Who participated in Earth Hour?

errant_star · Mar 30, 2008

Last night at 8:00pm we shut off the main breaker to our house, lit some candles, played some board games, ate some popcorn and had some general family fun for an hour.

I'm just curious how many of you did the same?

Apparently in our little neck of the woods the electricity consumption was down 7% as a result of Earth Hour. Which is higher than the provincial average of 5%.

mdcrisp2000 · Mar 30, 2008

I was a lighting engineer for a Choir performance at my local church last night. So no, we were doing the complete opposite. Running 10-15kW for about 3 hours = big power consumption. It was a small rig too...

matt-l · Mar 30, 2008

i did it!

not sure of the power consumption, but i know by looking out my back window alot of others did it as well.

errant_star, how did you pop the pop corn if your breaker was shut off, hmmm?

Antarctican · Mar 30, 2008

I participated. Turned the lights off and lit candles, then went for a walk to see the darkened city.

Edit: Heehee, on re-reading this, it sounds like I created a fire hazard. I of course blew out the candles before leaving for the walk

EricBrian · Mar 30, 2008

Didn't even know it was happening. :-(

Buszaj · Mar 30, 2008

Yes I participated. We turned off the lights, and went for a walk at a park close to downtown and filmed a bit. It was nice to just sit around in the dark and talk and stuff. Like the old days I guess!

shorty6049 · Mar 30, 2008

haha, i was on my laptop WHILE watching TV... is that worse? i might have done it if i'd remembered though.

oh , and Matt- you can pop popcorn with a candle, you just have to do it one kernel at a time....

nealjpage · Mar 30, 2008

I forgot! I use energy saving bulbs, though, and live in a small house. I also signed up yesterday to get 100% of my electricity from renewable resources.

errant_star · Mar 30, 2008

matt-l said:
i did it!

not sure of the power consumption, but i know by looking out my back window alot of others did it as well.

errant_star, how did you pop the pop corn if your breaker was shut off, hmmm?

We cheated and popped the popcorn at about 5 to the hour!

The kids thought the night was a blast all in all and it gave us some good opportunity to discuss taking care of our dear Mother Earth!

errant_star · Mar 30, 2008

nealjpage said:
I also signed up yesterday to get 100% of my electricity from renewable resources.

I've looked into that around where we live ... I think it adds $1 a day to the cost of the energy but we may sign up in the next couple of months ... I'll just have to forego my daily Tim Horton's coffee!!

nealjpage · Mar 30, 2008

Yeah. I'm not sure exactly how it works. I mean, Pacific Power & Light won't change my electric drop from the connection to the nuke plant to a line coming directly from a wind generator....I think that when you pay for the renewable energy, you "buy" into the infrastructure that was required to build the wind turbines and things like that. That way more wind turbines can be built in the future.

Plus I got a new coffee mug for signing up! :thumbup:

ScottS · Mar 30, 2008

Hmm, i thought that it was a bit weird when the giant Quest sign got turned off in downtown Denver.... Guess this is why.

Well, i would have participated, but i didn't know about it...

Mitica100 · Mar 31, 2008

I was in the middle of a concert and the performer(s), some great Canadian dude that does the Piano Men (Elton John and Billy Joel) remembered and asked the main lighting crew to turn all lights off for a few minutes. I guess anything helps...

Rhys · Mar 31, 2008

At 8pm yesterday I hopped into my SUV to drive from my in-law's house to mine. I spent most of that hour driving a 4 liter V6 powered gas-guzzler that does 19mpg.

The previous day we drove 503 miles from Kissimee to Columbia in my wife's gas guzzler.