The Oil Drum

I wonder if we could run our electrified railroads off the power savings from SEDs ?

Perhaps tax every other form of television EXCEPT SED 28" screen or smaller. Large screens (including SEDs) get a luxury tax (increases with size, small tax for 32" or 35", thousands for 55"+), all types except SEDs get a "energy waste tax" (varies by power wasted, CRTs taxed more, LCDs taxed less) and we give a tax credit for buying a medium or small screen SED for several years to speed the transition.

Less waste heat from the TV means less air conditioning needed.

IMVHO (back of envelope) SED TVs + more compact fluorescents could save enough to run the current railroads PLUS a large % of heavy truck inter-city freight. SEDs alone might run the main lines today.

Best Hopes,

Alan

One 19-inch TFT-LCD computer monitor I measured a while back took about 20W. (A 19 inch CRT might take around 80W and typically has a slightly smaller useful screen area.) One thing we'll have to see is how long an 'SED' actually lasts, since manufacturing cost/energy may well dominate. After all, if that TFT-LCD lasts 20,000 hours (10 years active business use, one shift), and it uses 20W, it will only use 400kwh over all that time, which might be $40 in electricity at retail rates, or $15 at wholesale rates. I suspect it takes more than that to make it, but anything more than a guesstimate is probably proprietary information.

Unfortunately, just a week or two of driving, even in the most efficient vehicle, is likely to use more than 400kwh. So if it turns out that we cannot - or do not wish to - or let the NIMBYs and BANANAs run the whole show as in the Case of Ted Kennedy and the Wind Farm - build enough of something to have reasonably abundant energy supplies in the future, then, yes, indeed, we will be sitting at home watching screens. This should shock no one - before energy became abundant, most people could do little but sit home, once they were done with the day's enormously hard labor. And the hard reality is that only dead people have zero environmental impact.

FWIW, because of the licensing issue that was giving the SED venture problems, Toshiba recently sold all of its interests to its partner, Canon. So Canon now owns the whole venture. How this will play out is still unknown because SED is still more expensive manufacture, even if otherwise being preferable to other technologies.

SED is however an example of where we can continue to work on increase the efficiencies of many of the products that we use. I expect that over the next two decades much of what we use in daily life will be scrutinzed for energy improvements.