Why is modern power demand so high?

[ShawnD1]

Modern houses have significantly better wiring than old houses because people apparently used less electricity in the past. Entire houses would only have maybe 5 breakers. Today, even my condo has more than 10 breakers.

How is that possible? Everything we have today is significantly more efficient. Examples:
-23W CFL bulbs instead of 100W incandescent bulbs. My parents' house was designed to use 400W for bathroom lighting!
-LCD and LED televisions use far less power than old CRT televisions. The one my parents had in the 1980s ate so much power that it didn't even show the picture properly unless it was "heated up" first. Modern displays never heat up. I can put my hand on my laptop monitor and feel that it's the same temperature as the air in this room.
-Ovens eat way more power than microwaves. Look at the instructions on a TV dinner; 5 minutes in the microwave vs 45 minutes in the oven. Before the days of microwaves, the oven was used for everything. Heating up yesterday's left overs would chew through electricity like it's going out of style.
-Stoves eat way more power than microwaves. Preparing pho noodles in the microwave takes 2 minutes. Doing that on the stove would take quite a bit longer. Making coffee on the stove was painfully inefficient because it was an inexact process. You can't put your coffee cup on the hot stove, so you end up boiling water in a metal pot and a lot of that water goes to waste, but putting a cup of water in the microwave only heats the exact amount of water needed to make that one cup of coffee.
-Modern tumble dryers are significantly more efficient than old tumble dryers because modern ones have sensors in them; they dry the clothes then turn off when finished. Old dryers didn't have sensors, so you would need to set the timer, and it might be running the dryer long after the clothes have already dried.
-Modern air conditioners are more efficient than old ones due to regulations and general technology improvements.

Where is all of this additional load coming from? Lighting, cooking, drying clothes, and AC are easily the biggest demands in any house, and all of them have improved over the years.

 

[surfsatwerk]

My lighting system would make Wrigley field blush. Beware the shadows!

 

[Zebo]

Because they are huge. My parents house built in the 1960s which raised 8 kids has 1/3 sqft of my house. Heat and/or cool and light that space takes tons more money.

 

[Tweak155]

Ahhh condo living. I wouldn't mind going back to that!

 

[vi edit]

It's nice being able to throw a breaker and only have it affect a single room or hallway instead of taking down half the house. I would say it's a function of homes being 3x the size they used to be, more logical methods to wiring and more building codes only allowing so many recepticles/breaker per breaker.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Nobody wants to or has an incentive to sell less.

Certainly not Energy companies.

 

[dullard]

McMansions. The bigger the house, the more surface area, the more it costs to heat/cool. Plus McMansions are built like a flimsy house of cards with terrible quality (tons of air leaks and minimum required insulation improperly installed).

House styling. An old ugly box house has minimal outer surface area. Newer styles with multiple bay windows, structures jutting out, many roof lines, etc all massively increase surface area and require massive additional power to heat/cool.

More windows. Bigger windows.

The so called right to have your house at 65 F in the summer and 80 in winter just because people won't go outside in the aummer or wear a sweater in the winter.

The fact that people now leave all lights on in all rooms, even when the house is vacant. Plus they have 20+ lightbulbs in many rooms instead of one dim lamp.

30 years ago there was an average of 1.6 TVs per house on an hour or so a day. Now a typical house has 3+ TV's on for many hours, computers weren't common back then, dishes were washed by hand, etc.

 

[Mixolydian]

1. There are still a lot of older homes with less efficient appliances.
2. People have a lot more "devices" than they used to, especially electronics.
3. Some people aren't very concerned about energy consumption.

 

[HumblePie]

Xboxs


j/k.

Each appliance is more efficient, but there are more of them. WAY more in an average household. Back in the day people may have owned TV's, but they spent more time doing things like being outside, or reading books.

Now everyone has all their lights on, the TV with the Xbox and PC all running. Several gizmo's hooked into walls being charged like phones, tablets, and what not. Everyone has a router or two and some other appliances constantly plugged in and running.

Old houses lighting was typically pretty piss poor. You'd have 1 typical fixture for a room, and not always that. So when you plugged in a lightbulb to light the area, it was big powerful and bright one. Now everyone has tons of fixtures and recessed lighting. Each lightbulb may use less, but there are typically more of them now and more on at any given time.

Also, there is just more people now than there was previously. More people with more gadgets = more power needs.

 

[vi edit]

Plus McMansions are build like a flimsy house of cards with terrible quality (tons of air leaks and minimum required insulation improperly installed).

I'm going to disagree a bit here. I've lived in/been in enough older homes to know that A LOT of them are about as air tight/leak proof as a whiffle ball. The 1920's built, 1200 sq/ft bungalo I lived in cost me *MORE* to heat and cool than my 3200 sq/ft home I have now.

 

[Mixolydian]

Back in the day people may have owned TV's, but they spent more time doing things like being outside, or reading books.

And they probably owned just one. Now people have TV's in practically every room of the house.

 

[Anubis]

the stereo amp i plan on buying when i move will prob get its own dedicated 30 amp line



also your DVR uses more power than your fridge

 

[Fritzo]

We also own a lot more electronics these days, and a lot of them draw power 24/7. How many TV receivers, laptops, PC's, wall chargers, media boxes, and various other gadgets do you have laying around?

 

[Ken g6]

Also:
- More TVs. One for every room!
- Bigger TVs. Quadruple the screen size and it's going to use more power no matter what you do.
- Plasma TVs. Some people still like them, but they use much more power than any variety of LCD.

And then there's me. See my sig for my reason.

 

[shortylickens]

We have way more gadgets than before. Its a good thing all of them get improved efficiency every year, otherwise we couldnt use any of them.

Also, AC. Many more people have it that before. It sucks up TONS of juice.

 

[dullard]

I'm going to disagree a bit here. I've lived in/been in enough older homes to know that A LOT of them are about as air tight/leak proof as a whiffle ball. The 1920's built, 1200 sq/ft bungalo I lived in cost me *MORE* to heat and cool than my 3200 sq/ft home I have now.

Except people in those homes generally live with temperature gradients. Compartmentalized old houses are easy to heat/cool the one room you are in and let the rest of the rooms be miserable. Just move the space heater around as you move and open/close vents. Now giant open spaces make that impossible.

 

[Arkaign]

All the 'wall warts' suck power even when the devices are turned off. Not to mention that in 1980, you generally had a single TV plugged in. Now, that same living room spot has typically : The TV, a console or three, a dvd/bluray player, a home theatre reciever or HTIB, a cable/fios STB, sometimes a DVR, sometimes a HTPC, etc. Ditto the bedroom.

 

[techs]

Actually many people have far more electrical items then in the past. In my living room I have a 52 inch LCD, DVR, Stereo, DVD player, Cable Modem, 2 Routers, 3 computers, 2 cordless phones, 2 uninterruptible power supplies. And thats only whats on most of the time. I have some other things I only use occasionally.

Because of the far greater number of home electrical devices its far easier to overload a circuit breaker. Which is why new homes have more breakers. In fact, its part of the building codes in most areas.

btw there is a disconnect between your thread title and post. One asks about demand and the other about why there are more breakers. But they are two separate issues.

 

[ShawnD1]

My lighting system would make Wrigley field blush. Beware the shadows!

You have schizophrenia. See: shadow people.

Because they are huge. My parents house built in the 1960s which raised 8 kids has 1/3 sqft of my house. Heat and/or cool and light that space takes tons more money.

Do you have centralized air conditioning for the whole house or something? 'Round these parts, we just have small air conditioners that take 12A or so. Instead of cooling the entire house all the time, it just cools one room.

 

[Imp]

Already covered: more of everything. TV and radio back then? Now we got stereo, surround sound system for the TV, separate speakers for computers, at least 1 computer/device per occupant, cable boxes, PVRs, multiple TVs, everyone gets their own rooms, higher standards for comfort, etc.

 

[Murloc]

It's nice being able to throw a breaker and only have it affect a single room or hallway instead of taking down half the house. I would say it's a function of homes being 3x the size they used to be, more logical methods to wiring and more building codes only allowing so many recepticles/breaker per breaker.

this.

Also back then they didn't have dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, daughter with hair-dryer and other stuff, dad on the computer, son playing PS3 on the television and the mother cooking with an electric appliance, all at the same time, everyone in a different heated room.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I read something not that long ago that said cable/satellite boxes are now some of the largest power leaches in our homes.

 

[jagec]

-23W CFL bulbs instead of 100W incandescent bulbs. My parents' house was designed to use 400W for bathroom lighting!

People insist on more lighting than they used to, but yeah, lighting is much more efficient than it used to be.

-LCD and LED televisions use far less power than old CRT televisions. The one my parents had in the 1980s ate so much power that it didn't even show the picture properly unless it was "heated up" first. Modern displays never heat up. I can put my hand on my laptop monitor and feel that it's the same temperature as the air in this room.

Per inch, sure. But a 12" B&W CRT TV uses a LOT less power than a 60" LCD...and in the past, people would only have the one TV.

Try putting your hand above your 50" LCD TV and you'll see that plenty of heat is still being generated...

-Ovens eat way more power than microwaves. Look at the instructions on a TV dinner; 5 minutes in the microwave vs 45 minutes in the oven. Before the days of microwaves, the oven was used for everything. Heating up yesterday's left overs would chew through electricity like it's going out of style.

Gas ovens. Electric ovens took some time to take off after their invention.

-Modern tumble dryers are significantly more efficient than old tumble dryers because modern ones have sensors in them; they dry the clothes then turn off when finished. Old dryers didn't have sensors, so you would need to set the timer, and it might be running the dryer long after the clothes have already dried.

Using electricity for dryers is also a (somewhat) more recent development.

-Modern air conditioners are more efficient than old ones due to regulations and general technology improvements.

People just didn't have AC, and certainly not central AC.

Ultimately it depends on what era's energy usage you're comparing us to. 20s? 40s? 60s? 80s?

 

[ShawnD1]

Already covered: more of everything. TV and radio back then? Now we got stereo, surround sound system for the TV, separate speakers for computers, at least 1 computer/device per occupant, cable boxes, PVRs, multiple TVs, everyone gets their own rooms, higher standards for comfort, etc.

But most of them are off most of the time. Advances in computer technology make this a lot easier than in the past. In the 80386 days, the computer was either on or off. You could either leave it on for 30 minutes while you leave to do something, or you can turn it off and let it take another 5 minutes to boot when you need it again. Now, advanced sleep allows the computer to sleep and consume as much power as being off (because transformers always consume no-load current), and the computer is completely up and running within 3 seconds of waking. Due to the quick wake time, my parents' computers are set to go to sleep after 15 minutes of non-use or go to sleep when the power button is hit. There's no longer a reason to keep the computer running for long periods of time just so they can play freecell while watching TV. They can hit the power button, the computer wakes up immediately, and they can play freecell right away.

Now everyone has all their lights on, the TV with the Xbox and PC all running. Several gizmo's hooked into walls being charged like phones, tablets, and what not. Everyone has a router or two and some other appliances constantly plugged in and running.

Do people really leave their lights on all the time? I haven't seen that before. Old people got into the habit of turning lights off because old lights consumed ass loads of power. Young people like me do the same because we remember getting yelled at for leaving the lights on. Things like phones and tablets don't take much power to charge. The charger I use for my iphone is 5V at 500mA, so that's about 2.5W plus transformer loss. Even my air purifier uses less power than old purifiers. The old ones were just fans with some filters. My air purifier has no fans and no filters; it uses high voltage metal plates to collect crap, and smells are removed from the air due to negative ions instead of charcoal filters.
Routers run all the time, but they don't consume much power. My super awesome DIR-655 gigabit router uses about 5 watts. I might be one of the few people who has 1 computer that runs 24/7 because I use it as a file server. Most people don't have file servers.

the stereo amp i plan on buying when i move will prob get its own dedicated 30 amp line

Modern speakers seem to use less power, but I don't understand how this is physically possible. My mom's speakers from the 1970s were huge, but they weren't very damn loud. Some modern $20 speakers can put out just as much sound even though they are only 10% as big. Stereo equipment damn huge back then as well. An iPhone consuming less than 3W of power is capable of a lot more than the tuner my dad had in the 80s, and that tuner was big.

As for wall warts, they are required to consume less than 0.5W when nothing is plugged into them. Even if you have 20 of these damn things, it basically amounts to nothing.

 

[Wyndru]

We also own a lot more electronics these days, and a lot of them draw power 24/7. How many TV receivers, laptops, PC's, wall chargers, media boxes, and various other gadgets do you have laying around?

This. When I was younger we only used a few outlets in our house. Now I have power strips all over the place.