alt Hacker NewsI think stuff like this really crystalises how people misunderstand how much energy stuff uses.
My parents for example sweat the small stuff and go around the house turning LED driven lights off to "save electricity" even though it would barely make a dent in their bill.
Granted, they come from a time of incadescants burning 60-100w at a time so I can see why that habit might be deeply ingrained.
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Yup. In my experience, average non-nerd folk very very little feel for this stuff. I suspect some believe energy consumption of phone vs car is basically a toss up.
I turn LED lights off because of the difference in operational life, and I don't like changing bulbs. M GE bulbs say they have a rated lifetime of 13 years......at 3 hours of usage per day. So if they don't get turned off, then that 3 hours can very easily become 12, and now you are at a rated lifetime of ~4 years instead.
The ridiculously dramatic drop in power we dedicate to lighting is one that is just tough for folks to internalize. As you said, used to, you could have ~10 lights in your house that would add to upwards of 1kw. Nowadays, you can have 50 lights and barely hit 500w. Just mind blowing how far we dropped energy on those.
Same goes for televisions. Your modern TV is probably closer to the basic light bulbs before LEDs.
I'm assuming the general trend is true for all things solid state. That said, lighting is by far the biggest drop for most houses. Remarkably so.