An anonymous reader writes "A Wall Street Journal columnist recently got his hand on a power meter and decided to write about his findings, the resulting article being discussed here on Slashdot. That author concluded that gadgets are getting a bad rap, and are relatively insignificant power consumers in the grand scheme of things. A rebuttal has appeared, arguing that not only are modern electronics significant power consumers already, while everything else is becoming more efficient, home electronics seem to be getting worse. This echoes the Department of Energy's assertion that 'Electricity consumption for home electronics, particularly for color TVs and computer equipment, is also forecast to grow significantly over the next two decades.' Are gadgets unfairly maligned, or getting an unearned pardon?"
In general, an LCD TV is 2x more energy efficient than a CRT. Modern dual-core processors are more energy efficient then older processors. However, as with all gains in efficiency, we're using MANY more of them. That's just what happens.
I just thought I'd note that the parent DOES actually mean '2x more' and not '2x as'. This is rare these days, and I think it should be marked on a calendar or something.
Something central to human psychology. The more we have of something, the more we use. It's why supply and demand works, why scarce things are valuable.
It might, it might not. I have an old dual pentium-133 server (two CPUs), and it only draws 45-50 watts from the wall. I also have a 650 Mhz Pentium 3 that only draws 60 or so watts from the wall, and it has a couple more disks.
About a half of a year ago, I measured some Athlon64 3200+ desktops in order to size out UPS systems. These measurements included the 19" LCD panel, which alone uses about 40 watts during use. The systems used Abit motherboards, stock AMD coolers, and GeForce 6200TC video cards. Through booting, using, and shutting down the systems, I found that an average draw during usage was about 100 watts - which included 40 watts for the monitor, putting draw from the wall at around 60 watts. Peak draw never got above 143 watts during those trials.
I didn't even bother measuring the Pentium-D systems that we had - the amount of heat alone that those things pumped out told me all that I needed to know.
Of course, the laptop that I'm typing on right now has a 1.8 GHz dual-core chip (Core Duo), and has a "measly" 65-watt power adapter. The 65 watts (which is what it draws from the wall, I measured) is enough to run both cores at a pretty good load, the 12" display, and burn a DVD at the same time - and still have a little power left over to charge the battery. That's a bit unfair, as it's an extremely power-optimized system, but it shows what can be achieved.
As an interesting side-note, I have a couple of Via's C3 systems, which are supposed to be low-power setups. Measuring power draw from the wall, I get 55-70 watts being pulled, depending on the machine. While the CPU is very low-power, system fans and hard drives still take power, and the cheap power supplies in them are extremely inefficient.
From the summary "while everything else is becoming more efficient, home electronics seem to be getting worse". But in fact in regards to efficiency they are NOT getting worse, but getting better. It is just that our increased usage is outweighing the increased efficiency, creating an overall increase in consumption.
I think it's more regional than anything else. The current definition of National household electricity consumption is, in effect, an average of household electricity consumption in different regions across the United States and is affected by many factors. However, hot summers increase the amount of electricity used for air conditioning and other space cooling, so households in southern States will tend to use more electricity. Similarly, cold winters increase the amount of energy used for space heating. Although U.S. households more frequently rely on natural gas than on electricity for heating, in the South the reverse is true, meaning that households in southern States will tend to have a peak of electricity use in winter as well as in summer.
Humidity is another climate-related factor that affects electricity consumption. Households in more humid regions tend to use air-conditioners and dehumidifiers to remove humidity. Households in arid regions, such as the Mountain States, are able to use evaporative coolers instead of air-conditioning for space cooling.
So, who is right? The WSJ or the article referenced? Actually both.
The article referenced talks about the trends for energy consumption. And, in that respect, the consumer electronics win hands down, since more and more people buy computers, flat-screen TVs and assorted electronic gadgets. On the other hand, the WSJ is right, since the overall energy consumption of these gadgets is still a very small fraction of the total.
One thing that I'd personally like to do soon would be to compare the electricity used by all my computers (6 and counting, including a big Sun workstation, 3 laptops, a modem/router, a wireless access point, a laser printer, etc) vs the overall electricity usage in my home. I have relatively modern equipment, and I am currently switching everything to low-power equipment.
Sure they might run instant on feature that takes some current drain 24x7 so they can do a warm start. Or a clock.
Chase down the Off-Grid living web sites and you'll soon find that one of the biggest problems people have when they first try to do off grid is all their appliances that drain just a little power all night long, leaving insufficient power for the morning routines.
I have three digital clocks in my kitchen, two in my entertainment center... I don't own a watch anymore because I realized that there is no place except the bathroom that I can stand in my house and not see a clock face. And I don't own any clocks!
The need for everything to have a digital clock and instant on takes up a lot more power then you think. Turn everything off and go look at your meter. it's still chugging along rather nicely. We could do much better if we dropped the clocks and dropped the instant on. Tube televisions took minutes to warm up. Solid State televisions take a few seconds to warm up. Instant On only saves me 3 seconds at most.
What particularly bugs me is that when I bought a new LCD TV last year, I discovered it had no power switch. It has a standby button, but the only way of turning it off is at the wall/powerstrip. On a related note, decidedly unhappy with the Wii's 24-hour on mode; I'd be more accepting if it wasn't required for things like Mii transfer to work, but there's no way of telling it to do network maintenance when it's first turned on each day.
My TV's even worse. Not only does it not have an Off switch, but it doesn't store its settings in Flash anywhere. So if I *do* unplug it, or if the power goes out, it defaults to the wrong input, channel 2 (wrong channel) and volume SUPER LOUD.
You're right that one 3 watt drain is insignificant. However, in my house I have probably 20 of these drains, between 3 and 20 watts. I also have at least 20 wall-wart transformers that suck juice whether they're hooked up to anything or not. I'd say that my (admittedly not normal) total standby power is 300 watts, 24 hours a day. That's a lot. It'll affect my bill substantially, and for no good reason. If the average house uses 100 watts, once you multiply that by hundreds of millions of houses you're talking about real power.
It's like a leaky faucet. Sure it's only 1/10 gallon a minute, but it adds up and doesn't benefit anyone. Why not minimize it? I know manufacturers could lower standby power use if consumers demand it.
With the move to HD, one of the proposed solutions was HAVi over Firewire [extremetech.com]. Basically, each device would have a firewire port (well, two so you daisy chain), you run the daisy chain between the devices, and they provide their interface via Java.
The studios HATED it, because it meant their content was moving around the network digitally (in MPEG-2), which was the point. Want to record something to D-VHS or AVHDD, just choose to record it. The devices tell everyone that they record. No more PVR, or if you
He's absolutely right. Ignoring AC costs, IMO its house size that is causing the increase in usage, and its changes in how houses are lit. 20 years ago houses were lit typically with a single fixture in a room, and lamps. (Or, if you're in the northeast US, typically just lamps, although I couldn't tell you why that is...)
These days lighting design is all the rage, and its common to have 4 or more fixtures in a room, often R30 can lights at 65w each projecting downward so you need 4 or more to light a room. The room I'm in right now visiting my parents has 4 can lights, a light with 4 60 watt bulbs in it, and two recessed spot lights of unknown power. Ignoring those, its still 500 watts to light this room.
My house is 60+ years old, but was renovated six years ago -- most of it is can lit as well. It has 24 65 watt R30 can lights in it, among all the other lights.
I saw a nearly $30 a month drop in my electric bill switching the entire house to CFL. Dimmable R30 bulbs are pricey, $12+ each, but they will have payed themselves off in a year. I typically am facist about keeping lights off, too... I'm sure the savings would be double that if I had kids leaving them on all the time.
On a geek note, I also got a $30 savings a month by making changes in the data center in the basement. An old HP rack server was replaced with a much less power hungry desktop box which was faster... that saved 75% of the electricity it used to use. Three other desktop boxes which were slower were replaced with two free laptops with broken screens I got from friends who tend to break their laptops. The upside as well is that one small UPS can power everything for almost an hour.
It's not just size. 60 years ago, your entire electrical appliance list probably consisted of a toaster, a television, a radio, and a clothes iron. You didn't have three televisions, thee DVD players, two TIVOs, two (or more) computers, two external hard drives, a home theater receiver, four cell phone chargers, a laptop charger, three CD players, a breadmaker, baby monitors, three hair curlers, two hair dryers, an air conditioner, and about a hundred other things. The NEC has constantly revised the electr
When we first got a TV (1988), the TV had a power switch, five channels and definitely no remote. So, whenever we didn't need the TV, we just switched off the power and turned it on when we needed it.
When 1999 dawned, the TV was a flat screen 25" with a remote. And lo, we would turn off the power for the TV only when we left the house (locked up) or at night. And that was just because my house was on the very top of a hill and power lines were often hit by lightning (yeah, I had my modem explode once).
And finally, now in 2006 (in a different city), I have six things plugged in - from DVD player to the TV itself. And it is such a big mess that nobody ever unplugs anything at all - just use the remote to turn it on & off. That sleep mode does take a fair bit of power (well, tens of watts) which is just going to an absolute waste (well, heating the room).
It is these un-noticed devices which suck a constant, but econonomically neglible drain - which could be avoided. The things you can fix aren't always the biggest consumers (water heaters, refrigerator) but small things like these - in a global level.
It is not just such permanently on stuff that you have - the average geek still has more connectors than you'd think.
I realized this when I was in the high himalayas - and we were charging [flickr.com] stuff before we left human habitation. (Oh, took the laptop to 18,000 feet).
And finally, now in 2006 (in a different city), I have six things plugged in - from DVD player to the TV itself. And it is such a big mess that nobody ever unplugs anything at all - just use the remote to turn it on & off. That sleep mode does take a fair bit of power (well, tens of watts) which is just going to an absolute waste (well, heating the room).
That last bit is critical. Guys, we're not wasting ANY energy, at least during the heating season. The heat put out by the wall warts and other always-on stuff, helps heat your house. If you have electric heat, it's exactly a wash. If you heat with natural gas or propane, well, this is that much less fuel you'll burn. The cost per BTU even comes out in favor of electric, sometimes. For me, the on-peak rate is 5x as high as the off-peak rate, so during nights and weekends, electric heat is cheaper than propane.
For off-peak heating, I use a 4500W water heater, piped into plastic tubing cast into the concrete slabs in my basement and kitchen. I can get a 1 degree (f) per hour temperature rise in the slabs, which doesn't sound like much but in practice is more than enough. The electric heat, in this case, saves me quite a bit in propane costs, somewhere around 20% in heating costs savings last time I calculated.
Point is, that heat isn't wasted, unless you're running an air conditioner at the same time.
The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent article on energy conservation in the home: Surprise: Not-so-glamorous conservation works best [csmonitor.com]. The two biggest issues to tackle are lighting and heating. Consider this:
although residences consume only about two-fifths of this as electricity, because electrical generation is inherently inefficient, it accounts for 71 percent of household emissions. A home's electrical use may be responsible for more CO2 emissions than the two cars in the driveway.
A friend of mine rents a loft in my house and he asked me to check out why his part of our power bill was so much greater (he now has a meter). Turns out his standby power on all his devices is half of his total average power draw. They are on all the time, after all, whereas the bigegr items are used mkore rarely. He also has more gizmos than you can shake a stick at. To sum thar up: when he's away from the house on vacation or whatever, with TVs and compuetrs off, his power draw is still at 50% of the noraml am
1) Off buttons that really turn off the power, not just put the device in a 'standby mode'.
2) Manufacturers should be obliged to make low-voltage devices have transformers internal(and wired after the power switch), and make those really annoying power bricks you now get with everything illegal.
Apart from usually being a ridiculous single-piece design that occludes several other sockets in a power strip, they cause massive cable tangles and practical use requires that they be left permanently powered-on.
Actually - removing standby buttons would be a bloody silly idea. At least with Macs, I'm lead to believe that the power used to boot the machine is greater than the power used to keep the machine sleeping for a week, so roll on those standby buttons.
Bob
OK, here are the numbers for a mac mini (no monitor - just the cpu.)
Powered off: 0.035A Booting: 0.250A - 0.320A On, but idle: 0.180A - 0.250A Sleep mode: 0.050A Unplugged: 0.0A
So booting isn't that much more power than idle, and it's for a short period of time.
I find it interesting that powered off isn't really powered off, so you are better off using the switch on your power strip than relying on the mac "off" mode, which isn't a whole lot better than sleep.
Someone who wants to play with math more than me can figure out the break-even points, but it's clear that you are far better off unplugging your mac and rebooting overnight than leaving it in sleep mode. It's a no-brainer for a week. This basically says, unplug all your crap when you go on vacation, because with modern electronics, off isn't off.
What's the manufacturing/engineering/economic reason that so many things use external power bricks instead of internal transformers?
Glad you asked. The main reason is safety regulations. Devices that plug in to your household power need 3rd party certification (e.g. UL approval in US). Power supply design is a specialty, and although any EE could do it, not all can do it well, quickly and cheaply. If you (as designer) spec an external transformer, then you don't have to worry about the approval. You just buy an approved transformer and design your device to work on low voltage. This saves you thousands of dollars and many man-hours of time per design by not having to hire an independent lab to verify your safety compliance.
As an additional benefit, you can sell you product to work with different AC voltages just by supplying the appropriate transformer for each market. Plus, when you buy an external transformer, you get economies of scale because it can power not only your devices but many others built by thousands of other firms.
That is the case, but why don't they do go one step further in the quasi-standardization of transformers and make the power plug (the one that goes to the device) all the same? I'm sure the vast majority of us don't have to charge ever little gadget we have, all at once. If they made all the charging plugs universal (say, mini-USB) and the same voltage, we could save a lot of power and socket space by unplugging all those wall-warts.
What's the manufacturing/engineering/economic reason that so many things use external power bricks instead of internal transformers?
Manufacturing costs: you get economy of scale on the power supply circuits.
Liability: if the power supply blows up, *you* didn't design or build it. Also, users of the circuit can't be directly exposed to 120VAC.
Size: yes, the circuit can be smaller, and the extra parts are out of the way on a floor or wall.
The problem with many wall wart bricks is that their transformer
The problem with many wall wart bricks is that their transformer's primary winding is energized all the time and thus drawing power.
This is true to an extent, but the amount of power drawn in "zero load" conditions is quite small. The more load placed on the secondary, the more load seen on the primary. Some energy is wasted as heat. IIRC, a typical iron-core transformer is around 85% efficient at 50/60 Hz line current.
Switch mode power supplies can be much more efficient (such as a laptop "brick" or a PC s
...my computer is using a lot more power than before - then again, it didn't play back HDTV or very impressive 3D games before either. And my last TV, well it's a lot bigger and thus draws a lot more watts than my last one. Compare that to a washing machine - it washes my clothes, they get clean. Two thumbs up for that, I don't need one spinning twice as fast. I must admit, I don't think energy efficiency when I look at power draw, I think cooling and noise - sitting in front of a computer is hardly an expe
I admit it, I now have more gadgets drawing current than I did five years ago. I have also reduced power consumption in the past five years. Five years ago, my typical electric bill was US $125 a month, it is now in the $75 range. None of the changes have caused any hardships or reduction in quality of life.
1. Replaced heat pump with a more efficient model and installed set back thermostat. I lucked out, the compressor crapped out and I had a service policy. The impact on quality of life is nil, I had to learn the new thermostat.
2. Replaced refrigerator with a more efficient model. It was expensive but the old refrigerator was about 30 years old and was reaching the end of it's service life. It is a nicer refrigerator than the old one and it is quieter.
3. Replaced commonly used light bulbs with compact fluorescent. This was an inexpensive change and it had the most impact on quality of life. The color and light quality of the new compact fluorescents compares to the old lights but they take a few minutes to produce full light output. They remind me of a tube type radio warming up.
I think that the most interesting replacements were the night lights. I replaced the 6 night lights that used to draw about 4 watts each with LEDs. I connected a wall wart to an unused wire pair in my home telephone wiring and I use the phone wiring to transport power to my night light LEDs. I had the wall wart, LEDs, and other parts in my junk box -- and they work great.
The light conversion is both saving power used for lighting and reducing the summer air conditioning load. Someday I might even figure out how long it will take to save any money by replacing those lights. The main light in the living room was a 300 watt halogen torchiere which I replaced with three fluorescent flood lights which cost $35 for a new floor lamp and bulbs, rated power consumption went from 300 watts down to about 75 watts; and I frequently don't turn on all three of the bulbs. This summer I noticed that the living room was much cooler with the new lights. The kitchen is saving a similar amount of watts but the lights in the kitchen are not used very often.
Consumer electronics do increasingly contribute to
a home's electric budget, but only by virtue of quantity.
Except for PCs and TVs, most products draw a pittance. For
PCs, they did draw more and more power from the mid-80s to
a year or two ago, but newer CPUs have finally addressed
that problem (and power supplies have gotten more efficient
as well). For TVs, larger means more power, but the tech has
drastically improved... A 50" plasma draws comparable to a
My TV has a power button, which works as a hard power button. There's also the TV remote, which puts the TV into the "soft-off" state where it's ready to turn on, but not exactly off. That's not all - when there's a power failure, the TV turns on as soon as power is restored. Given the size of the TV, I guess the manufacturer thought it would be used as a Kiosk where it needed to be always on rather than being used at home. I guess it's no worse than the "Wake on Modem" that's enabled by default in the co
It is interesting to take his numbers and do a bit of arithmetic. The highest power user is the kettle, but is only on for (say) 10 minutes a day, whereas the DVD and microwave are on all day (1440 minutes) [I assume that you never cook anything for watch a film]:
The Wall Street Journal is right (for once). The vast majority any house's electrical costs are Heating-Air Conditioning, and Water heating (baring designs using solar water heaters, and below ground air conditioning, I acknowledge that you exist, but let's face it, you're far less than 1% of the population). If electrical usage is rising, its the fault of the rise of McMansions, and generally larger housing in general. Most housing in the US is poorly designed and piss-poor insulated, with dozens of windows. All of which add hugely to HAC. Windows in particular are a huge elephant of electricity costs, especially the huge ones popular today, built with no consideration at all about where the sun is going to be at different seasons.
From the article theorizing that home electronic power usage seems to be getting worse:
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
No, that computer isn't *remotely* power effecient.
The ridiculously high 130+watt idle numbers are probably due to the S2K Bus Disconnect bug/issue AMD had before the switch to 64bit CPUs. Running a program like VCool or FVcool would likely reduce that number by 20-60 watts.
The trend in CPUs (still the biggest single power drain in modern computers) is for MUCH more power-effecient models (especially when idle). A newer CPU and motherboard would be using significantly less power than that old Athlon, despite vastly outperforming the older chip.
[...] given that it survives quite happily on a rather anemic 300W power supply, in an era when many advice guides are pushing monster 450W+ units.
The recomendations are probably due to the ridiculous power consumption of Pentium 4 CPUs (which are thankfully behind us now) and $5 "500w" PSUs, which can't possibly deliver half the power advertised. Stay away from those two issues, and a 300W power supply is more than enough for modern systems.
Additionally, 80% effecient power supplies like Seasonic's units are becomming more common, and more widely available, helping to significantly reduce power consumption as well.
With all of this, many people are putting together new towers that use less power than their notebooks.
A comparable LCD screen would use about 45-50W (yes, I've validated those numbers, and a 19" LCD really does use that much power.
That's not a fair comparison. Those 19" CRTs probably have a "viewable" size of 17.9".
Besides that, a jump of approx 50% power savings is still huge, and better than you'd get trading-in your old refridgerator for a new one... And with other improvements on the horizon, I predict computer displays will continue to out-pace refrigerator effeciency gains for many years to come.
Furnace blower motors have been moving to DC, significantly reducing their electricity consumption as well.
I fail to see how a DC motor is inherently more effecient than an AC motor. For one thing, it comes into your house as AC to begin with.
the receiver/audio amplifier takes 51W, regardless of output
I sincerely doubt most people watch TV with a surround-sound amplifier on, 40 hours a week.
I don't see the majority of TV programming (things like news, game shows, soap operas, etc.) getting any more exciting when played over 6 speakers instead of the two built-in to the TV.
(like most families, it's often on even when unwatched, especially given some of the great digital music channels our cable provider streams out)
I don't know why anyone would leave their TV on to listen to digital music channels for hours a day, when it has already been established that the person in question is using a seperate amplifier for their TV viewing already...
But that didn't stop him from using this in his calculations, not to mention claiming that he's trying to save the earth...
that PVR is just as efficient at turning 42W into heat as your baseboard would be with the same power.
No, it isn't. As I've repeated on/. many times before:
"An electric heater will be a purely resistive load, giving you a nearly perfect power factor of 1.0, whereas your VCR probably has a cheap power supply with a power factor as low as 0.4. So the VCR is causing a lot more power loss [line losses], even though it's the same 5watts."
The measured difference between doing general desktop tasks on Vista Ultimate running with Aero Glass, and Windows 2003 running on the same hardware, was negligible.
No doubt this test was done on the same 32-bit AMD Athlon system (without S2K Bus Disconnect enabled) WHICH DOESN'T IDLE P
Never mind... It's the summary that reads like a dupe.
Reminds me John Stewart's coverage of how Fox News uses "Questions": "Does John Murtha's push for withdrawl encourage terrorists and insurgents to increase the number of attacks on our troops in Iraq?"
Nope. It's a response to the article you linked to. The article you linked to was also linked to by the submitter. Things have gotten REALLY bad when people can't even be bothered to read the first sentence of the summary.
First, these are Volt-Amps, not necessarily Watts. National Grid is going to charge you for Watts. The "Watts=VoltsxAmps" formula only works for 100% resistive loads or DC. On AC, you have to adjust for reactive power.
Second, what is going into your power converter that you are using to run your Canadian appliances in the UK? In other words, how much have you increased the insanity?
On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of the night barefoot!:-)
> On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong > plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of > the night barefoot!:-)
IMHO there is at least a master's degree in psychology awaiting the person who performs an analysis of national character as revealed by the UK, French, US, Italian, and Australian electric plugs/sockets.
One thing I will say about the UK plug: at least there is no question that you have a ground (earth).
One thing I will say about the UK plug: at least there is no question that you have a ground (earth).
Unless you have the ones with the plastic earth prong...
If that leaves you with some question as to whether you will have an operable earth ground when the ground prong is plastic, you are not qualified to plug appliances into the wall. Please contact a trained professional.
There are actually several different kinds of British plugs. The giant square prong plug is only the most recent incarnation. There are the "lighting" plugs that have round prongs and are more akin to a US plug in size. They were actually the standard until the 70s or so. There are also shaver sockets with two prongs spaced similarly to US sockets. Some even have a voltage switch to select 115V or 230V.
UK plugs are ridiculously overengineered, but I can
On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of the night barefoot!:-)
Yes, they do hurt to step on, but I do like the design, apart from their size. If they were about 2/3rds of their current size, they'd be great.
One aspect I really like about them is that the ground terminal is longer than the other two, which is used to slide a shutter in the socket out of the way to allow the live and neutral pins to plug in to the socket. This makes
Yeah was about to say your missing a 2x multiplier if your in the UK. None of the equipment complains about running on 50hz instead?
A lot of equipment is completely oblivious to this shift in frequency. Most affected are appliances with AC motors and clocks. If the first thing an appliance does is convert AC to DC (as with almost all electronic appliances) then no difference will be noticed. If there is a transformer before the first rectifier, then there may be a slight loss of power.
None of the equipment complains about running on 50hz instead?
Nope! I don't know whether it's a solid state-ly modified waveform to 60Hz (there is no moving part in the converter as in a phase converter), or it's just that my electronics are taking 50Hz...remember that rectification doesn't care about the waveform in the RC smoothing for the most part, but my electronics don't seem to care!
Things are getting more efficient... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=1
According to this link, a CRT uses 3x as much electricity in a year as an LCD. Which is, of course, the same as saying '2x more'.
Inflation (Score:2)
Re:Inflation (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Things are getting more efficient... (Score:4, Interesting)
About a half of a year ago, I measured some Athlon64 3200+ desktops in order to size out UPS systems. These measurements included the 19" LCD panel, which alone uses about 40 watts during use. The systems used Abit motherboards, stock AMD coolers, and GeForce 6200TC video cards. Through booting, using, and shutting down the systems, I found that an average draw during usage was about 100 watts - which included 40 watts for the monitor, putting draw from the wall at around 60 watts. Peak draw never got above 143 watts during those trials.
I didn't even bother measuring the Pentium-D systems that we had - the amount of heat alone that those things pumped out told me all that I needed to know.
Of course, the laptop that I'm typing on right now has a 1.8 GHz dual-core chip (Core Duo), and has a "measly" 65-watt power adapter. The 65 watts (which is what it draws from the wall, I measured) is enough to run both cores at a pretty good load, the 12" display, and burn a DVD at the same time - and still have a little power left over to charge the battery. That's a bit unfair, as it's an extremely power-optimized system, but it shows what can be achieved.
As an interesting side-note, I have a couple of Via's C3 systems, which are supposed to be low-power setups. Measuring power draw from the wall, I get 55-70 watts being pulled, depending on the machine. While the CPU is very low-power, system fans and hard drives still take power, and the cheap power supplies in them are extremely inefficient.
steve
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's regional (Score:4, Interesting)
Humidity is another climate-related factor that affects electricity consumption. Households in more humid regions tend to use air-conditioners and dehumidifiers to remove humidity. Households in arid regions, such as the Mountain States, are able to use evaporative coolers instead of air-conditioning for space cooling.
Color TVs? Is that really necessary to specify? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh good, all my black and white TVs and computer equipment are okay...
I know that was meant to be a snark, but...,/P>
Monochrome CRTs use remarkably little energy.
Re:Color TVs? Is that really necessary to specify? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously! None of them have been plugged in for 20 years! ;-)
Parent
Trends vs Actual consumption... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article referenced talks about the trends for energy consumption. And, in that respect, the consumer electronics win hands down, since more and more people buy computers, flat-screen TVs and assorted electronic gadgets. On the other hand, the WSJ is right, since the overall energy consumption of these gadgets is still a very small fraction of the total.
One thing that I'd personally like to do soon would be to compare the electricity used by all my computers (6 and counting, including a big Sun workstation, 3 laptops, a modem/router, a wireless access point, a laser printer, etc) vs the overall electricity usage in my home. I have relatively modern equipment, and I am currently switching everything to low-power equipment.
More efficient and More Prolific (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they might run instant on feature that takes some current drain 24x7 so they can do a warm start. Or a clock.
Chase down the Off-Grid living web sites and you'll soon find that one of the biggest problems people have when they first try to do off grid is all their appliances that drain just a little power all night long, leaving insufficient power for the morning routines.
I have three digital clocks in my kitchen, two in my entertainment center... I don't own a watch anymore because I realized that there is no place except the bathroom that I can stand in my house and not see a clock face. And I don't own any clocks!
The need for everything to have a digital clock and instant on takes up a lot more power then you think. Turn everything off and go look at your meter. it's still chugging along rather nicely. We could do much better if we dropped the clocks and dropped the instant on. Tube televisions took minutes to warm up. Solid State televisions take a few seconds to warm up. Instant On only saves me 3 seconds at most.
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Re:More efficient and More Prolific (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like a leaky faucet. Sure it's only 1/10 gallon a minute, but it adds up and doesn't benefit anyone. Why not minimize it? I know manufacturers could lower standby power use if consumers demand it.
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The tech exists, studios and CE killed it (Score:3, Interesting)
The studios HATED it, because it meant their content was moving around the network digitally (in MPEG-2), which was the point. Want to record something to D-VHS or AVHDD, just choose to record it. The devices tell everyone that they record. No more PVR, or if you
Its good to see the few key things called out... (Score:5, Interesting)
These days lighting design is all the rage, and its common to have 4 or more fixtures in a room, often R30 can lights at 65w each projecting downward so you need 4 or more to light a room. The room I'm in right now visiting my parents has 4 can lights, a light with 4 60 watt bulbs in it, and two recessed spot lights of unknown power. Ignoring those, its still 500 watts to light this room.
My house is 60+ years old, but was renovated six years ago -- most of it is can lit as well. It has 24 65 watt R30 can lights in it, among all the other lights.
I saw a nearly $30 a month drop in my electric bill switching the entire house to CFL. Dimmable R30 bulbs are pricey, $12+ each, but they will have payed themselves off in a year. I typically am facist about keeping lights off, too... I'm sure the savings would be double that if I had kids leaving them on all the time.
On a geek note, I also got a $30 savings a month by making changes in the data center in the basement. An old HP rack server was replaced with a much less power hungry desktop box which was faster... that saved 75% of the electricity it used to use. Three other desktop boxes which were slower were replaced with two free laptops with broken screens I got from friends who tend to break their laptops. The upside as well is that one small UPS can power everything for almost an hour.
Re:Its good to see the few key things called out.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The NEC has constantly revised the electr
Shameless plug for my instructable... (Score:2)
http://www.instructables.com/id/EE62QUOM31EUOJJVA
saves a few pennies here and there.....
Remotes + Sleep mode (Score:4, Interesting)
When we first got a TV (1988), the TV had a power switch, five channels and definitely no remote. So, whenever we didn't need the TV, we just switched off the power and turned it on when we needed it.
When 1999 dawned, the TV was a flat screen 25" with a remote. And lo, we would turn off the power for the TV only when we left the house (locked up) or at night. And that was just because my house was on the very top of a hill and power lines were often hit by lightning (yeah, I had my modem explode once).
And finally, now in 2006 (in a different city), I have six things plugged in - from DVD player to the TV itself. And it is such a big mess that nobody ever unplugs anything at all - just use the remote to turn it on & off. That sleep mode does take a fair bit of power (well, tens of watts) which is just going to an absolute waste (well, heating the room).
It is these un-noticed devices which suck a constant, but econonomically neglible drain - which could be avoided. The things you can fix aren't always the biggest consumers (water heaters, refrigerator) but small things like these - in a global level.
It is not just such permanently on stuff that you have - the average geek still has more connectors than you'd think. I realized this when I was in the high himalayas - and we were charging [flickr.com] stuff before we left human habitation. (Oh, took the laptop to 18,000 feet).
Re:Remotes + Sleep mode (Score:5, Insightful)
That last bit is critical. Guys, we're not wasting ANY energy, at least during the heating season. The heat put out by the wall warts and other always-on stuff, helps heat your house. If you have electric heat, it's exactly a wash. If you heat with natural gas or propane, well, this is that much less fuel you'll burn. The cost per BTU even comes out in favor of electric, sometimes. For me, the on-peak rate is 5x as high as the off-peak rate, so during nights and weekends, electric heat is cheaper than propane.
For off-peak heating, I use a 4500W water heater, piped into plastic tubing cast into the concrete slabs in my basement and kitchen. I can get a 1 degree (f) per hour temperature rise in the slabs, which doesn't sound like much but in practice is more than enough. The electric heat, in this case, saves me quite a bit in propane costs, somewhere around 20% in heating costs savings last time I calculated.
Point is, that heat isn't wasted, unless you're running an air conditioner at the same time.
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the same verdict is being reached all over (Score:4, Informative)
Standby estimates (Score:2)
of our power bill was so much greater (he now has a meter). Turns out his standby
power on all his devices is half of his total average power draw. They are on all the
time, after all, whereas the bigegr items are used mkore rarely. He also has more
gizmos than you can shake a stick at. To sum thar up: when he's away from the house
on vacation or whatever, with TVs and compuetrs off, his power draw is still at 50% of
the noraml am
two simple things would totally fix it (Score:4, Insightful)
2) Manufacturers should be obliged to make low-voltage devices have transformers internal(and wired after the power switch), and make those really annoying power bricks you now get with everything illegal.
Apart from usually being a ridiculous single-piece design that occludes several other sockets in a power strip, they cause massive cable tangles and practical use requires that they be left permanently powered-on.
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Re:two simple things would totally fix it (Score:5, Interesting)
Powered off: 0.035A
Booting: 0.250A - 0.320A
On, but idle: 0.180A - 0.250A
Sleep mode: 0.050A
Unplugged: 0.0A
So booting isn't that much more power than idle, and it's for a short period of time.
I find it interesting that powered off isn't really powered off, so you are better off using the switch on your power strip than relying on the mac "off" mode, which isn't a whole lot better than sleep.
Someone who wants to play with math more than me can figure out the break-even points, but it's clear that you are far better off unplugging your mac and rebooting overnight than leaving it in sleep mode. It's a no-brainer for a week. This basically says, unplug all your crap when you go on vacation, because with modern electronics, off isn't off.
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Re:two simple things would totally fix it (Score:5, Informative)
Glad you asked. The main reason is safety regulations. Devices that plug in to your household power need 3rd party certification (e.g. UL approval in US). Power supply design is a specialty, and although any EE could do it, not all can do it well, quickly and cheaply. If you (as designer) spec an external transformer, then you don't have to worry about the approval. You just buy an approved transformer and design your device to work on low voltage. This saves you thousands of dollars and many man-hours of time per design by not having to hire an independent lab to verify your safety compliance.
As an additional benefit, you can sell you product to work with different AC voltages just by supplying the appropriate transformer for each market. Plus, when you buy an external transformer, you get economies of scale because it can power not only your devices but many others built by thousands of other firms.
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Manufacturing costs: you get economy of scale on the power supply circuits.
Liability: if the power supply blows up, *you* didn't design or build it. Also, users of the circuit can't be directly exposed to 120VAC.
Size: yes, the circuit can be smaller, and the extra parts are out of the way on a floor or wall.
The problem with many wall wart bricks is that their transformer
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This is true to an extent, but the amount of power drawn in "zero load" conditions is quite small. The more load placed on the secondary, the more load seen on the primary. Some energy is wasted as heat. IIRC, a typical iron-core transformer is around 85% efficient at 50/60 Hz line current.
Switch mode power supplies can be much more efficient (such as a laptop "brick" or a PC s
I'm pretty sure... (Score:2)
Gadgets using more power, lights can use less powe (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Replaced heat pump with a more efficient model and installed set back thermostat. I lucked out, the compressor crapped out and I had a service policy. The impact on quality of life is nil, I had to learn the new thermostat.
2. Replaced refrigerator with a more efficient model. It was expensive but the old refrigerator was about 30 years old and was reaching the end of it's service life. It is a nicer refrigerator than the old one and it is quieter.
3. Replaced commonly used light bulbs with compact fluorescent. This was an inexpensive change and it had the most impact on quality of life. The color and light quality of the new compact fluorescents compares to the old lights but they take a few minutes to produce full light output. They remind me of a tube type radio warming up.
I think that the most interesting replacements were the night lights. I replaced the 6 night lights that used to draw about 4 watts each with LEDs. I connected a wall wart to an unused wire pair in my home telephone wiring and I use the phone wiring to transport power to my night light LEDs. I had the wall wart, LEDs, and other parts in my junk box -- and they work great.
The light conversion is both saving power used for lighting and reducing the summer air conditioning load. Someday I might even figure out how long it will take to save any money by replacing those lights. The main light in the living room was a 300 watt halogen torchiere which I replaced with three fluorescent flood lights which cost $35 for a new floor lamp and bulbs, rated power consumption went from 300 watts down to about 75 watts; and I frequently don't turn on all three of the bulbs. This summer I noticed that the living room was much cooler with the new lights. The kitchen is saving a similar amount of watts but the lights in the kitchen are not used very often.
Not the problem, but not ignorable (Score:2)
Consumer electronics do increasingly contribute to a home's electric budget, but only by virtue of quantity. Except for PCs and TVs, most products draw a pittance. For PCs, they did draw more and more power from the mid-80s to a year or two ago, but newer CPUs have finally addressed that problem (and power supplies have gotten more efficient as well). For TVs, larger means more power, but the tech has drastically improved... A 50" plasma draws comparable to a
New definition to always on (Score:2)
I guess it's no worse than the "Wake on Modem" that's enabled by default in the co
Idle usage (Score:2)
So what you think is the big user (kettle) is about the same as the microwave.
Gadgets smadgets (Score:3, Insightful)
Save the earth quote... (Score:3, Insightful)
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
Many, Many Mistakes... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, that computer isn't *remotely* power effecient.
The ridiculously high 130+watt idle numbers are probably due to the S2K Bus Disconnect bug/issue AMD had before the switch to 64bit CPUs. Running a program like VCool or FVcool would likely reduce that number by 20-60 watts.
The trend in CPUs (still the biggest single power drain in modern computers) is for MUCH more power-effecient models (especially when idle). A newer CPU and motherboard would be using significantly less power than that old Athlon, despite vastly outperforming the older chip.
The recomendations are probably due to the ridiculous power consumption of Pentium 4 CPUs (which are thankfully behind us now) and $5 "500w" PSUs, which can't possibly deliver half the power advertised. Stay away from those two issues, and a 300W power supply is more than enough for modern systems.
Additionally, 80% effecient power supplies like Seasonic's units are becomming more common, and more widely available, helping to significantly reduce power consumption as well.
With all of this, many people are putting together new towers that use less power than their notebooks.
That's not a fair comparison. Those 19" CRTs probably have a "viewable" size of 17.9".
Besides that, a jump of approx 50% power savings is still huge, and better than you'd get trading-in your old refridgerator for a new one... And with other improvements on the horizon, I predict computer displays will continue to out-pace refrigerator effeciency gains for many years to come.
I fail to see how a DC motor is inherently more effecient than an AC motor. For one thing, it comes into your house as AC to begin with.
I sincerely doubt most people watch TV with a surround-sound amplifier on, 40 hours a week.
I don't see the majority of TV programming (things like news, game shows, soap operas, etc.) getting any more exciting when played over 6 speakers instead of the two built-in to the TV.
I don't know why anyone would leave their TV on to listen to digital music channels for hours a day, when it has already been established that the person in question is using a seperate amplifier for their TV viewing already...
But that didn't stop him from using this in his calculations, not to mention claiming that he's trying to save the earth...
No, it isn't. As I've repeated on /. many times before:
"An electric heater will be a purely resistive load, giving you a nearly perfect power factor of 1.0, whereas your VCR probably has a cheap power supply with a power factor as low as 0.4. So the VCR is causing a lot more power loss [line losses], even though it's the same 5watts."
No doubt this test was done on the same 32-bit AMD Athlon system (without S2K Bus Disconnect enabled) WHICH DOESN'T IDLE P
Sacre Bleu (Score:2)
Reminds me John Stewart's coverage of how Fox News uses "Questions": "Does John Murtha's push for withdrawl encourage terrorists and insurgents to increase the number of attacks on our troops in Iraq?"
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Re:My results (Score:4, Informative)
Two comments:
First, these are Volt-Amps, not necessarily Watts. National Grid is going to charge you for Watts. The "Watts=VoltsxAmps" formula only works for 100% resistive loads or DC. On AC, you have to adjust for reactive power.
Second, what is going into your power converter that you are using to run your Canadian appliances in the UK? In other words, how much have you increased the insanity?
On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of the night barefoot! :-)
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Re:My results (Score:5, Funny)
Or, more generally, don't step on anything pointy barefoot. Time of day and intended purpose of the pointy thing are not important.
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> plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of
> the night barefoot!
IMHO there is at least a master's degree in psychology awaiting the person who performs an analysis of national character as revealed by the UK, French, US, Italian, and Australian electric plugs/sockets.
One thing I will say about the UK plug: at least there is no question that you have a ground (earth).
sPh
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If that leaves you with some question as to whether you will have an operable earth ground when the ground prong is plastic, you are not qualified to plug appliances into the wall. Please contact a trained professional.
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There are actually several different kinds of British plugs. The giant square prong plug is only the most recent incarnation. There are the "lighting" plugs that have round prongs and are more akin to a US plug in size. They were actually the standard until the 70s or so. There are also shaver sockets with two prongs spaced similarly to US sockets. Some even have a voltage switch to select 115V or 230V.
UK plugs are ridiculously overengineered, but I can
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Yes, they do hurt to step on, but I do like the design, apart from their size. If they were about 2/3rds of their current size, they'd be great.
One aspect I really like about them is that the ground terminal is longer than the other two, which is used to slide a shutter in the socket out of the way to allow the live and neutral pins to plug in to the socket. This makes
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Yeah was about to say your missing a 2x multiplier if your in the UK. None of the equipment complains about running on 50hz instead?
A lot of equipment is completely oblivious to this shift in frequency. Most affected are appliances with AC motors and clocks. If the first thing an appliance does is convert AC to DC (as with almost all electronic appliances) then no difference will be noticed. If there is a transformer before the first rectifier, then there may be a slight loss of power.
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