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Comment by aleksandrm | Hacker News Reader

> its also worth noting that the nytimes might not be taking into account the number of people working from home. Duty and loadcycles for this year are going to be very hard to predict.

Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

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Its not just overall grid usage, substations have capacities as well. So the business park is going to be underutilized, but the residential ones are probably seeing more demand as people are at home and not turning up the thermostat during the day to save energy (since they are at home and want a comfortable environment, vs. letting the house sit at 80 when nobody is home).

The temperature on the AC at my house is set at 80F. At 80F with the air flow from fans and a dressing light, there is no reason most people cannot be comfortable. I think that people cranking the AC down to 72F like they do are selfish and do not understand the impact that everyday actions have on the world as a whole.

I don't run my AC. It regularly gets up to 85-88F. With air flow from fans and dressing light, there's no reason most people cannot be comfortable.

I think that people who run their AC like they do are selfish and do not understand the impact that their everyday actions have on the world.

(I really don't run my AC. I do think people are overly dependent on it. The number of people I know who have their home cooler in the summer than the winter indicates many people really just do it because they can.

But also I'm not a judgey asshole, so I don't moralize about it to people)

Too late to edit or delete this post, but looking back on it a couple hours later, it was unkind and I shouldn't have written it.

That's all.

For me, 80F is well beyond "sweating even without doing anything", even if wearing nothing (which is, thankfully in this work-from-home era, easier than ever.)

There's a good number of houses and apartments in the SCV with absolutely terrible insulation. The AC is the only thing keeping the interior moderately comfortable in 90°+ heat. If the thermostat is set to 80° The house will be significantly hotter than that.

Plenty of businesses are still open, and AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold. Maybe not at human comfort levels, but they still need to run them for the whole building.

> AC still needs to run to drive out building moisture so that they don't develop mold.

Serious question: How was this handled in pre-AC times?

Is it just an issue because buildings are much better sealed than they used to be, or is there more to it than that?

Building design has changed tremendously since the introduction of AC, the number of usable windows and ceiling overhead has drastically decreased in those regions traditionally needing them.

Older, less insulated buildings, breathe better. The more your home "breathes" the more it transfers heat and humidity to the outside, which defeats most insulation, unless the breathing is done though a heat exchange.

As an update, as I'm getting a bunch of down votes for some reason (please comment!).

Newer homes and buildings have a vapor barrier beneath the outside cladding. This article on the Perfect Wall [0], explains the benefits and options.

Older houses, like the Victorian that I live in, didn't have modern insulation, which can deteriorate if it gets wet, so they were made to breathe, so that any moisture that got into the wall could be removed through air movement. Not to mention that fireplaces required a constant stream of new air to replace that which is pulled up through the chimney.

[0][https://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-001-t...]

Depends, some climates buildings were moldy.

But old buildings generally aren't even close to air tight. Under those conditions as long as they are heated even a little the humidity is mostly lower than outside. Mean the amount of water in the air as a percent is the same inside and outside. But since it's hotter inside the house the relative humidity is lower. In temperate climates you don't get mold.

It's actually modern air tight houses that have terrible problems with mold. Because they don't breath water vapor builds up inside.

We're not in California, but while most people are working from home at my company, there are still 10 or so employees at the office. So as far as electricity usage it's basically business as usual. Most (80%+) of my friends work for similar companies where a small group is at the office so everything is still on, but a lot of people are working from home all day on top of that.

> Do you think think the demand would be higher? In parallel, while many people are working from home, the businesses are closed, which I would think eat up much more electricity.

At the level of the generation there won't be much change, but the distribution / "last mile" substations have never been planned for the duty cycle and load they have seen over the last months.

The issue is the offices are closed yet still running all services and most at home running all services....and in a heat wave.

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