Mark,
What is your cya level currently? It would be interesting to see what would happen to your chlorine demand if you lowered your cya back to 30ppm. Or do you normally operate at 60 - 80 ppm and then tested the effects by dropping down to 30 ppm?
You stated in your post today "Many SWG users operate 60-80 ppm of CYA and 2-3 ppm of chlorine, including myself, and do not have a cloudy pool or algae that many others who post on this forum do." but in the post you sent the link to (your post dated 6-22-06) you stated "My current preference is #4 since I have a plaster pool and not quite at Ben's CL ppm. I am operating at a CYA of 30, 21000 gallon pool, setting 90% and run the pump 6 hours a day. I am able to maintain 2 ppm."

As a comparison, my 20,000 gallon outdoor pool @ 70 - 80 ppm cya was operating last year with my Pool Pilot at about 30% output, 6-hrs per day with my SC-48 cell (max output = 1.56 lbs/day) and was maintaining 2-3 ppm (as tested with the Taylor K-2006 test kit). I kept pH at about 7.5 - 7.8 by manually dosing acid. I converted to the Total Control system back in Aug of last year and get about a 22% utility reading (which equates to about a 22% output setting), all other parameters the same as before the Total Control but with pH @ 7.3 electronically controlled.

FYI, the 1.45 lbs/day you're using to calculate your chlorine and ppm are swayed (no offense). This is a number that iwas submitted to NSF for testing under "IDEAL" conditions, which are not usually real world conditions.
Such as indoor (no UV), cooler water temps, higher salt levels, no bather loads(or chlorine demands), and most importantly, lower flow rates.
How does NSF validate the output claim? They start with a known free chlorine base level (no chloramines), run the systems, take periodic water samples, and tests for free chlorine. So as the salt system generates at full output, NSF records the free chlorine, calculates the increase per hour for the 24 hr period, then determine the max output. They repeat this several times to confirm consistent output.
The question is this, what does a manufacturer actually submit as the operating parameters to get the max lbs/day output?

I cannot dispute your test results for your pool. However, I think Waterbear and I both see many more backyard pools (water samples in his case) to state with certainty that the higher Cya levels do allow you to decrease the output of "a" salt system and still maintain a safe and clean pool.

Man, I can see this heading to the China Shop...

But let me state this. The Salt Chlorine Generator industry have NO vested interest in cyanuric acid sales, so we're not claiming a high-er cya is needed, just for profits. It's quite the opposite. We know from experience, that Cya helps to protect the chlorine from the sun's UV rays, not just from the heat of the sun. While you can get away with maintaining lower cya in a salt pool, your cell will suffer as a result.

Interesting article on UV radiation.
http://yourskinandsun.com/article1072.html
Northern climates may justify maintaining a lower cya due to it being further away from the equator, thus less UV exposure. But climb into the mountains and you should require a higher cya level.

Ben, have you ever read this article? I'm not a chemist by any means so any of you chemist types that disagree with this paper, please feel free to educate me.
http://www.magma.ca/~dougdela/chemed03/pool1.pdf
I do see that he states anything above 50 ppm cya is of little effect...darn it. Well, it's not just debated here. It is debated within the industry itself.
Just a worthy note, most Department of Health limits commercial pools to 100 ppm. More recently lowering that to 80 ppm. In fact, NY State does not permit CYA, except for special circumstances, such as outdoor pools, where pool operators can request the special exception to use it. In speaking to several of these pool operators in northern NY, they see the tremendous cost savings when permitted to use cya. Guess what level they maintain? OK...50 to 60 ppm. Not quite the 60 - 80 ppm we recommend, but not quite 30 ppm either.

...and so it continues...