The city council of Town X has proposed reducing the city’s electric expenses by switching all the lights in public buildings from incandescent bulbs to light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The switch would be made gradually as the old incandescent bulbs burn out, and the city council reasons that since LED lights burn brighter and cost no more to purchase, the switch would help Town X save money on electrical costs in the future.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered to help evaluate the efficacy of the city council’s proposal to save money on electrical costs. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the council’s prediction.
Town X's city council has proposed that to reduce the electric expenses they will replace the incandescent bulbs to LEDs as the LEDs cost around the same and are brighter than incandescent bulbs. If the LEDs are similar in cost then there is little incentive to switch and if they are brighter this says nothing about the power savings. The council has overlooked many deeper issues in the proposal which might weaken it.
The proposal is based on the fact that switching to LEDs will definitely lead to power savings, however, it fails to mention anything about the differences in the amount of electricity saved when both the incandescent bulbs and LEDs are utilized for the same amount of time. If it turns out that the LEDs consume more electricity to operate then the proposal is significantly weakened as any advantage offered by LEDs (like brighter light emission) would not make up for the cost of utilizing them in the long run.
The proposal also mentions nothing about the ruggedness or the failure rate of the LEDs in comparison to the incandescent bulbs. If the LEDs have a higher failure rate or if they are prone fail in inclement weather then this will seriously weaken the city council’s proposal as even if the LEDs save electricity, in the long run the cost of higher failure rate will surpass any power savings.
A light source must be easily repaired or replaced in case of any failure. A LED being a sophisticated technology might pose significant challenges in repairing or replacing the affected bulb. A LED also has a lot of electronic components and usually has multiple LEDs in arrays to provide the same output as the incandescent bulb. If a few LEDs fail in the bulb then the efficacy will be greatly reduced and replacing or repairing them will be a costly affair. If the above argument holds true the proposal is significantly weakened.
Although the council’s proposal seems well thought out at first glance, further analysis proves that it seems to have overlooked several questions that would seriously weaken it. LED's long term power savings or its ruggedness or even its repairability in comparison to incandescent bulbs can have strong impact on the power savings. The city council can research further into these topics to strengthen their proposal.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 388 350
No. of Characters: 1876 1500
No. of Different Words: 175 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.438 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.835 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.662 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 125 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 101 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.867 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.61 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.36 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.596 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.109 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 13, column 194, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...pairing or replacing the affected bulb. A LED also has a lot of electronic compon...
^
Line 13, column 463, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...repairing them will be a costly affair. If the above argument holds true the propo...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, however, if, look, so, then, well
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 16.3942115768 18% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1927.0 2260.96107784 85% => OK
No of words: 388.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.96649484536 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.43821085614 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75338201103 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 181.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.466494845361 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 606.6 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.5791159913 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.466666667 119.503703932 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.8666666667 23.324526521 111% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.06666666667 5.70786347227 54% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.313153267754 0.218282227539 143% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110520072426 0.0743258471296 149% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.07044024249 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.184573304879 0.128457276422 144% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0556358069155 0.0628817314937 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 46.1 48.3550499002 95% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.0 12.197005988 107% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.