Save The Planet
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How tf can a meter shut of an applience? Did you also have smart breakers from them?
Anyway absolutely ridiculous
It's separate from the main meter and connected directly at the condenser unit.
It monitors power draw and acts as a relay when the provider sends a shutoff signal. The thermostat thinks the system is still going, and the fans still push air through the vents, but the coils aren't being cooled anymore so the air gets hot and musty.
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The efficiency gains from an air source heat pumps are on the heating cycle, not the cooling cycle, since you are moving heat around instead of having to generate heat via combustion or big heating elements. When acting as an air conditioner, the efficiency is the same.
Ground source heat pumps (GSHPs) are generally the most efficient, achieving 350-500% efficiency by leveraging stable underground temperatures, though they have higher installation costs. Air source heat pumps (ASHPs) are also highly efficient at 250-400%, extracting heat from the air, but their performance can be affected by extreme outdoor temperatures. In contrast, a traditional gas boiler for heating is around 90-95% efficient, while separate air conditioning units cool, but neither offers the combined, high-efficiency performance of a heat pump. Therefore, for overall energy savings and reduced environmental impact, heat pumps are the superior choice for both heating and cooling.
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I had my energy company remove their LVTC smart meter this week after they started using it to shut off our condenser unit during our 100 degree days
The fact that it exists at all is bad enough, but they were doing this at a time when our AC was already malfunctioning due to low refrigerant. On the day they first shut it off, our house reached 94 degrees.
The program that the previous owner signed up for that enabled them to do this gave them a fucking two dollar a month discount.
I use a smart thermostat to optimize my home conditioning - having a second meter fucking with my schedule ends up making us all miserable. Energy providers need to stop fucking around and just build out their infrastructure to handle worst case peak loads, and enable customers to install solar to reduce peak loading to begin with.
The other thing that kills me about this is that our provider administers our city's solar electric subsidy program themselves. When i had them come out to give us a quote, they inflated their price by more than 100% because they knew what our electricity bill was. All they did was take our average monthly bill and multiplied it by the repayment period. I could have been providing them more energy to the grid at their peak load if they hadn't tried scamming me.
FUCK private energy providers.
our city’s solar electric subsidy program
It sounds like there's two different things there. There's a solar installation (hardware, etc.), and there's likely some kind of net metering program (where they pay you or give you credit for electricity you generate). That paragraph sounds like the first, but the phrase sounds like the second.
You shouldn't have to go through them for the solar installation, if your conditions accommodate it. Granted, the conditions don't apply to everyone. You'll want to have a suitable roof that ideally faces south-ish, own your home, and plan to stay there for at least 10 years. In the US, you also kind of need to get it done within this calendar year, which is a rough ask, before the federal 30% tax credit goes away. But maybe you can find an installer that isn't trying to scam you quite as much.
(It's early and cloudy today.)
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That’s the only definitional difference. In practice there are other differences. My modern cold climate heat pump has a variable speed compressor whereas my previous traditional AC did not. The variable speed allows the system to ramp up and down on both heating and cooling, letting the system run all the time even at a very low level when the demand is low.
The traditional AC’s single speed compressor ended up doing a lot of short cycling when cooling demand was low and shutting down completely when cooling demand was too high (to prevent overheating and compressor damage). The variable speed compressor of the modern heat pump is designed for continuous operation over many hours, even when the temperature outside is extremely high, without overheating. I believe it’s able to back off the compressor speed when the cooling demand exceeds capacity though I have yet to see the system be unable to keep up, despite the unit itself being a lot smaller than the old AC.
I genuinely think the oversimplification of what a heat pump is and how it compares to AC is malignant. It's like comparing a rickshaw to a bullet train.
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I should have figured the Rick and Morty episode was a reference to something.
Makes me think about South Park and watching it as it aired when I was a kid. There were so many things I missed because I hadn’t seen any of the source material for a lot of the jokes.
Watching it all again 25 years later and damn, even better the second time around when you’ve seen all the shit they’re parodying.
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our small impact is only felt when we band together
It is also offset immediately when unregulated corporations use the saved energy to sell us the next dumb thing.
It is not offset. If you bend together you don't buy the next dumb thing.
Bending together is the only thing that can create change, billionaires won't.
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The core of the post, regardless of the "like 400W running for a minute" is "why the fuck do I have to suffer in 80°+ inside heat while AI companies don't have to reduce any sort of electrical intake during the heatwave"
If I had to pick between having AC or AI, I'm picking AC every time. Fuck would I even do with AI while im burning up at 104°
"ChatGPT tell me how to prevent heat stroke"
"Dinosaurs used to eat rocks. Have you tried eating a rock?"Difference being AC per capita uses a shitload more energy than AI does per capita. Also in AI, the costly part is done once and is done till a new model gets trained. AC is on 24/7.
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It's a meme.
It's misinformation that then makes people think "I can run my AC all day because AI uses up so much power to make one image" when it is not the case.
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It is not offset. If you bend together you don't buy the next dumb thing.
Bending together is the only thing that can create change, billionaires won't.
Bending together
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Not only are they cheaper than AC, but doing the math shows that they are more energy efficient than a human doing the same work, since humans operate at around 80-100W, 24 hours a day. (Assuming that the output is worth anything, of course.)
let's not use the term "efficiency" with humans making art, please. you're not helping anyone with that argument, you're just annoying both sides.
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Great, now this might work with my neighbor, but how exactly do I smack mega corps and the state? Are we talking eco terrorism here or do you have some other idea that hasn't been tried in the last decades?
I mean, climate change isn't new but humanity still fucks up the planet and that does not seem to change. Why should we have to sweat at home while professionalized greed burns down everything around us? I will gladly take individual responsibility, but not alone.
Actually, a failing power grid here and there might act as a wake-up call and then we can start talking about solutions, not just symptomatic treatment.
Talking about direct action or even a mildly disruptive protest will probably get you moderated here, and in trouble in real life. It feels like the only options "allowed" are stern words. At least a progressive like Zohran won the primary in NYC, but we'll need a lot more of that to make a difference.
On the other hand, Luigi is considered by many a hero.
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let's not use the term "efficiency" with humans making art, please. you're not helping anyone with that argument, you're just annoying both sides.
Well if humans could run on coal it would be a valid argument...
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Difference being AC per capita uses a shitload more energy than AI does per capita. Also in AI, the costly part is done once and is done till a new model gets trained. AC is on 24/7.
AC typically provides real value. (Not counting when people air condition empty rooms, but that's also a thing corporations typically do more).
AI is often worthless or counter productive.
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I don’t disagree with you but most of the energy that people complain about AI using is used to train the models, not use them. Once they are trained it is fast to get what you need out of it, but making the next version takes a long time.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Only because of brute force over efficient approaches.
Again, look up Deepseek's FP8/multi GPU training paper, and some of the code they published. They used a microscopic fraction of what OpenAI or X AI are using.
And models like SDXL or Flux are not that expensive to train.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but they can get away with it because being rich covers up internal dysfunction/isolation/whatever. Chinese trainers, and other GPU constrained ones, are forced to be thrifty.
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Not only are they cheaper than AC, but doing the math shows that they are more energy efficient than a human doing the same work, since humans operate at around 80-100W, 24 hours a day. (Assuming that the output is worth anything, of course.)
I think that’s going a bit far. ML models are tools to augment people, mostly.
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I think that’s going a bit far. ML models are tools to augment people, mostly.
Oh for sure. But if (for example) an artist can save time by tracing over an SDXL reference image, that is energy-efficient as well as time-efficient, despite most people claiming the contrary.
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Yeah, that thing that nobody wanted? Everybody has to have it. Fuck corporations and capitalism.
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Energy providers should install smart meters that shut off the power to AI server farms instead of residential air conditioners during peak loads.
what would you do if you asked llm master what fourier means and municipal grid said "no"
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Yeah, that thing that nobody wanted? Everybody has to have it. Fuck corporations and capitalism.
Oh, and you don't want it and want the stupid model? You can still buy it for 3x the price.
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Well if humans could run on coal it would be a valid argument...
Humans essentially do run on fossil fuels. Modern agriculture is very energy intensive.
