“To make this the greenest Super Bowl, the New Orleans Host Committee has partnered with fans and the community to offset energy use across the major Super Bowl venues. The exterior of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome features more than 26,000 LED lights on 96 full-color graphic display panels, designed to wash the building in a spectrum of animated colors, patterns and images. The system draws only 10 kilowatts of electricity — equivalent to the amount of energy used by a small home — and the lights are expected to last for many years before needing replacement.”
Gee, and here I was ready to blame the standby WIND power generators….
Sorta like them EV’s….ya got a choice between heat or movin’……
Howcum, the defroster must be functional to safety a motor vehicle…but…..
So the blackout was a visible reminder that green tech is not ready for prime time. May as well forget about it, even this isn’t stark enough reality for the partisan media to “get it”.
No Occam, it’s the new normal.
What is really ironic? Read the quote above. They are touting the energy efficiency of what basically amounts to Christmas lights on steroids. These “display panels” do nothing to further the “mission” of the Superdome, not a damn thing. The most energy-efficient solution would be to leave them off altogether.
Another innumerate story on electricity. The system draws only 10 kilowatts of electricity — equivalent to the amount of energy used by a small home
Huh. 10kW * 24 hrs/day * 30 days/month ~= $575/month @ $.08/kwH (7,200 total kwH usage).
According to the Ontario Energy Board, the average family of four uses 800 kwH/month, or about 11% of the usage above.
There’s just no way to make this number sensible. Even if they meant 10kwH, that’s about a third of what the average home uses in a day. And since they didn’t specify what time frame the house would use that energy in, the comparison is meaningless.
And they wonder why their industry is dying.
Some observations.
First,
KevinB, the 10KW for those lights do not run 24/7. From the article, “exterior of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome features more than 26,000 LED lights on 96 full-color graphic display panels…”. I suspect that a majority of the time, when there are no events there, those display panels are off.
Second,
Despite that, 10kW for a small house? Excuse me, but I can run my entire house on a 5kW generator and if I had to, a 3kW. By being selective in what I run etc.
Third,
LED lighting is very low power consumption. They are being advertised as lasting up to 100,000 hours(approx. 11+ years) before replacement. I find that claim funny and never fail to ask the manufacturer’s reps, who come by trying to hawk them, how they can claim that since they haven’t been around that long. They always squirm while answering.
But seriously, LED lighting is being retrofitted into industrial locations all over because not only are they low power consumption, they require less maintenance. For example, they save on labor costs if you aren’t re-lamping every few years. Refineries and other industrial plants have LOTS of lights. Drive by one at night sometime. The savings are not chump change or many industries would not be implementing them. They are not about to do anything that doesn’t provide a payback unless forced to.
LEDs aren’t some ‘greenie’ boutique power pipe dream.
That being said, I would be very interested to know what the power abnormality referred to in the article was. If it tripped a breaker, the options are somewhat limited. Given the large amount of power consumption at the Superdome (we’re probably talking mega-watts)and the fact that half of the field lighting went down, I suspect they had utility or distribution power problems.
The maintenance there I have been told is not the best. I worked with a fellow who worked there for a few years as an electrician, he told me the environment was highly political and unionized. Lots of workers who got their jobs because they ‘knew somebody’ in the city or the union and getting anything done was a real chore.
I’m willing to bet the LED’s had nothing to do with it.
As I learned years ago working at a very progressive 5-12 day school in the US.
It doesn’t have to _work_, it just has to _look_ good!
.
test
What could go wrong indeed! OY!
Obama ordered the blackout by executive authority in an effort to boost beer and finger food sales in the Restaurants and Taverns around the country. The US economy is still lagging, so a little extra stimulus from paying customers was needed to keep the job numbers and business revenues up for at least one more month. OK so I just made this all up. Hahaha!
If you’ve ever choked down an acorn cake, you’ll understand why eating dog sounded good.
MercedesBenz SuperDome, sounds suspiciously like Bring My Wallet (BMW)
The Dodge superbowl commercial, listen and learn Phil:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sillEgUHGC4
Green, pffffh.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100424440#ixzz2JqJ30vMr
The drop from 1100 private jets last year to 1000 this year makes it “greener” too.
But putting up a few more windmills here in rural Nova Scotia will fix it, I’m sure.
Tim is right; there’s nothing unusual about LED lighting. In fact it’s greatly superior to CF lighting. And 10 kW is about right for an LED display of that size.
What we do know at this point is that Entergy confirmed that there was no event with their supply from grid. Any power issues were on site at the Silver Dome.
> LED lighting is very low power consumption. They are being advertised as lasting up to 100,000 hours(approx. 11+ years) before replacement. I find that claim funny and never fail to ask the manufacturer’s reps, who come by trying to hawk them, how they can claim that since they haven’t been around that long. They always squirm while answering.
They squirm because they don’t understand statistics. First of all, “up to 100,000 hours” is almost meaningless. Under ideal conditions, some LED device somewhere certainly will last that long. A more meaningful prediction would be at what point some fraction (expressed by the B-lifetime) of the devices will fall below some fraction of their rated light output (expressed by the L-lifetime). (LEDs fade – quite slowly – with time (and other things, like heat and quality of forward current). This is called “lumen maintenance”.) Since the fade is electronically detectable long before 100,000 hours have elapsed, it’s not difficult (under certain assumptions) to extrapolate.
Probably the distribution most often used to conduct this extrapolation is the Weibull function. It’s been very useful in modeling this sort of behavior in quite a variety of systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution
Uhh Tim, LED = Light Emitting DIODE. Diode’s short Tim, They don’t go open like filament lighting. Diode arrays short catastrophically in a cascade effect which is so fast it could fry a whole system before an old analogue circuit protection device has time to trigger. I have inspected some of these “advanced” lighting systems and they are a hodgepodge of old electro-mechanical devices and fixturing mutated to solid state devices – what you gain in reduced current consumption you lose in device/system break down – no real practical engineering or QC involved. This is green tech – full of hucksters and sub standard design because there is government mandated markets and big public subsidy. No other technology has had so much market intervention retarding its development. As I say most of this stuff is not ready for prime time and that which is is not cost effective.
The bookies spiked a load controller … too much money on the line with the Ravens way above the spread. 😉
LEDs are definitely low power consumption, however, from my experience with Christmas light strings, they are finished after 3 years max, negating any savings in electric bills. I suspect cheap Chinese junk, with moisture shorting the light string out. Again, cheap junk, I would rather have my old traditional set, which is likely now illegal(!).
LED’s are also sensitive to voltage fluctuations……with so much power drawn at the Superdome, is it any surprise?
On another note……just bought an LED 40″ TV, and all I can say is, what a spectacular picture, best I’ve ever seen out of all the others. And yeah, I bought it for the savings in consumption.
BoomBoom out go the lights
Actually, the power outage occurred just as Beyonce and her 100 dancers plugged in their hair dryers following the half-time show.
“The Danger of Living on Bread and Circuses
By Alice Schroeder
Rome in the first two centuries A.D. faced a yawning gulf between rich and poor. The mighty empire built on tribute reached its geographic limits. Its economy created few exportable goods. Slaves acquired by conquest built most of its bridges, roads and aqueducts and took jobs in farming, mining and construction. As this cheaper labor replaced Roman citizens, idle, unemployed, hungry people filled the capital.
The Caesars created make-work and part-time jobs, subsidized housing and doled out grain. Even more, they found, was needed. “A people that yawns is ripe for revolt,” wrote Jerome Carcopino in “Daily Life in Ancient Rome.”
The emperors added holidays until, eventually, the Romans spent half their days attending gladiator games, public executions and chariot races. Disgusted, the satirist Juvenal accused his fellow citizens of selling out for bribes of “bread and circuses.” The Romans did nothing to prove him wrong, until two centuries later the empire was divided forever and Rome was sacked by Visigoths.”
“The emperors added holidays…”
Interesting you would mention it given that our B.C. Liberal Empress has deigned to give us yet another tax-payer funded holiday – Family Day – for Feb. 11th.
Never mind that it’s largely a transfer of wealth from business to bureaucrats. Businesses – retail, foods etc. will have to remain open, while bureaucrats will take another day off. Meanwhile, other public workers from police to firemen, will work a ‘stat’ at time and a half or double time.
And those employees in private businesses that do get a day off, will be happy since they receive something for nothing at their employers expense.
Sure, a few people will actually use the day to benefit their families, but for most it’ll be just another day off. If it’s a ‘family day’ shouldn’t employees have to qualify by actually having kids? ‘Partners’ shouldn’t be enough to qualify.