Energy Star Program Needs an Overhaul 306
Martin Hellman writes "DeviceGuru.com ran my piece raising questions about the EPA's Energy Star program. For example, an Energy Star compliant TV that claims to draw 0.1 watts in sleep mode appears to do that — but only seems to sleep about 25% of the time that it is 'off.' The other 75% of the time it draws about 20 watts, for an effective sleep power draw from the user's perspective that is 150 times what the manufacturer claims. Based on the observations described, it is also questionable how many PC's really are sleeping when their screens are blank, even if the user has turned sleep mode on. Given the billions of dollars and tons of CO2 that are at stake, this situation demands more attention."
Re:Hi there, click harvester, here's why you fail (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy actually researched and wrote an article, unlike Piquepaille who copied and pasted from others. No shame in giving links to your own original work.
The solution is easy. (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't watch television!
Re:I'm getting a bit tired of this.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes it is flamebait. What is even worse is that it is wrong.
Plus it ignores other damaging effects of wasting energy. Like the 40 billion per month in the balance of trade deficit. Or the fact that it allows people who don't like us very much to control our economy. Or the shear waste of burning something that could be used to made far more valuable stuff.
Read a thermometer (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm getting a bit tired of this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know where you have your TV, but I know mine is easily in a place where I could press the power button on my own and then do everything else by remote to save on power consumption.
So, unplug and replug your TV every time you want to watch it. I honestly don't care if my TV uses 20 Watts when it isn't turned on or not, that is a rather insignificant part of my electric bill for a major part of my (and most people's) life.
I don't own a TV that downloads its own clock setting. Though I haven't bought a TV in a while... And what background data does a TV need anyways?
Some TVs have a guide that you can use to see what is on. And yes, there are actually TVs with built-in guides not using the cable box. It might be important to have that load in a timely matter rather than 15-20 minutes later.
I've never really considered the boot up time to be that terrible for TVs that I have turned on manually in the past. I don't consider TV that important that the difference between 2-3 seconds (LCD) and maybe 20-30 (old CRT) is at all important.
Then unplug and replug in your TV, the rest of the world wants TVs to boot up instantly.
The fact that you don't watch TV much and prefer to manually turn on TVs rather than using the remote is simply a preference. For most of the people that that TV manufacturers cater to, they don't want to wait. They want the TV to turn on quickly and using the remote, no matter if it costs a few extra watts of electricity. For people like you, well theres always the option of unplugging and replugging in the TV.
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:2, Insightful)
They're starting to build hard drives into TV's, so you can download shows from the internet. For situations like this, it is quite understandable.
Though the remote comment is about right. And don't forget the fact that some TV's still store things (like channel list) in volatile memory (with no battery backup!) that has to be maintained by constant current. It's stupid in this day and age, but they do.
On a related note, there's got to be a way to back up date/time on appliances, or power a clock with a battery, so they don't f***ing flash 12:00 in my parents' house.
I honestly have to disagree! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your post is a set of trollish exaggerations, so force it to fit your views.
So, unplug and replug your TV every time you want to watch it. I honestly don't care if my TV uses 20 Watts when it isn't turned on or not, that is a rather insignificant part of my electric bill for a major part of my (and most people's) life.
No it not rather insignificant. The devices add up. And you don't know shit about most people. You are just stating that out of your ass. Show me someone who does not want to save money.
Some TVs have a guide that you can use to see what is on. And yes, there are actually TVs with built-in guides not using the cable box. It might be important to have that load in a timely matter rather than 15-20 minutes later.
Some TVs have that guide. This may be true. And if you knew anything about embedded computers, you'd know, that never on earth would any system need to load the data for your completely exaggerated 15-20 minutes. If you are talking about updating the guide from the net, it would go as fast as a browser loading a page. The TV would most probably only implement a cache with per-page refresh time values (like a browser). Why on earth would anyone implement a complex constant updating routine for powered-off state? It costs money, and you get the same results with the caching. On another note: I have never in my life seen a TV that needed to load that long, that I recognized it. And I have seen the oldest CRTs, where the tube gets slowly brighter (while already fully working), and the newest digital super-high-end TVs from my rich uncle that include every feature that you can think of, while still being from completely powered off in usable in the time i needed to get from the TV to sitting on the couch.
Then unplug and replug in your TV, the rest of the world wants TVs to boot up instantly.
Am I right guessing that you ignore connector strips with real power switches, including foot switches with a 2 m cable, so you can put it somewhere else. And remote controlled power outlets (if you're really lazy). And am I right in assuming you do this because else your "arguments" would be worthless? Again you don't know the rest of the world.
The fact that you don't watch TV much [...]
That's not what he said, and therefore no fact. He just does not consider it that important. And I consider people who consider TV to still be important, to be strange.
For most of the people that that TV manufacturers cater to, they don't want to wait. They want the TV to turn on quickly and using the remote, no matter if it costs a few extra watts of electricity. For people like you, well theres always the option of unplugging and replugging in the TV.
This is a repetition of what you already said. Do you think you can persuade us because you can't convince us? Because you can do neither.
You are now officially a troll. Go find a therapist or something to cure your misdirected urge to be right at all costs.
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, unplug and replug your TV every time you want to watch it. I honestly don't care if my TV uses 20 Watts when it isn't turned on or not, that is a rather insignificant part of my electric bill for a major part of my (and most people's) life.
At 15 cents per kWh, that's $26 per year. That's like having to buy a case of beer for your TV every six months.
If it's technically feasible to have the TV *not* consume 20W, I'd prefer to keep the beer money for myself.
Re:And What Part of This is News? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:5, Insightful)
20 minutes? I'd say a whole weeks worth of listings data is no more than a megabyte. What's the bandwidth on an HDTV channel? Something immense I'm sure. Store the channel scan results in flash, no need to rescan each time. Download a meg of text, parse and store it, and you're up and running in two or three seconds.
Are you FUDding for an energy company or something? Several hundred million devices suddenly using 200 times less power has got to be worrying the publicly traded energy companies.
Re:I'm getting a bit tired of this.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:oh...that free agency thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
If electricity costs money, and I use it, I pay for it. If I want to pay more to use more, that's between me and the supplier. Not bloggers, not the government, not you.
Sure, I can't stop you being a pig when it comes to your power, but I can point out that it does indeed affect me through the environmental waste you are manufacturing. Do you really think that you making icecream with your air conditioner and leaving all your appliances on isn't generating small armies of carbon emissions?
Disbanding the EPA's EnergyStar program would save energy and money.
Also, a lot of people actually do care about what they pay for in terms of electricity and make use of things such as the EPA EnergyStar program. You aren't the only person that might use it. I know that you are inevitably more important in your mind than anyone else, but spare a moment for the unfortunate folks that aren't you and maybe shed a little compassion their way. Maybe they want to make use of the things you so carelessly flaunt.
How would skate boarders feel if there was a whole government agency set up to reduce skate boarding?
But it's not like that at all. As a skater I would have no problem if someone came out and said "these wheels/trucks/deck will last twice as long as the xxxxxx ones you got". It's not an attack on skating, it's simply providing information so that I can make a more informed choice.
Re:I honestly have to disagree! (Score:2, Insightful)
I honestly don't care if my TV uses 20 Watts when it isn't turned on or not, that is a rather insignificant part of my electric bill for a major part of my (and most people's) life.
No it not rather insignificant. The devices add up. And you don't know shit about most people. You are just stating that out of your ass. Show me someone who does not want to save money.
Wow, are you a depression era kid (or a kid of a DEK)? Almost everyone I know younger than 60 doesn't care if they leave lights on all over the place. That's at minimum 40W per light, more likely 75W. Even my parents (who do turn off lights when not in a room) don't remove power from devices like VCRs, DVDs, TVs, computers, wifi routers, stereos, etc. I'm not a wastrel, but I find my way of life much less stressful, not worrying about the $0.01s
Then unplug and replug in your TV, the rest of the world wants TVs to boot up instantly.
Am I right guessing that you ignore connector strips with real power switches,
It's the same thing, but more expensive. Why would you ask him to spend $0.99 after in-store rebate? Is he made of money?
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even if it actually takes 20 minutes to get the data (it doesn't), that justifies going from 0.1 Watts to 20 Watts for a total of 20 minutes a day (and then only if it hasn't been turned on for a day).
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine and dandy, so what's the excuse for the manufacturer lying about the stand-by power consumption? If it draws 20 Watts, they should say so and let the market decide if that's acceptable when another model actually draws 0.1 Watts in stand-by. I'm guessing they figured it WILL matter to people or they wouldn't bother lying.
Re:When you set the bar so low... (Score:2, Insightful)
Which matters more, the motivation or the result?
Re:Why tons of CO2? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that problem is very easy to solve. Don't allow any more coal plants to be built, and resolve the shortage using rolling blackouts. Significant opposition to nuke plants will disappear after two or three days. After a week or two, you'll have a pro-nuke movement.
Re:Why tons of CO2? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that problem is very easy to solve.
Me too! I live in California.
Don't allow any more coal plants to be built
Done.
and resolve the shortage using rolling blackouts.
Done.
Significant opposition to nuke plants will disappear after two or three days.
Eh....
After a week or two, you'll have a pro-nuke movement.
Really? 'Cause that's not what's happening here... Perhaps this quote has some bearing?
"For every complex question, there is a simple answer-- and it's wrong."
-- H.L. Mencken
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're not displaying the clock, you can maintain a clock for a long time on a capacitor charge, and a very long time on a battery charge. For something like a microwave that's always displaying the time, you could probably use a battery or rechargeable battery. The battery degrading would probably be the limiting factor there.
Re:You Fool! (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're having difficulty separating groups of people. There are scientists, doctors, and the media. Of those, only the media said we would all die of bird flu. I don't recall much being said by nonmedical scientists, and I certainly don't recall any "consensus" (though I doubt you're familiar with what scientific consensus even is), but if you asked just about any expert what the real risk and potential transmission vectors are for a particular case, they would tell you.
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:2, Insightful)
and be ready to boot up in a timely manner?
I've never really considered the boot up time to be that terrible for TVs that I have turned on manually in the past. I don't consider TV that important that the difference between 2-3 seconds (LCD) and maybe 20-30 (old CRT) is at all important.
Given that people accept 10-minute bootup times [userfriendly.org] on DVDs, why would they be particularly sensitive to 20-second bootup times on a television?
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. But it is, frankly, ridicolous to need to draw 20 watts 75% of the time in order to keep a tv-guide updated. Downloading such a guide once a day, and doing it when the TV is on anyway would be completely sufficient. And that would mean the TV would only need to wake from deep-sleep and come up to downloading-tv-guide levels of powerusage at most once a day. (never if the TV is used atleast once ever 24 hours)
A TV-guide is what, 5MB of data ? MY EEE-pc can download 5MB worth of data using wireless networking in about 10 seconds, using sligthly under 10W.
There's a WORLD between using 10W for 10 seconds, on one hand, and using 20W for 60.000 seconds on the other hand.
And being enough "on" to be able to detect a incoming "power-on" IR-signal is easily doable with 0.1W or less.
So, reasonable would be 0.1W almost the entire time, 10W for a minute or two once a day.
Hell, I leave my Blu-Ray player on just because of (Score:3, Insightful)
that. Damn thing takes over a minute from the time I push the power button before it will even open the door to load a movie.
I leave it on across weekends when I know we will view more movies or when it especially cold outside.
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you FUDding for an energy company or something? Several hundred million devices suddenly using 200 times less power has got to be worrying the publicly traded energy companies.
Not once everyone starts plugging in their electric cars it won't !
(Of course, that will bring along a whole new set of worries for "energy companies", but it certainly won't be due to losing business.)
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:3, Insightful)
At 15 cents per kWh, that's $26 per year. That's like having to buy a case of beer for your TV every six months.
Where I live, we need some level of home heating 6 months out of the year. Now you're down to $13 since every watt not provided by the TV has to come from my HVAC system, a watt here a watt there its all the same. Of course for 3 months out of the year, my roughly 10 C.O.P. air conditioning system has to use 1/10th of the dissipated energy to pump the heat back outside, raising it to $13.75 annual cost. Of course most people don't live in CA so the electricity costs at least 1/3 to 1/2 less than your cost.
There can be local "microclimate" benefits. When I had two giant power sucking dell servers in my basement, they raised the temperature of the basement enough that I didn't need to dehumidify the air... Also the sound of whirring servers is music to my ears compared to the rumble of dehumidifiers. My wife had no such refined musical taste and found the noise from both to be offensive, Oh well. Another "microclimate" benefit is well known to any cat owner whom has any horizontal electronic device that dissipates a couple watts... Growing up, one could always find the VCR or TV or shortwave radio, merely by looking under the cat.
Now the real question, is what will rot your brain more, watching TV for a year, or drinking $13.75 worth of beer? I'd suggest drinking the beer and selling the TV for more beer money. You can recycle the beer cans, and beer can replace a significant portion of your caloric intake reducing your food bills, at least for a few years. Also a good dark beer like Guinness provides valuable vitamins and minerals, the watery stuff isn't as healthy.
Re:Phantom power has it's use. (Score:2, Insightful)
Economists call this phenomenon "the tragedy of the commons," taken from the idea if that everyone acts in perfect individual self interest and grazes their sheep as they want on limited common land, then the land is rendered useless. Division of the land or agreements solve this particular issue.
Unfortunately, I can't fence my atmosphere off from your polluting ways, so I support reasonable regulation to protect our common resources.
BTW, the marginal cost to device makers for energy savings can be quite small, but it comes right out of their profit unless all device makers operate under the same rules. In the 1980s appliance manufacturers supported increased efficiency standards, as long as they didn't have to deal with a patchwork of state standards. In the end a tighter standard ends up being win-win. You pay $1 more for your TV and save that much in a month on electricity and the TV makers standardize on hardware that remembers the channel lineup. Oh, and we get less climate change.
Re:Oh, it's no more stupid than... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now...for evil right wing megacorps. Pretty simple again...The champions of doing business in areas where they can dump toxins or make use of nearly slave labor to lower business costs have been the Republican party. Now...go watch a few hours of TV and tell me how many of the products that you see were made in places like China in shitty conditions out of materials that were produced in India our South America by plants that can spew tremendous amounts of toxins in the air and water without anyone to stop them.
Not that the left wing is any better with their moronic carbon credit purchase program or shipping tons of food into starving countries under the guise of humanitarian aid. (Hint: Economics at play. Stupid farm subsidies cause overproduction of foodstuffs, these foodstuffs get dumped off for pennies on 3rd world nations as "aid" so that our economy doesn't suffer from the overproduction. In the mean time it undermines the local economy where the food goes because local farmers can never compete with cheap dumped food so the local warlord gets to control the land because the farmers are stuck living in squalor, everyone starts starving, and then increases the amount of excess foodstuff we can dump on them.)
So in a nutshell *winger isn't about people I disagree with. It is about the highly partisan politics and rhetoric rather than actually seeking REAL discussion and debate of existing problems. I will point out that an Eagle has two wings and the brain is in the center.