Different Patterns of Electricity Usage in Italy
Have Italians always been so parsimonious with their electricity? We pull up to our B&B in Siracusa in the deepening dusk, and wonder if it's been abandoned. We're sure we have the correct address, but no light peeps from any window, heavy wooden doors face the street, the outdoor sign is only faintly illuminated, and the only light comes from outdoor streetlights. I ring the doorbell. No sound of a bell, and no response. I ring again, then pound the heavy door knockers. I hear a distant voice, followed by hurried footsteps. A light clicks on. The door opens on an interior courtyard filled with bicycles and motorcycles, and a gate leading to a flight of stone steps. We ascend, and the light clicks off behind us.
We see the same patterns as we walk the streets of Ortygia, Siracusa's old quarter, now a tourist destination but still housing many local people. In America, light beams from every window, even from empty office buildings. Here, most of the buildings are dark, or you see a faint light coming to the street from an interior room. Profligate use of lighting to say "I'm here, I'm here" seems the exception.
We see a mother with an infant enter a dark courtyard and up a deeply shadowed stair. No light turns on to lead her steps. We see a couple turn down a street so dark that surely it must be abandoned and unsafe. But no, single women walk dark streets. Use of lighting to say "this street is safe" seems restricted to major arteries.
This is no doubt part of the reason per capita electricity use in Italy is 42% of what it is in the US. Add to that smaller, more fuel efficient cars -- our rented Lancia has taken us the length of Sicily on 3/4 a tank of diesel in four days -- and you realize just how profligate we are in the US.
tags: electricity, italy, sicily, us
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[11.03.07 07:29 AM]
Also compare the sizes of large-size drink at McDonald's in Italy and the US.
[11.03.07 09:24 AM]
"even from empty office buildings"
In the interest of energy conservation, I want to comment on this one - many commercial buildings use vapor lighting with high voltage ballasts that actually consume more energy being turned off and then back on several hours later than they do simply being left on 24 hours a day. That is to say, if the building requires lighting and has this type, it is burning less electricity leaving the lights on all the time than if it turned the lights off at the end of the business day and back on in the morning.
The power and lighting industries have, I'll concede, done a very poor job of informing the public on this issue.
Anything you can do to get us more diesel cars here in the states would be greatly appreciated.
[11.03.07 09:58 AM]
J--
I honestly can't believe that each fixture would use the energy equivalent of leaving the lamp on for several hours just by turning it on and off. Take a 175W lamp. Are you suggesting that it magically consumes 500Wh over the course of a few minutes on startup? You'd need wires literally 6 gauge thick to each fixture.
We overlight in America because we incorrectly fear the dark and don't light the outdoors correctly and efficiently. Companies overlight because they think it draws customers, and they can always pass the energy cost on.
[11.03.07 10:37 AM]
Never mind the lights on at night; most buildings in the U.S. seem to be built in such a way as to require the lights to be on all day, too.
I suppose the thought is that it requires less money and energy to light up restaurants, stores, offices, etc. with no or few windows than it would to heat and cool those spaces if they had more windows on exterior walls. The real pity is that the light is far less pleasant.
[11.03.07 01:05 PM]
Welcome to Italy, Tim. Have a nice vacation.
[11.03.07 05:15 PM]
Good lord, you write like you have never seen this before. I don't believe it.
[11.03.07 05:55 PM]
You don't need to go so far to see how north americans waste energy.
I learnt this while watching California's full congested freeways with cars w/just one person inside, and comparing them with the public transportation in Europe.
US is in a positive loop feedback, slowly drowning itself in an oil barrel ... good luck.
[11.04.07 01:45 AM]
Tim, this is true. But in the last years in Italy we have understood the utility of a good urban lighting projects, for energy meter and for increase the "by night" value and beauty of our historical quarters.
Anyway we have problems about bad nightly lighting in the cities, so our sky is never dark...
Remember also here in Italy in the hot summer (cause air conditioning) and in very cold winter (cause darkness and heating ) we are ever in "red alarm" for blackout. We have said "no" about nuclear energy, we haven't fossil energies and not (for now) enough renewable energy (we have a lot of hydroelectric power, 15% of total). Italy must import a large amount of petroleum and natural gas.
[11.04.07 06:14 AM]
I wonder what drives this behavior, is it conservation or cost. Energy is more expensive in Italy, partly due to the fact that they are more dependent on fossil fuels.
If you read through IEA's Key World Energy Statistics from 2006. In response to Federico's post, it does look like Italy imports a larger proportion of fossil fuels than countries with more developed hydroelectric and nuclear programs.
The last data point I could find was 2001 from a site called Solar Buzz that compared prices. Italy @ $0.15/kWh (residential) and the US @ $0.08/kWh. I also found a number of sites trying to fight the privatization of electricity in Italy from earlier in the decade.
[11.04.07 08:37 AM]
The New Yorker had a very good article about this last August:
The Dark Side: Making war on light pollution. by David Owen
The article is primarily about how lighting affects our ability to see the night sky, but it also goes into some depth about energy usage, and (this was a surprise to me) about the way typical lighting in the U.S. often does more harm than good regarding nighttime safety. Search for the sentences
The lighting near the mailboxes was of a type that Crawford calls “criminal-friendly”...
and
Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how eyes—or criminals—operate.
on page 2 to jump straight to that discussion.
[11.04.07 02:42 PM]
What you all say about energy costs in Italy is definitely true, but I think it's simply a matter of a different mentality (we in Italy waste energy in many other ways).
As Federico sais in a previous comment, those urban lighiting projects are quite recent (for Rome probably no more than ten years). And some of us thought, at that time: "Very nice, but... what a waste of energy...!".
Light is the most important resource if you need it, but at the same time is the most useless if you don't! We are probably used to deal with limited resources, so it's natural not to use a resource like light if we don't actually need it (I think it depends on many cultural influences - it's not a matter of price or actual avaliability).
Anyway, Tim, have a nice time in Italy!
[11.04.07 02:53 PM]
Tim,
I'm in Vanuatu at the moment, one of the world's least developed countries. However, it was recently rated the world's "happiest" country on a scale which -- I later found out -- has more to do with environmental impact than anything else.
Anyway, when I flew into .vu at 11:30pm one night, I watched keenly out the window as we approached the islands. Unlike most places I've flown into, I didn't see lights marking out the roads and urban areas; rather, I saw a small speckling of pinpoints which I figured out were single lights in people's homes. The largest grouping I saw was 11 visible lights; I later learnt that this was Mele village, just outside the capital Port Vila.
At night here, you carry a flashlight to avoid tripping, as most of the streets aren't lit. If you're feeling hot, you go sit on the verandah where there's a cool breeze. And though every home has a garden full of food, not all of them have refrigeration.
Actually, many houses don't *have* electricity at all. Yesterday we were at the beach, looking across the bay to the country's one windmill generating power, and my friend told me that they hope to have 10-15% of the country's power be renewable soon. I said, "That doesn't sound hard," but he pointed out that power use here is growing rapidly. My first thought was to blame expats from Australia who have huge houses all air-conditioned, but Dan pointed out that simply getting power into everyone's homes will have a huge effect, too.
I wasn't able to find any data on the cost per kWh here; I wonder how it compares to the US?
[11.04.07 04:27 PM]
i like walking or stumbling around in the dark.
[11.04.07 06:50 PM]
FWIW I've been staying in Florence with some friends of friends, and they are absolutely impeccable hosts... but I get the odd feeling from time to time they've been about the flat turning the lights out after me... and I'm pretty good about turning them off when I'm done with them!
[11.05.07 12:17 AM]
Alex, you're right. I haven't seen this before. I've been to many other parts of Italy (but mostly those catering to tourists, like Rome and Tuscany), and nothing there struck me as significantly different from the Western norm. Even in urban areas of Thailand and Malaysia, I saw pretty much the Western pattern of lighted windows. Sicily is different.
Sorry to make you so scornful. Where have you seen cities of darkened buildings, looking uninhabited even though you know they are not? Clearly, you must have far broader travel experience than I do.
[11.05.07 10:19 AM]
During the past few years the former state electric utility ENEL of Italy has deployed the largest smart electrical metering program in the world. This program has installed 10s of millions of new smart power meters. The effect is that much greater remote management is possible for the Italian electrical distribution system and that Italy can monitor their distribution systems continually for theft of service and develop time-of-use rate structures better and faster than any other country in the world.
[11.05.07 10:51 AM]
During the past few years the former state electric utility ENEL of Italy has deployed the largest smart electrical metering program in the world. This program has installed 10s of millions of new smart power meters. The effect is that much greater remote management is possible for the Italian electrical distribution system and that Italy can monitor their distribution systems continually for theft of service and develop time-of-use rate structures better and faster than any other country in the world.
[11.06.07 04:41 AM]
There is a very different culture attached to the meaning of lighting. Where I live - a few kilometres to the east of Lausanne in Switzerland, we only had the moon to guide ourselves until very recently. And it's only with the advent of cars driving at furious speeds at night that our local authorities have started to consider the safety aspects of it all. We now have two street lamps on my little road. But in countryside villages it's still the norm not to have street lighting.
Take a look at www.wattwatt.com. It's a site entirely devoted to electrical energy efficiency with all sorts of questions from wattwatters around the world. There's a request out too for tools and gadgets, a place to add your favourite energy links (wikiwatts) and a competition open to school children (care4it).
[11.14.07 08:57 PM]
Tim, actually approx 99% of the world goes on this way. It's simply logic. And we still do a lot of energy waste
I'd like to see more about energy on your pages
PS Have a look at this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTFKpIaQhM
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Georgia Harper [11.03.07 07:15 AM]
And there's the price of electricity and gasoline/diesel to encourage care in the use of these relatively expensive resources. We, in contrast, resist any attempt to raise the prices, preferring instead to *keep the prices low* encouraging waste. It's good for the economy, right?
What you observed in Italy is also true of France, Spain, Germany. Any country where electricity and fuel for cars is expensive will use less of them.