{"id":6578,"date":"2013-11-07T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2013-11-07T14:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6578"},"modified":"2013-11-07T09:11:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-07T14:11:26","slug":"leds-vs-the-entire-u-s-nuclear-fleet-and-gas-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/leds-vs-the-entire-u-s-nuclear-fleet-and-gas-pipeline.html","title":{"rendered":"LEDs vs. the entire U.S. nuclear fleet (and gas pipeline)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nAll U.S. nuclear power reactors could be replaced by LED lighting\r\nwith a few clever on-off controls.\r\nMore evidence Plant Vogtle is a boondoggle good for nothing but\r\n\r\npropping up profits for Georgia Power and Southern Company<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nMichael Kanellos wrote for Forbes 28 October 2013,\r\n\r\nCan LED Bulbs Make Nuclear Plants Obsolete?<\/a>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOne $7 billion nuclear plant like one of Georgia Power’s 1.2 GW\r\nunits would add a little over 1 percent of capacity. The bulb\r\nsolution would cost $60 billion, and around $36 billion two years\r\nfrom now, and require only that consumers know how to screw in a\r\nlight bulb. Nuclear would cost $105 billion, probably more, and take\r\ndecades.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSo maybe it’s not\r\n\r\njust weather<\/a> that’s pushing down your demand, Southern Company:\r\nmaybe people are switching to LEDs already (plus rooftop solar).\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n…if you could install these anticipated LED lighting systems\r\novernight—and the only impediment to that would be finding\r\nenough bulbs—you could mothball 44 reactors by the end of the\r\nyear and\/or postpone any new plants for decades.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nEven more aggressive measures could further reduce the need for\r\nnuclear. Case studies that show that networked controls combined\r\nwith LEDs can cut power by 80 to 90 percent, or another 35 to 45\r\npower plants. With smart lights and a computerized Clapper, we’ve\r\nalready whacked out nearly the entire reactor fleet.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWould lighting be more cost-effective? Yes, by a wide margin.\r\nGeorgia Power is in the midst of trying to bring two nuclear power\r\nreactors online. The estimated budget is currently $14 billion, or\r\n$900 million over earlier estimates, and the project has been\r\ndelayed to 2017 or 2018. Earlier this month, Westinghouse, which is\r\nbuilding the reactor, filed a lawsuit against Georgia Power.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nFinland’s Olkiluoto, a 1.6 gigawatt plant originally slated for\r\ncompletion in 2009, won’t likely go live until 2016.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nCompare that to lighting. The cost of the primary component package\r\nfor making LED bulbs fell from $13 per kilolumens to $6 per\r\nkilolumen from 2010 to 2011. In 2012, Lux Research predicted LED\r\nbulb prices would drop by 50% to hit $11 by 2020. But, oops, it’s\r\nalready happened. Several vendors sell 60 watt equivalent bulbs for\r\n$12 to $10.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWe don’t have to wait for Georgia Power.\r\nAnd cities and counties can take the lead:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAnd note that residential LEDs provide the least bang for the buck.\r\nThe 2.4 billion commercial lighting systems consume half the total\r\nlight power. In commercial markets, vendors have come up with\r\nprograms to finance lighting upgrades through utility bill savings,\r\nreducing the cost of new lights to zero or close to it. New York,\r\nLondon, Paris, Buenos Aires and other cities have already launched\r\nLED streetlight programs. Fun fact: there are\r\n\r\n2.4 billion commercial, industrial and outdoor lights in the U.S.<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nKanellos’ other data comes from\r\nthe U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA)\r\nfor\r\n\r\nenergy sources<\/a>,\r\nfrom U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) for\r\n\r\nlighting market<\/a>,\r\nand from the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) for\r\n\r\nnuclear power plants<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nIt’s not just economy, either.\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAnd finally, there is the issue of safety. Is anyone really afraid\r\nof Iran getting its hands on a dimmer switch?\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nIs anyone afraid of LEDs\r\n\r\ncorroding and leaking methane or PCBs like natural gas pipelines<\/a>?\r\nOr of their \r\ndrinking water being permanently contaminated like in fracking<\/a>?\r\n

\r\nAnd is anyone afraid of LEDs \r\nblowing up like that pipeline in Oklahoma<\/a> or\r\nmelting down like Chernobyl or Fukushima?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All U.S. nuclear power reactors could be replaced by LED lighting with a few clever on-off controls. More evidence Plant Vogtle is a boondoggle good for nothing but propping up profits for Georgia Power and Southern Company. Michael Kanellos wrote for Forbes 28 October 2013, Can LED Bulbs Make Nuclear Plants Obsolete? One $7 billion […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,265,18,6124,104,6687,73],"tags":[8704,8755,1060,8701,8708,397,8702,7218,12,7,562,8737,6076,107,8731,108,6],"class_list":["post-6578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia-power","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-pipeline-2","category-safety","tag-economy","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-forbes","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-grid","tag-lake","tag-led","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-pipeline","tag-plant-vogtle","tag-safety","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1I6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6581,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6578\/revisions\/6581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}