apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Gee, seems like every household should have one of these -- why are they selling it at such high price? They should give it away for free to every PG&E customers.

So when it turns red do you turn it off to lower the demand on the system?

It's a weather ball!

Seriously, the whole energy thing isn't that complicated. Shut down as much as possible in mid- to late afternoon on warm weekdays and try not to run the AC then if you can live without it. That's PG&E's peak usage time, and it's peak partly because their major load comes from businesses, which are all running their AC in mid-afternoon.

Wende, though that would be the easiest, sometimes having a visual reminder is good, to trip the thought process, especially for those who didn't live through the energy crisis while living in central California. =)

...and I agree with Rich, humorous that it runs on the very thing you may need to cut back on!

No, I wasn't criticizing -- more musing that behavior which was once common sense, driven by the desire to save money, has become this gadget-intensive "save the earth" movement. It's one sign that people in general have much more disposable income than was the case 30 years ago -- which has to do with lower costs from the international manufacturing and shipping that's now getting not-green criticism.

I'd actually expected the Green site to be much more... well... esoteric. Something happened with consumption patterns between crises, that it's necessary to reinvent so much...

Does anyone else see that this is not only useless but also increases the grid load?

They should have made it solar powered instead... :)

Ha. So they're telling me to unplug my television when it's not on and plug this in?

How many watts does this think suck up?

Who wants to calculate the additional load on the grid should all of their customers get one of these? PG&E needs to install a solar or wind power array to compensate!