What’s the Impact of Earth Hour Campaign to the (Luzon Grid) Demand?

I hope that Earth Hour Campaign promoters will not claim the 84.2 mw deviation of the forecasted and actual demand on the 22nd trading interval (9:00pm – 10:00pm) in the Spot Market (WESM) as the result of the simultaneous switching-off of lights, primarily because the deviation is within the forecast error on that day. The absolute forecast error on March 28, 2009 range to as high as 3.77%. Forecast error on the 22nd interval is only 1.62%.

Actually, if you will not consider the error in forecasting, it will be interesting to observe that the Luzon Grid demand on the 1st half period of Earth Hour actually increases by 30.6 MW (see table below). The impact of the 1st half of the simultaneous switching of light which started at 8:30pm should be felt on the 21st trading interval which covers the time from 8:00pm to 9:00pm. They, definitely, can’t claim a reduction of electricity demand on this period because what was happened is the opposite.

I expected the deviation to be low because they were only switching-off the lights which consume very less electricity compared to air-conditioners and television sets. If they, specially the large companies who are also the biggest electricity consumers, are really serious about this campaign, they should set the date of the Earth Hour on the weekdays, when the electricity demand is usually high and commit to turn-off their large air-condition units which consumes a huge amount of power.

I’ve been saying this that we cannot make changes by this mere 1 hour campaign. We need a concrete solution to reduce the pollution for a permanently longer period of time. I believe that this kind of campaign only weakens the genuine fight for a better solution to the pollution and “global warming”, distracts the real issue, and only justifies everyone’s contribution to the emissions of pollutions (I mean, if I am a company which has a factory that emits pollution, I will simply join Earth Hour Campaign to make the people believe that I also love the environment, even If I’m not, and justifies my existence). Actually, this campaign is being used by large companies as a PR for them to say that they also want to save the Earth from pollution even if in reality, they don’t.

Earth Hour is a campaign that calls for the simultaneous switching-off of lights at 8:30pm – 9:30pm on March 28, 2009 to “boost” awareness of the climate changes caused by pollution. It was spearheaded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF),

Filed in: Polution and Global Warming
Local date: March, 2010

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