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Does that use a lot of energy?

hannahritchie.github.io

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Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#151

Post by eru »

noosphr wrote: post #103
NortySpock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy security is national security. Cheap electricity means you can do things that made "no sense" with expensive electricity. (e.g. smelt aluminum) Cheap electricity means you can underbid regions that have expensive electricity... As Technology Connections said, "Panels that cover your electrical needs for the next 25+ years? In the Midwest, we call that a good deal!"

Most of those technologies also need uninterrupted power supplies. Something wind, solar and batteries for the next 50 years aren't.

Have you heard of batteries?

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#152

Post by eru »

nomel wrote: post #75
alnwlsn wrote: post #60

I attached a generator with some supercaps and an inverter to a stationary bicycle a few years ago, and even though I mostly use it as a way to feel less guilty watching Youtube videos, it does give me a quite literal feel for some of the items on the lower end of the scale. - Anything even even halfway approaching a toaster or something with a heater in it is essentially impossible (yes, I know about that one video)…

Where I am at least, people using less power because power because power need to profit more, is wild . They literally had record profits the last few years, rather than being forced to lay down solar. I think power should be a global endeavor, not some local for profit business with complete regulatory capture that makes competition illegal. Yes I'm angry, because I pay more in electric than most anywhere in the wor…

> They literally had record profits the last few years, rather than being forced to lay down solar. I think power should be a global endeavor, not some local for profit business with complete regulatory capture that makes competition illegal.

Sounds more like you guys should be lowering barriers to entry, not setting up a global non-profit cartel.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#153

Post by dmd »

harrall wrote: post #121
NortySpock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy security is national security. Cheap electricity means you can do things that made "no sense" with expensive electricity. (e.g. smelt aluminum) Cheap electricity means you can underbid regions that have expensive electricity... As Technology Connections said, "Panels that cover your electrical needs for the next 25+ years? In the Midwest, we call that a good deal!"

[flagged]

Where does that 0.3 TW figure come from? That seems awfully high.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#154

Post by eru »

Why does their air con take 1kW to run? I wonder how much below ambient they are setting their temperature, and how old that aircon is and how bad the insulation?

The washing machine seems also inefficient.

My dryer is also a lot more efficient than theirs, at least if Miele's app is to be believed about how much it uses each cycle.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#155

Post by michaelt »

alnwlsn wrote: post #107
Waterluvian wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any sense what the efficiency ratio was for your setup?

I'm as curious as you to be honest - putting a strain gauge on the pedals for measuring mechanical power has been on my list for quite a while. My own (probably inaccurate) measurements right after the generator says I can get 60-70Wh in an hour, but I can get to 100Wh if I try harder. I have reason to believe my setup underestimates power because my ammeter clamps at 5A and I know I can peak over that on the down st…

> I've seen numbers like 250W mechanical power for an average trained cyclist, so either my setup is rather inefficient, my measurements are off, or I'm going to find out that I'm nowhere near as strong as a real cyclist.

Cyclists' power output is sometimes reported as a 'power curve' - a chart with power on the vertical axis, and duration-of-that-power on the horizontal axis.

For example, a cyclist might be be able to produce 500W for 15 seconds; 350W for 1 minute; 270W for 10 minutes; 200W for 1 hour; and 150W for 5 hours.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#156

Post by SebRollen »

ForHackernews wrote: post #64

Doesn't show the comparative energy waste of bitcoin? This source[0] says > One Bitcoin now requires 854,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce. For comparison, the average U.S. home consumes about 10,500 kWh per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 2025, meaning that mining a single Bitcoin in 2026 uses as much electricity as 81.37 years of residential energy use. [0] https://ww…

About 1,200 kWh per transaction, currently[0]. I wrote about this back in 2022, when it was about 2,200 kWh per transaction[1].

Edit: made a chart with this data, but adding in a bitcoin transaction[2]

[0]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

[1]: https://rollen.io/blog/crypto-climate/

[2]: https://imgur.com/a/ggAGylW

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#158

Post by recursive »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #35
dr_dshiv wrote: post #30

One hour of Claude code— well, I’d guess it would be comparable to an hour of driving an electric car. How to know?

OP says one query uses 0.3 Wh. Driving an electric car for 10 miles = 3,000 Wh which is roughly 10,000 Wh per hour. I'm not sure how many queries is equivalent to an hour of Claude code use, but maybe 5 seconds, which means an hour of continuous use = 216 Wh, or ~50x less than an electric car. OP has a longer article about LLM energy usage: https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/ai-footprint-august-202...

Beside the point, but 10,000 Wh per hour is kind of an insane unit. It's 10,000 watts. Or 10 kW if you're really into the whole brevity thing.

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#159

Post by recursive »

empath75 wrote: post #41
oulipo2 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, looking at a "single median query" totally disregard the fact that: - first, those queries are mostly useless and we could totally do without them, so it's still a net pollution - they are being integrated everywhere, so soon enough, just browsing the web for a few hours is going to general 100k+ such equivalent "small queries" (in the background, by the processes analyzing what the user is doing, or summariz…

LLM calls are getting cheaper every day.

Are they getting cheaper faster than their usage is increasing?

Re: Does that use a lot of energy?

#160

Post by michaelt »

eru wrote: post #154

Why does their air con take 1kW to run? I wonder how much below ambient they are setting their temperature, and how old that aircon is and how bad the insulation? The washing machine seems also inefficient. My dryer is also a lot more efficient than theirs, at least if Miele's app is to be believed about how much it uses each cycle.

> Why does their air con take 1kW to run?

The author is in the UK, so they probably looked at a product like [1] which is "ideal for rooms 16-26m²" and has cooling power consumption of 1005W.

Residential air conditioning in the UK often involves small, noisy units that are only used for a few weeks at the height of summer. They'll have a thermostat built in, sure, but the user will eagerly turn them off when the room's cool just to get some quiet.

[1] https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7623899

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