Lights out in San Francisco

[lperkins]

I saw a news article in the Chronicle the other day reporting that one of the supes is proposing lights out in downtown office buildings at night to save energy. Jeff's pictures of the SF skyline at night may get real boring. :)

[Jeff Keller]

I saw a news article in the Chronicle the other day reporting that one of the supes is proposing lights out in downtown office buildings at night to save energy. Jeff's pictures of the SF skyline at night may get real boring. :)
No kidding! If that bill gets any traction I'm going to get a DCRP letter-writing campaign going...

[Rhys]

It'll be interesting to see how much of an increase in crime there is with no lights.

[AdamW]

There should be no impact on crime. They're not talking about streetlights, but about office buildings (skyscrapers) that remain lit all night when they're only occupied by cleaning crews.

[cdifoto]

It always did strike me as stupid to have all those lights on for no reason. Same goes for McDonald's & such. I know the idea is to ward off burglars, but someone would have to be in pretty sad shape to steal pressed burgers and/or fax machines. Besides, all you need is a couple rent-a-cops at ground level. Not too many people have Spidey skills.

[JTL]

It always did strike me as stupid to have all those lights on for no reason. Same goes for McDonald's & such. I know the idea is to ward off burglars, but someone would have to be in pretty sad shape to steal pressed burgers and/or fax machines. Besides, all you need is a couple rent-a-cops at ground level. Not too many people have Spidey skills.Which costs more...the rent-a-cops or the energy? ;)

[cdifoto]

Which costs more...the rent-a-cops or the energy? ;)
Rent-a-Cops are cheaper, guaranteed.

[bascom]

Rent-a-Cops are cheaper, guaranteed. They probably consume less energy than lights, also.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

With a whole lot of assumptions:

If each fluoro tube is around 20 watts,
1kW/hr of power costs roughly $0.15 then
that tube costs roughly $0.003 per hour to run

If a single rent a cop on night shift rates earns perhaps $25.00 per hour
Allowing for incidentals like annual leave, superannuation, uniforms and supervision etc lets say he/she (not to be sexist) costs the business $50 per hour.

1 rent a cop = roughly the cost of running $50/$0.003 = 16,700 light globes

At night those buildings often only run 1 light tube in every 2 or even 4.

In conclusion then unless the buildings got more than 30,000 installed light tubes then running the lights is cheaper than paying 1 man (or woman) to sit in the dark in the foyer:D

From a social commentary point of view.
Energy is pretty darn cheap in our societies and hence gets squandered a bit.

From a greenhouse gas point of view how much methane would a rent a cop eating donuts produce each night?

Yes I know - spot the bored engineer.

[DonSchap]

If a perpetrator did have to make use of aforementioned light for thier intrusion ... how would the light bulb stop him/her?

"Hello ... 911 ... how may I assist you?"

"Shhh, keep it down ... this the light bulb calling ... we have an intruder @ ..." :rolleyes:

[DesertDave]

Rent-a-Cops are cheaper, guaranteed.

Isn't it incredibly likely that the building that would be effected by the lights out policy already *have* intrusion detection systems installed and being monitored?

I really don't think their after hours security policy is: "Leave the lights on and everything will be fine." ;)

Great, now I can't get Tom Bodette's voice out of my head.