Monitor Draws Zero Power In Standby 405
fifthace writes "A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby. The technology uses capacitors and relays to avoid drawing power when no video signal is present. With political parties all over Europe calling for a ban on standby, this small development could end up as one of the most significant advances in recent times. The British Government estimates eight percent of all domestic electricity is consumed by devices in standby."
The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
power isnt free (Score:4, Insightful)
A more useful version would be one that used solar cells on the top of the LCD to absorb the already expended energy of ambient lighting.
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing only different. (Score:4, Insightful)
instead (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the OFF switch (Score:5, Insightful)
8% sounds high (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess this is more save the planet stuff.
Now I need to buy new monitors, tv's, vcrs, dvd players, microwave, oven, unplug my clocks every day, etc.. Lots more aluminum smelted. Lots more resources used up. Lots more pollution, but we all can sleep better knowing the residential power demand may shrink by a fraction of a percent.
I'll get right on that after I scrap my relatively new car and buy a prius, and pull and toss all my perfectly functional lighing in favor of compact flourescent. And if we all pitch in, the rate of increase of power demand of this planet will slow by a probably incalculably small amount.
Why do individuals need to change their lives so radically, for an extremely minor, and likely insignificant payoff - all the while lining the pockets of the worlds leading polluters?
If my PC didn't have standby, it'd simply be on all the time, and so would yours - don't lie. This is all getting a little bit silly. Where are the real problem solvers, why are we waiting for government to solve these problems?
My solution? "Consume" as little as possible. I got a ton of shit already, I don't need anymore. We simply aren't going to buy our way to a cooler planet.
Re:power isnt free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:power isnt free (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:power isnt free (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet according to TFA this monitor still draws power when you press the standby / power button. It's only when the video signal ceases that the power usage drops to zero.
If I press the "off" button and have to press it again to turn it on, why is the monitor still drawing power?
Re:8% sounds high (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Same thing only different. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:patents?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you can patent something that 1-2% of EE students discovered on their own.
Re:Same thing only different. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:instead (Score:3, Insightful)
Go ahead, push the button on the front if it makes you feel 'green' or something. But other than the LED on the front going off instead of blinking and/or changing colors you ain't done a goddamned thing. It is still wasting almost (less the couple of milliwatts for the LED) exactly as much power as if you hadn't pushed the button. Because the button on the front is just a 'soft button' on almost every LCD panel. Mine has a real switch on the back that will discontinue all power... and is useful to reboot the retarded thing when it's CPU locks up.
It does help to know something about the problem before spouting off answers.
Only 2 to 4W difference (Score:4, Insightful)
My airconditioner uses at least 1kW. 1 hour of airconditioning = 20 days of monitor standby.
For those of you who live in countries that need central heating, the standby power isn't going to hurt as much during winter since you want stuff warmer anyway.
I need a better designed house (to reduce cooling bills etc), but I can't afford one... An "Energy Star" legislation for houses here might be good, but I'm worried the builders will just use it as a way to make a lot more money.
Re:instead (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh crap. Maybe mechanical devices might have a problem - like spinning down and spinning up your hard drive - but not electrical devices. Modern electronic devices haven't been around for decades, maybe just over one. Most old fashioned electoronics - like old TVs and radios - did get turned on and off (they had no standby) and they did last decades.
Modern devices barely last five years before needing replacing. Add the fact that they chew up power when they are in "stand-by" and I wonder what the definition of "progress" really is.
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
As for Fujitsu's 0W-standby monitor, they conveniently omit the fact that this extra relay's coil and related components will be drawing an extra 1W or so while the monitor/TV is on. I would prefer that they perfected ultra-low-power standby like 1W as the current typical appliance has 4-10W standby power: having standby rely on capacitors means standby would not work as expected every now and then if it's been too long since the previous power-up.
Re:The most frustrating thing is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure that design could be improved either by using a solid-state switch or a bi-polar relay that only needs a pulse to change state rather than to hold a state. What Fujitsu have done is a good start.
How long is a monitor on compared to off for most people anyway? In an average work place one would hope that most people get home to eat, be with the family and sleep for a larger proportion of the time. OK, if you're unlucky in that respect, just think of all the energy you will be saving while your monitor at home is switched off while you spend you're whole life at work
Re:power isnt free (Score:3, Insightful)
The big offenders need nailing first so they should be banning hot water tanks (instant on hot water uses 50% less energy) before they start regulating standby mode.
Re:power isnt free (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but the relay is now basically acting like a latch and is drawing power continuously to keep itself closed until the appropriate hardware cuts off the control voltage. Now I'm not saying that the relay might not have been there anyway, but if this is an additional relay, you have an efficiency problem. Also, when the capacitor bleeds down, there has to be another way to cause the relay to latch. So why not just use a pushbutton to latch the relay and be done with it. After all, you're sitting at the monitor anyway, so why do you need standby mode? Just throw the switch already....
What amazes me is that we had this problem solved fifty years ago. It was called a mechanical power switch. All these devices in standby mode aren't doing anything useful except allowing people to turn on devices by remote control. In the case of your computer, it's even more appalling, as you're already sitting right at the computer. Do you really mean to tell me that people aren't willing to spend the energy to push a push-button switch to turn the monitor on and off? Seriously? And again, for computers, is it really that hard to put up a dialog that says "It is now safe to turn off your computer?" I wish the whole soft power concept would just go away for 90% of the devices that use it, as it doesn't add any real value.
Back in the early days, amplifiers had a separate power jack. You plugged in some other device, and when you turned on the amp, everything else got power, too. What happened to that design? It would be perfect for home entertainment systems. You push one button and your TV, your amplifier, your satellite receiver, your DVD player, etc. turn on. Until then, they aren't using power. Then, if you want it to be remote controlled, you only need to have one device in standby instead of a dozen. It saves power and would work better than what we have to put up with now. It's a win-win.
*sigh*
Re:power isnt free (Score:4, Insightful)
But the real reason for all those soft-power settings I think has less to do with powering on than it does with powering off. Most devices don't like to be daisy-chained and controlled by a remote source, like lots of analog electronics were, because they can't stand having their power cut abruptly.
In other words, it's the "shut down" procedure that's the killer, not the "start up" one. Lots of devices perform little rituals when you turn them off, writing settings to non-volatile memory for instance, that analog electronics just don't have to do. Because of this, you need to make sure that the user doesn't really have control over the device's whole power. So instead of a real switch, the user gets a soft-power button. That way, they can press it, and the device can start shutting down, and do its thing. But this basically necessitates 'standby' rather than 'off,' in order to be able to start up from the soft power button.
Remote controls are the other driving force, but there are lots of devices that do 'standby' now, that don't have remotes. I think it's often because they have a power-off procedure; if you designed devices so that they could be unplugged at any time without consequence, then you could go back to centrally-controlled, daisy-chained power supplies.
These people are idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
So a "Blackle" would increase power usage on LCD systems, which needs to be factored in.
If these people really care about saving energy, maybe they'd look to things like old, inefficient air conditioning units. ACs use power like no other appliance in a normal home. However there are many different quality levels out there. Good modern ones can move a lot more heat per unit of energy input. This is generally measured in a term called SEER, which means how many Btus of cooling a unit does per watt-hour of energy input. For old units SEER values of 9 or less are common. These days, you can't get less than 13 (by law) and you can get them over 20 SEER. That means that you'll be talking about a unit roughly twice as efficient at cooling. That is some major, major energy savings right there. Doesn't take a lot of that to equal their theoretical Google numbers, and this is backed up by reality.
Re:Holy Shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Practically no oil is going towards generating electricity on the grid.
Re:power isnt free (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:instead (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems a lot of people simply can't tell the difference between "not my problem" and "not a problem" - between placing responsibility for a problem and actually seeing it solved. You wouldn't expect the same people to argue "Why can't all world leaders just sit down and hold hands and sort it all out peacefully", but it's exactly the same sort of worthless argument. Well, I don't know why, but your rhetorical question doesn't mean whatever reasons there are suddenly disappear, and hurrah if they all did what you suggest, but I'm sure as hell not going to carry on with my life pretending "well that's solved, then".
This mental dodo is especially mind-boggling when the negative impact is on a third party and not on the one identified as 'responsible'. "Damn regulations. Parents should take some responsibility and screen their children's toys for toxic chemicals". Implicitly: "if they don't then they deserve what they get". Errr, OK, let's just for the sake of argument assume that they did deserve it. Does that affect what their kids deserve?
This last variant also incorporates another common logical gem: the scapegoat fallacy - the idea that responsibility for something is a constant amount. If you can blame someone, everybody else is off the hook. It's like saying that "the hit man was just doing his job", or "don't blame me, hire the hit man I hired". No. You are both fully responsible for all easily foreseeable consequences of your actions, including how you affect the actions of others, and a longer list of parties who share responsibility for the result does not lessen yours unless it lessens your control or predictive capability over what happened.
Re:The biggest wastage is in the power supply itse (Score:2, Insightful)
I realise that this is the third time that I've posted in this topic now, but FFS people if you don't know anything about discrete electronics (and most
I do know about it. It's my job to know about it. Standby power is part of what I do, I develop electronics for certain types of household goods. What they have done here is nothing new, except perhaps for the solar panel (it's unncessary, probably done for marketing reasons). It is trivial to build zero power standby circuits for most home appliances except those that use remotes to wake them up. It does not require magic, or micros, or cheating the laws of physics, or anything like that, what it does require is usually a little more cost. Hell, the standby power of most devices is double or triple what it could easily be because it saves a few cents, and a few cents on a few million items is a few years salary for a few engineers. In several of the designs I've done I've gone so far as tracking changes which would take standby power from ~1.5 Watts down to 0.2 Watts, they're on the PCB, but the parts are not fitted and the el-cheapo circuit is fitted instead. Because the beancounters said so.
Until governments require low standby powers on domestic equipment (and I mean really low, not energy star BS, although at least it's a start), manufacturers are going to continue the way they are because it's cheaper to make energy inefficient devices.