We have a worldwide energy crisis and electricity rates are very high in Australia. Any energy saving will help with the current situation with added benefit of reducing global warming.
So just trying to understand why do many stores leave their lights on after they are closed? Is it for security only? At least sensor based lighting should be there.
Thoughts?
10 watts, 300 lights at light store
That's 3000 watts which is a lot.
Okay it's like two aircons running. Or three heaters. They would save a lot
which store has 300 lights running overnight? (with nobody inside).
Most stores have a few on for security. Also, they might be restocking, or paperwork out the back etc.
Beacons lighting
Most stores just have the bare minimum of lighting running after hours, even for just night fillers.
That's 3000 watts which is a lot.
"A lot" compared to nothing, sure, but that's not even a drop in the ocean of energy consumption elsewhere.
I used to work at a tech company where no-one came in on weekends but the air con ran both days and they didn't care.
Some tech companies has aircon blasting on their servers when CPU at 10% load.
@skillet: My work has the server equipment in a not purposed designed closet. So we can't close the door and we can't turn the air conditioning off as it's needed to keep the servers cool. Top it all off with the inability to only turn on sections. So the entire floor plate in the office is left on 24/7 even though people are only in the office 9/5.
Now that's wasting a lot of electricity!
Disagree, that attitude towards it, doesn't encourage any positive change though. Lots of things on their own have little impact but collectively those "small" things compound and make a bigger difference. Otherwise it creates a lets give up type mentality. It also promotes the improved actions to society and works to change the societal perspective. Similar to single use plastic bags or straws etc. (Not that I agreed on the straws).
Disagree with your disagree. Lots of little things don't really have an impact yet make people feel like they're doing something good, and so they won't pursue actual solutions.
Like if you religiously switch off lights in rooms that aren't occupied, or turn off your standby items overnight, but you disregard the installation of solar or heat pump hot water heaters.
Or like during covid how everyone was obsessed with hand sanitiser, and stickers on the ground telling you where to stand, and you could only drink sitting down, yet shops and restaurants had all the windows closed and air-con running, circulating contaminated air.
make people feel like they're doing something good
…
or turn off your standby items overnight
Using Powerpal to understand my usage for my wfh setup, and my current power bill, I calculated I can save $100/yr just turning my wfh setup off outside of 8am-7pm M-F. So now I turn them all off.
That’s more than just feeling good.
It actually allows me to save up for the other things that will make a bigger impact.
Don’t shame people who are trying. It’s not all instant success, and it doesn’t have to be. Doing something is better than nothing.
Don’t shame people who are trying
This forum post literally asserted that we should all be doing these miniscule and debatable "savings", and the people agreeing are doing far more "shaming" than others pointing out it barely makes a difference.
I'm not going to give a (profanity) about a bit of plastic when we're detonating nuclear weapons underwater and littering depleted uranium shells across large swaths of the globe. Does anyone still think "getting rid" (charging for) plastic shopping bags was about the environment?
More directly to the topic at hand - how do you even know that everyone reducing their power bill by 2% a year is even a net win, if it costs us a bunch of time and effort, or even installing new "energy saving" tech in our houses? Lets see the TCO calculations/audit, and note the lost opportunity-cost of how that effort could have been spent.
Like if you religiously switch off lights in rooms that aren't occupied, or turn off your standby items overnight, but you disregard the installation of solar or heat pump hot water heaters.
But they're not mutually exclusive. This is presented as a false dichotomy, in that those who take effort to switch off their lights are going to neglect more substantial actions.
In reality you'd probably find those more concerned about frivolous consumption are going to be the ones pursuing those ideas (i.e. getting solar).
@thrillhouse: The missing step here is education.
those who take effort to switch off their lights are going to neglect more substantial actions.
I believe this is the case due to lack of (correct) education.
Yet they still have 20 min warm showers.
If people believe they are doing things to save power, despite them being potentially wrong, they won't seek out the proper education to learn how to actually save significant power.
We should discourage the little things that are outright wrong, or do hardly anything, and instead focus on education on what the most impactful things are.
@Keplaffintech: You know the type, they drive 2 huge 4WDs, run their aircon 80% of the year, have a swimming pool, take annual overseas trips/cruises, and generated god knows how much waste renovating their house. The same people then preach to others that people using straws are responsible for killing the planet.
@lunchbox99: There's a term for such people. The middle class. Greedy, selfish people who believe a bit of virtue signalling will atone for all of their transgressions.
@RefusdClassification: I don't think your problem is with the middle class my friend. I don't know any middle class people who live like this. Your example is indicative of a tradie whose dad is an engineer or lawyer
@Keplaffintech: “ I've seen people switch off empty power outlets to save power.”
Hilarious. Clearly so dumb they don’t know that an empty outlet is an open circuit and not consuming any power at all.
@thrillhouse: It's actually not a false dichotomy, at least not completely. Your assertion doesn't take into account we have a time and effort budget in our lives, so everyone has to make trade-offs about what to care about. Micro-optimizations in your every-day life often have a relatively high cost. There is always more you could be squeezing out, given enough time. (Basically) nobody lives even remotely like this though, the vast majority of warriors for ecology/bargains/recycling/energy/coral just have their pet optimizations (or hates) they love to promote. For some it's just "plastics" (even though they drive a novated lease car which is 90% plastic and get a new one every 4 years). For others it's not eating meat (even though they go on holidays via air, etc). etc etc. I actually have known people that attempted to "take it all the way" and they literally lived in the forest. Ironically that's still not sustainable, they still relied on (some) mass produced goods and had some energy budget, and they were excluding themselves from work on larger scale root causes, such as materials science that could improve manufacturing.
"…….don't really have an impact yet make people feel like they're doing something good, and so they won't pursue actual solutions…….." HOW DARE YOU!?…says Greta from her private jet on her way to the next demonstration.
@mountaineer: You're attempting to call out Greta Thunberg for the one thing she's famous for not doing?
Have you done any research to find out how much energy is saved when 8 billion people and companies turn off lights, or are you just assuming it's negligible as it would conveniently absolve you of responsibility?
@callum9999: Both, I assumed, and now I just looked up the research and confirmed it's negligible. Measured drop of 4% in one hour of a year (1 in 8700). That's an annual change of 0.00046%.
That wasn't even my point anyway, it was that people thinking that they've made a difference is enough to stop them from seeking out any further, and potentially more effective, ways of having an impact.
Look, it is true that if you are more careful and turn off the lights when you're not using them you might only save 200kg of coal from being burnt every year. Where as, if you install solar panels, you can save a massive 5000kg of coal from being burnt every year.
However, why not do both, waste not is an important concept and everyone's little bit helps out a lot. I try to automate as much as possible around the house that that lights & switches switch off automatically when not required. That way you can do both and not require too much effort on your part.
. Lots of things on their own have little impact but collectively those "small" things compound and make a bigger difference
Nah. If you add up a million 0.1 'things' that is still nothing compared to one hundred million 'other things'. The effort/impact of the individual vs an industry is laughably small.
Otherwise it creates a lets give up type mentality
It's not a binary choice, either focus on the little things or give up. The effort should be in holding industry and businesses to account with their actions.
The biggest con of climate change is big business marketing it so that the responsibility is on the individual and their actions, not the business itself and the impact on climate change.
Hell, even look at celebrities or Prince Harry. They'll take private jets to conferences to talk about climate change, making more damaging changes in one trip than you will in your entire life of 'turning off the lights' and sweating with the fan on instead of air con.
Hell, even look at celebrities or Prince Harry. They'll take private jets to conferences to talk about climate change, making more damaging changes in one trip than you will in your entire life of 'turning off the lights' and sweating with the fan on instead of air con.
This is the part which shits me. A 7 hour flight between New York and London on a private jet puts the same amount of CO2 into the air as me driving our car for 14 years at 10000km per year.
We can turn off all our lights, sweat without air con, sort our rubbish, and industry will still blow us all out of the water with their energy usage and waste.
@whitey1212: As above, business is polluting on your behalf - not for fun. You choose to pay them to do so.
Rich people invariably have a much higher impact than the rest of us, agreed. If you want to spite them for it and kill the planet in the process then go ahead, but don't try and pretend you have no choice. They are a tiny percentage of the population so their outsized impact is still a tiny percentage of the problem and if the general public did their bit then it would still significantly help.
That being said, as this thread demonstrates, even people who profess to want to help the planet invariably can't be bothered to do so, so my personal belief is that we're already beyond the tipping point and the climate will now irreversibly change. I still do my bit because it makes me feel better to know I'm not particularly contributing to it, but it seems futile to try and convince others now. (My one exception being to assign responsibility - if you don't care then fine, if you say you care but "can't" do anything to reduce your impact, or refuse to do anything because "someone else does less" I'll definitely object!)
It's not remotely a con. "Big business" isn't polluting for fun, they're polluting because you and everyone else specifically asks them to by buying their products. We are the ones paying them to do this, and you can absolutely stop/reduce those payments if you actually want to.
I think this is an incredibly lazy way of thinking that's specifically designed to justify why people can't be bothered to do your part.
Nah mate easier to blame the boomers. It's all their fault.
While I do agree with you that turning lights on or off is mostly a red herring when it comes to concerns over energy 'waste', however…
The power consumption of LED lights in a store
There are still plenty of high-intensity discharge lamps, older halogen or even incandescent lighting fixtures to be found in commercial/retail premises, especially in older buildings.
Most studies I could find put the uptake of LED lighting in the commercial sector around 50% or so (but there don't seem to be more recent figures since 2018 and most of these are American studies, so factor in a larger percentage of non-LED lighting in countries like Australia where we're generally speaking years behind current trends).
Look at a larger shopping centre at night or higher-end department stores/boutiques in more upmarket shopping districts. They'll have dozens of halogen flood lights (probably in the several hundred watt range) covering outside parking/heavily-trafficked areas and the interior lighting can often feature halogen reflector globes as well, which while more efficient than older incandescent globes still use a lot more energy that LEDs or fluorescents.
Many older display cabinets/shelves or store front displays will also have bright halogen or incandescent globes as well.
LEDs made up 50% of lighting sales in 2019 and while I can't find any more recent statistics it stands to reason that there's still a lot of non-LED lighting in use in the commercial/retail industry.
Fair point, didn't know about the scale of non-LED still being used, but wouldn't that all pale in comparison to even just the aircon in a shopping centre?
Feels like 'lighting' is the least of our worries
Halogen lighting for outdoor flood lighting isn't really that common. Most of the older non-LED commercial outdoor flood lighting is usually discharge lighting (typically mercury vapour for white lights and sodium vapour for orange lights). Sodium vapour lights are pretty energy efficient compared to halogens and have quite a long bulb life.
Switching them off would save the lights though- they'll have to pay to replace them in a few years if they don't turn them off.
Switching them off would make that quite literally a 'never have to do thing'.
Lighting is up to 10% of the power usage of a commercial premises, so not as "miniscule" as all that:
To Stop Freddy five fingers.
Um…. Yeah… Nah.
Just keep believing that most retail theft is conducted by stealthy nocturnal Hamburglars.
It's just a trope (and lazy) to say that putting up lights will fix (or even mitigate) theft issues. Like…. how has worked out for the last, what? hundred years?
It's easy to sell exterior lights (and cameras for that matter), as people don't generally critically examine where and how most attritional loss occurs. "Oh, it's common sense" is not necessarily an ideal rationale. "Oh, maybe I should look at my supply chain, logisitics, warehouse storage, contractors, staff, and executives" is more pertinant. Nah… Just buy lights and cameras.
Lighting is 100% a deterrent for break ins. Have seen it happen multiple times where the poorly lit stores get their windows smashed etc over ones with lights all over the place.
Sure it doesn’t stop it happening because drunk/high people don’t think straight but it is a major deterrent.
And even better is lighting that turns on (and off), switched by simple movement sensors
because it looks nice..
It does but i would assume stores will be more interested in their bottom line.
But who is around to admire the lighting of the store after they have closed?
If it is external lighting for security purposes, then that's different.
Aesthetics, branding, marketing,
sometime main lights won't be on, but lights for signs, advertising boards, displays and shop fronts will remain on
sometime main lights won't be on, but lights for signs, advertising boards, displays and shop fronts will remain on
Yes, external lights serve a purpose.
I don't think we are talking about this at all.
We are discussing the issue of internal lights and other appliances (such as air con) being left on 24/7 when there is no occupancy.
@DoctorCalculon: My parents used to run a large furniture store. They left the lights on in the front section (visible part) as a deterent to thieves as thieves don't like being visible. Secondly they regularly left air con running in summer despite hating the cost as the heat even at night where they were actually affected the goods, especially wooden furniture which would cause glues or joints to expand or contract, We also used to have to put out glasses/bowls of water when they wanted to leave the air con off to help provide some humidity. So yeah it is not all laziness, many goods are affected by temperature changes too.
So people can stand outside and window shop at 2 am in the morning.
Um, sure?
Geez, the mental capacity of the neggers. Proper grammar would be 'at 2am' or 'at 2 in the morning', when else could 2am be? The 24th rotation on alpha centauri?
@Brian McGee: I probably do it from time to time, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother you when people say it that way lol. As I said, your life must be comfy. That’s not a bad thing, FYI.
Also, I said “um, sure?” as in “sure, why not, I guess?” I wasn’t disagreeing with what you said, but I don’t really care about that kind of thing as much as you clearly do.
Dob them in to the global Karen registry and have the global World Economic Forum police pay them a visit!
Or, better yet email Greta Thunberg.
How dare you!
Tate, is that you?
Yeah, anyone who points out simple ways to improve our economic and environmental situation is a total Karen who wants a world police state!
Yeah, those whom complain on OZB expecting to change the world are totaling using their time on resources that will bring about what they desire!
Feels a bit like the pot calling the kettle black here
@SpainKing: Yeah, because I am totally here to change the world, can't possibly be pure entertainment!
But hey, stuff your kettle with all the pot you need for that copium boost :P
@7ekn00: Nice to see your entertainment is belittling those who would like positive change in the world
@SpainKing: Nup, just those that think OZB is the appropriate forum for that change!
But I wouldn't expect a big intellectual like yourself to understand they subtle difference :P
@7ekn00: Discussing whether companies should turn their lights off is inappropriate for the site? Hopefully the mods take this post down soon. Wouldn't want any other Australians thinking of more ways to reduce global warming :O
OzBargain is as appropriate as most other forums would be. They're a place for public discourse. Just because it has wide reach and wouldn't be appreciated by all doesn't make it inappropriate
In some ways it's probably more useful to have this idea reach so many people. As opposed to writing a letter to your local Coles telling them to turn off their lights at night, or discouraging others from wanting change
I recognise your initial comment was likely made in jest though and I think caitsith's replywas as well so I don't want to make your day worse or get in to an argument. Just making my own entertainment
And thanks for calling me smart, that was sweet of you
Someone's gotta stop all that electricity from going to waste at night
Won't somebody please think of the EV's
Stalker much?
Nice to see how thin your skin is.
@Brian McGee: Just giving you back some of your own medicine.
If you’re going to call out people on their grammar on an internet forum then you should accept your punctuation being called out too, instead of getting defensive about it and calling the person a “stalker”. Hardly stalking as well — this isn’t a different post. If I commented on your comment in another post that would be closer to “stalking” and maybe it would be ok for you to say such silly things.
Funny you say my skin is thin when you’re the one who can’t handle someone who comments ”… 2 am in the morning.” on the internet lmfao. The irony is lost on you, isn’t it?
@Ghost47: 2 am in the morning isn't grammar, it's literally just saying the same thing twice. The "am" already specifies morning. The only way your thing makes sense, is to say "2 in the morning", or just "2 am". Both together doesn't make sense.
@Ghost47: Oooh, look who’s got his panties in a twist. Maybe you should give the internet a rest before you blow a gasket.
@Brian McGee: Knew you wouldn't be able to handle your own medicine. Keep seething when people say PIN number and ATM machine. Your punctuation still sucks.
Road lights in my area always on during the day
Another example of waste.
We should use the electricity where needed but the waste can be avoided.
Then report them as they are broken.
Thanks. I did contacted them on that Tuesday. I just realized it's only one light that has issue.
On Wednesday afternoon I noticed the light was off, and night time too, it's also off on Thursday during the day and at night.
These assets are usually looked after by your power distributor.
Try calling them up.
foxmulder
Road lights in my area always on during the day
Looks like an X-Files phenomenon.
I'm sure there is scientific explanation for this :)
I'm not sure . So many or all stores leaves there lights on during the night when most defiantly don't OP .
How was lunch at the pub?
Who are they defying?
Might be because it's easier to break in if it's all dark.
Only a very tiny proportion of loss by theft is caused by break-ins.
And any half-decent professional break-in experts are unlikely to be deterred by lights anyway.
I was thinking it acts as a simple deterrent for any opportunistic troublemakers. Someone walking by might consider it if it was all dark. Of course, a "professional" that is targeting the store would not care either way.
Which is to say we're talking Darren Ciggie Brain, not Danny Ocean.
Electricity shortages are being deliberately created through artificial scarcity, so you might want to look into that scam first.
I do wonder what hope there is for us when so many are so blind to the obvious. They are more likely to start a post online about the lights being left on in shops than query why our power stations are being shut down.
You think power stations shutting down is a conspiracy rather than businesses making a rational decision based on the significant structural change that is underway in that area?
They have been and continue to be shut down and there is no investment in replacements. Judging by your tone, you approve of this "change" or transition as your comrades might call it.
This is the end of cheap energy, replaced by expensive, unreliable sources.
You cannot worm out of this. It is affecting the most vulnerable in society and you are making peoples live miserable.
Fossil fuel electricity generation (which is what we mostly use) are always operating because they ramp up and down outputs very slowly. From an energy cost perspective, the shops are actually doing the right thing by using electricity when the majority of people arent. They are using "free" energy which would otherwise not be used.
the shops are actually doing the right thing by using electricity when the majority of people arent.
To do something productive - yes. To do something unproductive - no. Therein lies the dilemma - what real value does illuminating an empty space bring? Maybe different answers for different places at different times; surely not required for all places all the time.
Depends which state, but that's less and less true as time goes by, e.g. SA just ran the whole summer on 80% renewables.
Also that power could probably be used somewhere else via interconnectors, you don't have to 'burn' it pointlessly.
The power consumption of LED lights in a store is beyond minuscule compared to literally anything else going on with energy consumption.
Turning your lights off won't save the planet.