A Waste of Energy

The Governor of Utah promoted a ridiculous program last week, in which people were supposed to turn their lights off from 9-10 pm one night as some kind of energy-saving demonstration. Of course, it failed. The power company noticed no decline in power use. I can think of several reasons why this didn't work:

• One would only save a small amount of money (less than $0.10) by participating in this.
• Who wants to sit in the dark for an hour?
• People knew this was a stunt that wouldn't accomplish anything.

Now Texas A&M wants to do something even more lame, according to an e-mail they sent me. It's the "Residence Hall Energy Challenge!" Halls compete against each other to see who can reduce their energy use the most over last year's numbers.

How much impact can students really make? They can control lights and washing machines. Correct me if I'm wrong, those who have lived in A&M dorms, but I assume students don't have much control over the temperature in the building, and that's where most energy would be used. So students have to sit in the dark in stinky clothes if they want to win this.

But why would they want to win? The grand prize(s) is/are $400 for the winning dorm(s) to spend as they wish. So the residents will get a pizza party or something. The average student will see little of that $400, and thus has little incentive to compete. Will A&M reduce anyone's tuition as a result of this program? No chance in hell.

Texas A&M students have dorm and school pride, so some may take part in this. I hope they realize, however, that this is a waste of time. In fact, if I was there, I'd probably use more energy just to spite the university. Of course, it wouldn't make any difference in total energy use, and neither will this program.




UPDATE: Apparently, A&M did this in March, and claimed that it reduced energy use by 4.35%. Assuming energy costs $0.14/kwh (by taking an average from here), A&M would have saved $3,062. This is probably less than A&M spent promoting this program. If I'm a student in a dorm that got $400 for winning the contest (apparently there were three in March, so let's say $1,200 was doled out), I'd say, "Who gets the other $1,862?".