"After hours" lighting ban

[The Straight Story]

"After hours" lighting ban

Do you sometimes forget to flip the manual light switch when you leave the office? If so, Board President David Chiu hopes that the prospect of fines will help you break this environmentally unfriendly habit.

Chiu has introduced an ordinance that prohibits commercial buildings from lighting unoccupied interior spaces after business hours. The idea is to conserve electricity and use cost-effective lighting control technology that turn lights off automatically, when the last person leaves the office.

"Not only are lights typically left on in buildings when occupants leave an office during the middle of the day, but the night skylines of all U.S. cities are filled with lights from countless empty offices, and San Francisco is no exception," states the "findings" section of Chiu's ordinance, noting that almost half of the electricity in typical office buildings is used to keep lights on, and commercial establishments account for about half of the lighting energy used in the United States.

"No person may illuminate any unoccupied space in a commercial building after hours except for exit signs, path of travel lighting and utilization equipment lighting," states Chiu's ordinance.

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/03/after_hours_lighting_ban.html

[frazzled]

1. Good idea, but there goes my view

Those of us who live in large cities adore our nightscapes. Oh well, those summer nights drinking a caipirinhia on the roof and contemplating the beautiful lights ... buh bye. I can give it up. I wonder if my property value decreases, however.

[notadmblnd]

10. Well look at it this way...

it might actually get dark enough to see the night sky. The stars, the moon and the clouds have a way of providing a great show too.

[cherokeeprogressive]

2. Why limit it to interior spaces? What need is there for a closed business to have outside signs lit

up during the night? My small city looks like Las Vegas even at midnight when there are no people around whatsoever.

[LisaM]

3. My only concern would be to keep it lighted where people might walk

I'm just talking regular street lights (or maybe motion detection lights). It's sometimes dark when I get home from work and there are woods by my neighborhood. I don't want to get jumped.

In general, this is good, though.

[fudge stripe cookays]

14. .

"No person may illuminate any unoccupied space in a commercial building after hours except for exit signs, path of travel lighting and utilization equipment lighting," states Chiu's ordinance.

[myrna minx]

4. Can someone explain to me why people don't turn their computers off at night when they go home?

Is it to save the 30 second boot up in the morning? I've never understood this, but in every office I've worked in, there are several people who never turn their computers off, even for the weekend. :shrug: I'm just curious.

[The Straight Story]

6. I don't - and here is why

Of course I have a laptop and usually bring it home - but when I leave it at work it stays on due to the many corporate software updates they push out. Best to update PC's at night so you don't mess with productivity during the day.

Edited to add - also many backups are done at night (and yes, people should use network shares but don't, some companies I have worked for do a back up of docs folders and such at night).

[myrna minx]

15. Your explanation makes sense, but most of the folks I've seen do this over the years,

don't know anything about updates or backup, I promise you this, they just never turn it off. Again, your explanation make perfect sense, and would apply to *some* of the people I've seen do this over the years, but not for the majority (I've had to explain the difference between save and save as in Word for one person.) I was just curious, because some would get ANGRY if their computers were turned off when they came in on Monday. At one job, our President would walk around and turn off people's computers over the weekend. (He taught one coworker a lesson about logging off, by sending himself a HORRIBLE email from her email address, and replied back to her asking her to come see him. She was horrified, because she knew she didn't write the original email, but was embarrassed when she learned the truth, but she learned her lesson.) One coworker taped cardboard over her "on" button to prevent anyone turning off her computer, even through it was the President who turned it off. It is just something that doesn't make sense to me outside of your explanation. I guess I just need to chalk it up to everybody's different. :shrug:

[eppur_se_muova]

8. I think you guessed the right answer -- can't wait for anything.

I once worked with someone who left the fluorescent light over his desk on all the time, even when he wasn't there -- and got mad if anyone turned it off.

If they're going to leave the computers on all the time, at least they should join a distributed computing project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

[myrna minx]

16. I've experienced the same thing. I just find it strange. n/t

[fishwax]

13. there was an article in USA Today today about how doing that costs companies billions

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2009-03-25-pc-power-company-costs_N.htm

SAN FRANCISCO — Even during an economic meltdown, when companies are scrambling to cut costs, businesses are wasting billions of dollars by leaving their PCs on at night.

U.S. organizations squander $2.8 billion a year to power unused machines, emitting about 20 million tons of carbon dioxide — roughly the equivalent of 4 million cars — according to a report to be released Wednesday.

About half of 108 million office PCs in the USA are not properly shut down at night, says the 2009 PC Energy Report, produced by 1E, an energy-management software company, and the non-profit Alliance to Save Energy. The report analyzed workplace PC power consumption in the USA, United Kingdom and Germany.

Wastefulness does not just affect a company's bottom line, it creates environmental concerns, the report says. If the world's 1 billion PCs were powered down just one night, it would save enough energy to light the Empire State Building — inside and out — for over 30 years, it says.

[myrna minx]

17. Wow. I think I might sent this article around my office.

It just seemed so wasteful, especially over the weekend.

On edit--At my home, I've started unplugging my coffee maker and toaster oven when I'm not using then, as well as unplugging a cordless phone that I hardly use and my electric bill has decreased by about $4 just from that! It's amazing how much these things suck up energy.

[eppur_se_muova]

5. I worked in a building that had motion sensors controlling the lights ...

in all the *offices*. People sitting at their computers typing had to wave their arms occasionally to keep the lights on (there was a Dilbert cartoon about this). The areas that actually needed the sensors were the hallways, classrooms, and lobbies, which contained a far greater number of lights and often sat empty for hours on end -- often with the lights on -- and were often locked, so only someone with the key could turn the lights off. Motion sensors in those rooms would have saved easily 10x the energy that was saved in the offices, which were occupied a much larger percentage of the time and had few lights. It's nice to try to save energy, but things really need to be thought through and fine-tuned.

[The Straight Story]

7. Maybe instead they should tax the usage from big companies more

They will scramble to keep the lights off :)

[WillowTree]

19. All of the lighting in our office is motion activated.

Everything except the washrooms are on a 10 minute delay. (Washrooms are only a 5 minute delay.) Even if you're quietly working, you move enough in a 10 minute span to keep the lighting on. Hallways and the lobby are still lit, but the building controls that and it is a safety issue.

We also went to great lengths (and expense) when finding our new office space last year and designing the interiors to take advantage of as much natural light as possible, cutting down on the need for as much artificial light as we possibly could. Most people don't find it necessary to turn on the cubicle lighting fixtures at all.

But we do keep the PCs on. We're going through a massive iterative system conversion as well as going, again iteratively, as paperless as possible in an industry that is historically voraciously paper-dependent. Overnight patches, fixes and new deployments are happening almost nightly and we need network connectivity. There's also the fact that shutting down and booting up cold does take it's toll on hard drives and motherboard circuitry and honestly, PCs use very little electricity when idle. In fact, I never turn off my CPU even at home unless I'm working on the guts or unless I'm going to be away from home for more than a day.

What burns me up is that so many people don't just turn off their monitors. They consume far more energy, especially when they flicker on and off if something stirs in the CPU during installations. That's just effin' lazy and stupid.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

20. That is now requried in CA for new work as are other measures

Its called Title 20

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Gwendolyn]

11. "When the last person leaves the office..."

Well, at my last place of employment people regularly stayed till midnight and later, and if they were any indication of what's what, cities must be lit up like fire crackers from dawn to dawn. :)

[xenussister]

12. What if someone's working late? What about the cleaners?

"No person may illuminate any unoccupied space in a commercial building after hours except for exit signs, path of travel lighting and utilization equipment lighting,"

I understand the "unoccupied" concept, but are there going to be building check-up brigades looking to see if anyone's there? Does that mean NO ONE can ever work after hours? What about cleaning crews? Does this guy even know that there are cleaning crews that come in after hours and need lights to do their work, or does he think the trash fairies come around gobbling up the trash and they're like cats, can see in the dark? How is this going to work, exactly?

It's a nice idea in theory, but will it work?

[Gwendolyn]

18. Cleaners are usually very good about leaving the place the way it was.

It'd be one of those duties taken up by security. I remember staying very late alone at my first place of employment, having locked the door behind everyone, and at one a.m, some security person unlocked the door and entered with two rabid german shepards that came close to ripping my throat out if the guy hadn't been far behind. Office space in high rise buildings are usually rented out, so someone always can get in to check it out. Far as I know, security is supposed to check ladies' bathrooms after hours on all floors to make sure no one is being accosted, so checking for lights should be a breeze.