Photo by Antti Ahonen aka anttia  

Green Cloud brought down the energy consumption by 800 kVA during the Friday 7-8pm unplug event. This is equivalent of the power generated by one windmill running for one hour.
Why does this matter?

This is the first time there has been public monitoring of the collective consumption within a local area. Incredibly, despite the current energy crisis, electricity is only monitored on an individual basis. The results of the unplug event - realised on a tiny budget and with limited resources - shows that making collective information available to a community in a public form can make a difference.  As willem Flusser once wrote: Form carries information.

Since energy cannot be stored, producers across large geographical regions have to produce exactly the amount of energy that is being consumed right now, within micro-seconds. It is astonishing that this balancing act works – in Finland, energy grid is connected to Norway, Sweden and Denmark. So, it is true to say that if people in Ruoholahti consume less, there will be no less coal burned at the Salmisaari power plant, but there will be less coal burned somewhere in the Nordic Pool. As Martti Hyvonen explained at the Film-Debate at the Centre Culturel Francais, the more energy that is consumed, the higher the energy prices rise, and the more profitable it becomes to produce energy via expensive and unsustainable methods: such as coal-fired condensing power plants, condensing oil and gas turbines.

The cheapest and most environmentally friendly energy, is energy that is not consumed.

Photo by Antti Ahonen aka anttia