The lights are out but there is someone home.

Yesterday will officially be called “Powercut” day from now on, at least around oxfordshire anyway. High winds knocked several trees over on to the pylons producing a spectacular, if brief, display of lights.

Unfortunately (snigger, snigger) my office had no power so there was little work that could be done. “Why doesn’t everyone go home now”, eventually came after waiting an hour, “well OK” , I said, “I think there’s work I can be doing at home anyway” (snigger, snigger).

So, I get in my car and “Top 10 at 10” is playing on the radio and it starts with “Fantastic Day” by Haircut100, and I find my self think this really is a great day, (at least from my perspective), I get to go home on a work day, a free holiday if you will, and no one pestering my with questions of demands and I’m getting payed for it.

Then the thought of all the power that would have been used during this day hit me, so how much was that:
there was about 45’000 house holds without power (from here: bbc news)
Average emissons from home electricity use 1693.62 kg of CO2 per year (from here: Scottish electricty couldn’t find english one)
Which is about 4.5 kg per day, now we have to assume that some houses had their electricity back quicker than others, so lets say each house had on average no power for half a day.

So our total carbon saving number is = 45’000 * (4.5 kg * 0.5)
thats 5000 kgs of carbon not sent into the atmosphere (Or more than three households woth of carbon)

Not bad, but really a drop in the ocean, what we really need is more powercuts… (enter the “Ecowarriors”?)

Note, that this is just a bit of fun. (I doubt any of this is accurate!)

#flag: Powercut, “Day of work”, “Carbon saving”