then we can see whether citizens feel it's
| worth it or not.
| lioeters wrote:
| Banksy on Advertising
|
| > People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt
| into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear.
| They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
| They make flippant comments from buses that imply you're not
| sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
| They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.
|
| > They have access to the most sophisticated technology the
| world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The
| Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are
| forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property
| rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they
| like wherever they like with total impunity.
|
| > Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no
| choice whether you see it or not is yours. It's yours to take,
| re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it.
| Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone
| just threw at your head.
|
| > You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you
| especially don't owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have
| re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They
| never asked for your permission, don't even start asking for
| theirs.
| phh wrote:
| Wow, what city? Sounds like that would make for interesting
| news read
| npteljes wrote:
| I think similarly, I think advertisement is mass poisoning that
| we happen to allow, because it makes a lot of money go around.
| One of the cities that did away with billboards is Sao Paulo -
| really interesting case.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidade_Limpa
| paganel wrote:
| Interesting to see most of Western Europe go where we, Romania,
| were back in the 1980s under Ceausescu.
|
| Just today I was thinking about how one of my fondest memories as
| a kid (because it involves me, my parents and our home from back
| then) is of my dad teaching 5 or 6-year old me how many stairs
| there were in our block of apartments between two consecutive
| flors, so that I could use them even after the sun was down,
| cause said staircase wasn't lit. And then how proud I felt when I
| was managing to go up and down on those stairs (we were living on
| the last floor, the 4th) at night, only by "feeling" and counting
| the stairs in my head (at some point the counting became an
| "instinct", I was not even actively doing the counting anymore).
| This was all happening in the second part of the '80s.
|
| With all that said, I'm honestly not that sure that today's
| Western Europeans are mentally prepared to go through what we,
| Romanians, went through back then.
| staircasethrow wrote:
| Kind of an odd question, but out of curiosity, did the first
| set of stairs, the one on the ground floor going up, have an
| "even" or "odd" number of steps? Did the following sets of
| stairs on higher levels have the same number as the ground
| floor set or a different amount? Assume "odd" means that when
| starting on the ground floor, if you were to go up two stairs
| at a time, you would have to akwardly go up one stair on the
| final stair, whereas an even number of stairs would allow you
| to take 2 stair increments at a time without problem.
| paganel wrote:
| That's a good question, because now that you asked it I
| remembered that there were some buildings that did indeed
| have that odd number of steps you mention, on the ground
| floor going up to the first floor, that is. I remember that I
| was finding that strange.
|
| Each block of apartments had 16 steps between two floors. The
| building we were living in had those 16 steps "split" in two,
| that is you were climbing 8 steps from a given floor, there
| was a small "platform" of 3-4 meters, and then you'd climb
| another 8 steps until the next floor itself, after a change
| of direction "architected" through that platform I mentioned.
| And then there were the bulldings where you'd climb 16 steps
| straight. I liked the 8+8 version better, imo it gave the
| architect the chance to add more and larger windows to the
| staircase, and hence more light, the 16 steps straight
| staircases seemed to have smaller windows, hence less light.
|
| Back to the odd number of steps on the ground floor, I think
| there were 15 or 17, can't remember exactly how many.
|
| Interesting discussion, I have to admit, I sometime compare
| the staircases from today's buildings to those I knew as a
| kid, and it seems that today they don't care about light
| coming in or "ergonomy" or anything like that (there's also
| the very interesting discussion of the "perfect" height for a
| given step).
| samatman wrote:
| I consider the annoyance of lighted digital signage a good enough
| reason to turn them off, and the offense of billboards a
| sufficient reason to ban them as San Paolo has. I say that for
| context.
|
| The piecemeal approach to energy regulation is arbitrary and
| unfair. It introduces political friction with no evidence that it
| reduces emissions.
|
| Why might it not reduce emissions? Because energy which is
| produced is consumed. Banning a source of consumption causes
| marginal affordability.
|
| If the goal is to limit atmospheric carbon, which is laudable:
| tax carbon. Be sure to apply the proceeds generously to
| decarbonizing industry, because this will be expensive.
|
| If the goal is to allocate electricity which is scarce due to
| crisis: tax electricity use progressively. Make businesses which
| aren't manufacturing submit paperwork for an exemption. They'll
| turn the lights out at night on their own.
|
| Be sure to apply the proceeds to energy security, because no one
| is going to like what happens if you don't.
| rcarmo wrote:
| This is going to be interesting to watch, as many low-end digital
| signage solutions do not have the ability to fully shut off the
| displays they're attached to (and I suspect some high-end
| billboards will have displays fully decoupled from media players,
| etc.)
| csmattryder wrote:
| Yeah, I'm trying to think how a lot of these are going to work,
| myself.
|
| When I built a low-cost signage platform, a lot of the devices
| we deployed to were Android 4.4/5.0 (yes, even in 2020+), which
| doesn't have auto on/off that Nougat introduced in Android 7.0.
|
| Probably some poor sap's job is to Teamviewer in and install a
| third-party app to control the shutdown and startup.
| raverbashing wrote:
| A hardware store timer should solve that problem
| Etheryte wrote:
| At a fiver per piece, old dumb and reliable tech, and set and
| forget, these are by far the easiest solution.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Don't these have some kind of basic "oh, I've had no signal for
| 10 minutes, guess I'll turn off"?
|
| I have two such displays in the office (Nec something) that
| have input sensing and a shut-down timer. They're pretty old,
| too (they were already there when I joined 7 years ago).
| bhaak wrote:
| I don't have a problem with that because the likely workaround
| for those will be to not be allowed to be on at all. :-}
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| They will just cut the power to them.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| I wish the whole world would do this stuff. Light pollution
| sucks. It's understandable from street lights but other sources
| aren't as excusable.
| yrro wrote:
| At first I loved LED street lights because I could see so much
| better by them (and I presume that they have an increased
| deterrent effect on crime though I have not checked this).
|
| These days I think disrupting wildlife is more important than
| human safety and I wish we could get rid of nearly all street
| lighting.
| cyborgx7 wrote:
| I wonder if the ubiquitousness of people carrying flashlights
| in the form of smartphones could be leveraged into doing away
| with street lights as an expected practice. I don't think I
| would actually support that, but I think that kind of shift
| in culture is a possibility right now.
| megous wrote:
| It can, but one would need a bit of a ettiquette to not
| point it into other people's faces. Pretty sure some people
| would use headlamps if it was necessary for everyone to
| bring their light source and that is plenty annoying.
| neolithicum wrote:
| Really? You think protecting wildlife is more important than
| human life? Also, less light might increase the frequency of
| road kills.
| yrro wrote:
| Yes, yes I do. We're doing incalculable damage to animal
| life (e.g., disrupting birds and insects which are
| essential pollinators for plants). This is but one facet of
| the crisis that our species has inflicted upon the planet.
| neolithicum wrote:
| But why is that a problem? I do not disagree with you
| about the crisis (at all!), but the only reason we care
| is because we're human beings - because we defined this
| to immoral and also because it endangers human (and
| other) beings lives. IMO, I find it makes very little
| logical (and frankly also moral) sense to say as a human
| being that wildlife conservation is more important than
| the lives of other human beings.
|
| I know you're not saying quite the same, but this reminds
| me a bit of an "unpopular opinion" I came across once,
| which stated that people must die because there are too
| many people living on earth...
|
| (edit: formatting)
| wickedsickeune wrote:
| The real problem is that the disruption to animal life
| will eventually affect human lives too, so you don't
| really have to choose.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| In this scenario, the choice seems obvious. Humans can make
| informed decisions regarding their safety and apply
| measures to mitigate dangers, while wildlife affected by
| those lights can't.
| 7steps2much wrote:
| But wouldn't animals be able to adapt to a single,
| predictable light source that illuminates a certain area more
| easily than to an arbitrary number of individual light
| sources in an arbitrary number of configurations/angles
| moving around?
|
| That said, maybe one could equip street lights with a sensor
| so they don't need to run at all times?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Over a few millenia, certainly.
| nousermane wrote:
| Even outdoor lighting is not without problems, especially two
| recent trends are worrying:
|
| - shift from low-pressure sodium lamps (which emit 95%+ of
| light in the narrow peak, so are a bit easier to filter out in
| astronomy application, and also don't trigger blue-light neural
| response in humans, and animals alike) to LEDs (which pollute
| across the visible spectrum, with plenty of blue light
| component);
|
| - as light efficiency increases, people often choose to utilize
| it to increase lighting intensity within same electric power
| budget, rather than keep same output in lumens, and save some
| power.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| My village recently switched to LED street lamps, and I hate
| them. The light pollution has definitely become worse here
| over the last ten years. The village lights switch off around
| 1am, but that doesn't seem to make a jot of difference to my
| astrophotography, because the town 4 miles to the South and
| the city 10 miles to the North keep theirs switched on.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| I really missed the sodium lamps after my university
| "upgraded" to LED. There was something peaceful about the
| monochrome, and their gentle whine when they got too old.
| gareth_untether wrote:
| A while ago I had an idea for a device that has a light sensor on
| it. The device has in/out for the data cable. It basically
| overlays a dark image over the feed.
|
| In dark conditions the device darkens the LED output and vice-a-
| versa for light conditions.
|
| Too many signs are too bright to comfortably look at night.
| cr3ative wrote:
| I realise your comment isn't directly related, but the article
| directly states "showing a black image" is not an acceptable
| solution (it wouldn't save any power). I'd like to see your
| idea done for backlight/brightness control though!
| brnt wrote:
| This will chiefly affect commercial billboards and the like,
| which should not be even allowed to ever emit light (or exist)
| IMNSHO.
| sva_ wrote:
| For real, when they installed some of these ultra bright
| billboards by the street, I'd get blinded by them as I waited
| at the traffic light, especially on shorter winter days. The
| operator claimed they don't run them in the dark, but that was
| definitely a lie.
| avian wrote:
| > The operator claimed they don't run them in the dark
|
| I think the following progression of events leads to many of
| those blindingly bright digital signs at night:
|
| Original sign conforms with regulations and comes with a
| light sensor to dynamically adjust brightness. It's bright
| during the day, dim during the night.
|
| After a few months the light sensors gets gunked up with
| dirt. Display now thinks its night all the time. It's way too
| dim to see in daylight.
|
| People running the display don't like that you can't read
| their ads during the day. They realize that cleaning the
| sensor every X days will be expensive, so they get someone to
| defeat the light sensor altogether and get the display to run
| at full brightness all the time.
|
| Result is a sign that's still making money during those
| valuable rush-hour traffic times, at the cost of beaming
| deathrays into driver's eyeballs at night.
| gog wrote:
| It's not only a gunked up light sensor, it is buggy
| software as well that is running those panels. At least
| that is what I heard from a friend working in the industry
| maintaining those displays.
| tpxl wrote:
| FWIW, it's trivial to determine sunsets and sunrises for
| years in advance. If the only concern is day/night, and not
| also clouds/rain/whatever, then that is the cheaper, more
| reliable solution.
| louwrentius wrote:
| I n NL we have human size billboards that have active cooling
| for crying out loud. When you walk past them, you hear a loud
| fan.
|
| Just such a waste of energy. I wish advertising should only be
| forbidden to use active lighting at all.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| So many best and brightest in our society work on ads, from
| google ads to these billboars.
|
| If these efforts were invested in something usefull...
| cbg0 wrote:
| This is not an either or proposition, we can do both useful
| & not useful things at the same time.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Maine banned billboards a long time ago. One of the best things
| ever and somehow customers in Maine still find their products
| and services.
| jollybean wrote:
| Other than in iconic urban spots, where it's a nice spectacle, we
| don't need these.
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