Can turning off lights for earth save energy?

Question

Last year, on 31 March 2007, 2.2 million people and 2100 Sydney (Australia) businesses turned off their lights for one hour – Earth Hour. This massive collective effort reduced Sydney’s energy consumption by 10.2% for one hour, which is the equivalent effect of taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year.

i mean i understand the concept, but energy from power companies has to be a constant flow, used or not. so even if everyone turns off lights, energy is still constantly flowing and constantly wasted. this makes no sense to me.

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

You got your numbers a little mixed up.  It was the equivalent of taking 48,616 cars off the road for an hour, which was the equivalent of taking 6-8 cars off the road for a year.

Answer 3

It isn't exactly rocket science, but it is just as complicated. Electricity is constantly being used. Some is even still going through cords even though the appliances are off. I got this from a website somewhere on ways to go green;

Unplug your power. Ten percent of the electricity used in your home is burned by communication devices and appliances when they are turned off! If every U.S. household just unplugged their computers and cell phone chargers when they were not being used, collectively we'd save over $100 million — enough to provide free health care to every low-income child under the age of five in the state of California.