On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 08:09:54 -0800 (PST),
wrote:

On Jan 7, 10:31*am, Jimw wrote:
What gets me are these car dealers who leave lights on all night, and
lots of the very high powered types too. *WHY? *

Because lights make would-be thieves and vandals visible to any
passers-by, and video surveillance.

Keeping the lights on is cheaper than paying the insurance premiums
after all the cars on your lot have been stripped under the cover of
darkness once or twice.

I guess no one read my whole message. I did mention to keep on some
SECURITY lights. But there's a big difference between security and
what many of these lots use.

I used to live on a farm and I know how much light comes from one of
those mercury vapor or sodium pole lights. Two or three of those
would be plenty for security and they consume something in the range
of 70 to 150W each. But even the smaller car dealers are running
multiple halogen floodlights that are at least 1000W each. Then they
have many other lights on top of that. I dont doubt that even the
smallest dealers are burning up 10,000W at minimum all night every
night. And larger lots are using much more than that. There's a big
difference between security and pure waste.