Power drops during Earth Hour in Edmonton

EDMONTON - It’s hard to say whether Earth Hour efforts contributed to a modest drop in power usage in Edmonton this Saturday night, but the city certainly fared better than last year.

According to Epcor, the city used 1082 megawatts of power between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. Saturday night, a 3.4 per cent drop from the same day and time the week before. In 2011, power usage actually jumped by 1.01 per cent during Earth Hour in Edmonton, likely due to cold temperatures.

Epcor spokeswoman Michelle St-Amand said this year’s drop “could have been influenced by conservation efforts,” though it’s normal to see a variation of plus or minus 10 per cent when comparing any given hour’s power consumption to the week before. Weather and hours of daylight have the most significant influence on power consumption, she said. The temperature rose to 10 degrees Celsius this Saturday, and reached only 1.1 degrees on March 24th.

This is the fourth year the utility company has measured Earth Hour in Edmonton. Power usage dropped by 2.92 per cent in 2010 and by 4.15 per cent in 2009.

Earth Hour began as a local event in Sydney, Australia in 2007 and has since grown to include an estimated 1.8 billion people in 135 countries. Organized by the World Wildlife Fund, the event is intended to raise awareness about climate change. Homeowners and businesses are asked to turn off the lights to highlight the actions individuals can take to reduce energy consumption.

Landmarks around the world went dark this year, including St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. In Canada, the lights were turned off on Parliament Hill in Ottawa and at the CN Tower in Toronto. In Edmonton, lights were out at the Legislature, City Hall and other city-owned buildings.

Individual efforts can only go so far in Edmonton, since 75 per cent of the city’s power consumption is commercial, St-Amand said.

“Unless we really can get the commercial and industrial to participate in Earth Hour, it is going to be hard to get a significant decrease,” she said.

Still, there are ways to save power every day, particularly when it comes to the “vampire” or “phantom” electricity drains.

Left plugged in, devices like cellphone chargers or blow dryers are vampires, St-Amand said, since they’re sucking power even if not in use. Televisions, DVD players and clock radios — anything with a light on it — are phantoms.

“You don’t think about them. But they are constantly drawing power,” she said, recommending power bars as a way to easily switch everything off.

In Calgary, there was no noticeable change in electricity intake during Earth Hour, according to Enmax. Last year, usage rose by 2.1 per cent across the city. In Toronto, Canada’s most populous city, power use dropped by 193 megawatts, according to Toronto Hydro, the equivalent to removing approximately 128,000 homes from that city’s electricity grid.