Measuring How Much "Standby Mode" Electricity For Game Consoles Will Cost You 198
An anonymous reader writes: Modern game consoles have a "standby" mode, which you can use if you want the console to instantly turn on while not drawing full power the whole time it's idle. But manufacturers are vague about how much power it takes to keep the consoles in this standby state. After a recent press release claiming $250 million worth of electricity was used to power Xbox Ones in standby mode in the past year, Ars Technica decided to run some tests to figure out exactly how much power is being drawn. Their conclusions: the PS4 draws about 10 Watts, $10-11 in extra electricity charges annually. The Xbox One draws 12.9W, costing users $13-$14 in extra electricity charges annually. The Wii U draws 13.3W, costing users $14-$15 in extra electricity charges annually. These aren't trivial amounts, but they're a lot less than simply leaving the console running and shutting off the TV when you aren't using it: "Leaving your PS4 sitting on the menu like this all year would waste over $142 in electricity costs."
What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:4, Insightful)
So about a dollar a month for standby. What would the author consider to be trivial?
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Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:4, Insightful)
That isn't trivial at all. 10-13 watts are ridiculous. It should be 0.5 watt or less. Take that one 13 watt appliance and then multiply it by a household of appliances. Suddenly, have a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb running on 24/7 in every household in America souds like it would be frugal in comparison.
I just found out my DVR STB is using 30 watts electricity whether on or not, just so I can turn on a show, and if it happens to be on a channel I like with a show I like, I can go back up to 15-30 minutes and not miss a thing. You know how often that happens? 0. And yet I'm paying in my area nearly $5 a month for this "feature".
Now multiply that by a household of people with a household of appliances, and it will add up to real money. I loved it when things had a hard switch. Now too much shit has a "soft" power shit, initially so it can sense a remote or do something at some time, but in the meantime too much shit has "convenience" few people use.
Here's a list of typical shit that's running constantly (obviously some is useful to have 24/7, but just to get an overview):
-Coffee Machines/many kitchen appliances
-Microwaves, Ovens, Induction Stoves (sorry, I have enough watches in my life, don't need another one to program and be on all the time)
-computers/cell phones/tablets/phones
-wireless landline phones
-stand top boxes / cable boxes for TVs
-video game consoles
-dvd/blu ray
-security camera
-anything with remote, including standing fans and what not
-alarm clock
-refrigerators
-water heaters
-water pump
-sump pump
-ac
-ac/heat controls
-anything with nonstandard on/off feature - motion activated, solar activated, etc
There are obviously a lot of essentials (fridge, etc), but a lot of the countertop appliances and electronics tend to be just energy vampires and if it matters to you, should be put on a outlet which can be turned off completely (without running to the fusebox). It's also wise to switch off all the nonessentials at outlet or fusebox at vacation time (also will help prevent the odd electrical fire).
And companies should be encouraged to cut down the rates via an energy star program and provide that info of offtime usage to the consumer so they can decide at purchase instead of being surprised at home.
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If you really want that stuff to turn off and stay off, don't plug it directly into the wall. Plug it into a power strip with a real on/off switch and turn it off there.
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Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds cool. Can you get one of those with a remote?
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You can get one with a foot switch so you don't have to bend down. I use a few of those.
I've seen devices that use less than 1W in standby and have remote power control, but only in Japan. Given a few years the technology will filter down to the west. In Japan energy saving is a big selling point. People feel like they want to contribute to the country's efforts to save energy, particularly after Fukushima and because energy is expensive.
Are you really that lazy that you need a remote control for power on/o
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But a standby to listen for a remote need not take more than a few 10s of milliwatts.
The reason they have a stupid standby draw is because it's cheaper to just use the 200W power supply and not put in the extra components for a standby power supply.
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What is this distinction you're making between being "on" or "running" on the one hand, and "working" on the other?
I suppose the microwave has a LED display that shows the time (or shows nothing if you didn't set the clock after the last power outage), but we can run wristwatch LEDs for a couple years on a tiny battery, so I don't think that's using much juice. Likewise the LED display on our oven. Maybe a land line phone would use a tiny bit of electricity for an LED too, but I long ago traded that in fo
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:2)
You are operating on the assumption that these LED displays and clocks operate fron battery. Yes, they NEED very little energy and work long from battery. However most of the time the manufacturer has saved a penny by ditching the battery, and runs the sleep mode operations, remote or clock directly from the power supply. the energy is wasted inside the power supply's AC-DC converter, not clock or screen itself.
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My old microwave oven uses enough power for its clock that if left on 24x7 would use more for the clock than for all the cooking I do.
Newer devices (especially those for sale in the EU) should be better behaved.
Rgds
Damon
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it's pretty fucking trivial if the standby means doing some background work, network downloads or whatever.
if it's just a standby led and remote control wakeup, then it would be pretty bad.
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So about a dollar a month for standby. What would the author consider to be trivial?
For a prototype, thats trivial.
For specialist equipment that sells a few thousand units, its a bit sloppy, but still tiny.
For consumer equipment with 70 million units sold, it is fucking obscene.
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:5, Interesting)
10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?
I have done a lot to cut my power use. And it's made a big difference. Went from about 10,000 KwH per year to 5,000 KwH. You don't get there by ignoring 10 watts. I did it by living with higher temps in the summer and lower in the winter (83F and 68F respectively). That was the biggest. Even after that, heating and cooling is still by far my biggest energy user, accounting for about 50% of my total usage. Have always had heavy drapes. But it's always frustrated me just how bad the cookie cutter house I have is for keeping temperatures comfortable without wasting megawatts of energy. The moronic builders put the outdoor part of the A/C on the west side of the house. Those guys who want to sell the expensive double pane windows could never justify the price. 30 year payback? Not doing that. I changed all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent, and now am moving to LED, and would like to employ skylights. Have had too many times when the electricity went out while I was in the shower, leaving me in total darkness though it was daylight, as the bathroom is an interior room. A skylight would fix that, and save energy. I got low energy computers, basically laptop designs that were packaged as a desktop. My best one uses 30W max, and that only when running an intense 3D game. If playing video on Youtube, it takes 20W, and if just reading and writing email, it takes 10W. Even so, I have them set to go to sleep after 10 minutes and use almost no power. The best old style desktops with the classic +12/+5/-5 volt power supplies take around 80W. The 80plus program helped with those kinds of power supplies, but it's better to run off a single voltage as laptops do. Another big help was the move from CRTs to flat screens. A CRT uses from 50W to 120W, depending greatly on how bright an image it's displaying and the resolution. Early flat screens use 30W no matter what's being displayed, and now with LED backlighting, that's down to 20W. In 1996, refrigerators took a big leap forward in efficiency. Unfortunately, we had a 1995 model. Finally ditched it, and got one that's twice as efficient. Another appliance that used an unexpected high amount of power while off was the Maytag gas drier of all things. 5W while "off" and doing nothing! Felt warm to the touch on top.
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Grow a victory garden, go to jail (Score:2)
Grow your own food. The food savings really adds up
Go directly to jail [go.com].
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Produce in your garden? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not surprising -- it just isn't worth it for most people. To do it well, you variously need land; upkeep time; knowledge (pests you don't need, creatures you do, plant nutrition, how to harvest without doing damage, control of wastage, fertilizer issues, varietal information, home-cooking skills, canning skills); seed sources; patience; storage, fencing to control animal forage, sometimes a permit...
Or you can just go to the supermarket, buy a bag of salad and a can of beans, come home and cook dinner. Or hit a restaurant.
It's pretty easy to see why most people choose to exchange the labor they do via the obvious proxy (money.). It really depends where you want to put your effort. The money you save -- whatever that is in a particular case -- has to be of at least the same value as your time, otherwise, you're working against yourself.
We have a tower garden here. It was a gift, so the initial cost (to us) was nothing. Even so, the costs for the nutrients and starters and the small amount of electricity the nutrient pump takes adds up to be non-trivial, and the amount of produce isn't fabulous overall, all things considered. The quality of what it produces is, though. Buying it... I wouldn't even think of it. It's expensive. It's also kind of pretty when it's all growing like a little vertical jungle, but that's pretty minor in the larger picture.
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:5, Insightful)
One idea I've found that works, provided this is possible (i.e. you own the property), and one has the electrical ability, is to have a dedicated circuit for the little devices that comes from an inverter [1] and a set of batteries that charge from a PV panel array.
This doesn't have to be expensive. A common setup winds up being two 6VDC golf cart batteries in series (12 volts total), 2-3 PV panels, a decent charge controller [2], and an inverter. This won't run your air conditioner unit, but it will be big enough to handle a number of low amperage devices, and one can build a decent setup for well under $1000.
In fact, I did a jerry rigged setup to light a shed on the far side of a friend's farm using a cast off extension cord (it had the proper gauge wires when stripped), a cast off 200 watt panel, a $8 PWM charge controller from eBay, an old deep cycle battery, and a DC-DC converter so I could use some 340 lumen SunJack LED bulbs (with built in switches) that run from a USB port. All of this cost well under $100. The SunJack LED bulbs would run 8-10 hours on a 1.2 amp (or 12,000 mAh as the packaging says), so a 200 amp-hour battery that only has 50-75 amp-hours left can run the bulbs for a very long time without solar.
Another added benefit of having all the devices on their own circuit is that they are essentially on a UPS, so if power fails, they will still keep running.
[1]: Don't skimp here... buy a reliable PSW (pure sine wave) inverter, and go for a 1500-2000 watt model even though running at full tilt will discharge the batteries quickly. This is so that if one plugs something in that has an inrush current (refrigerator compressor, microwave), the inverter can handle it.
[2]: You can go with a MPPT controller, which allows for higher voltage panels (as it converts the voltage higher than what the batteries use into a lower voltage with more amps), or have more panels to handle how a PWM controller "lops" off any voltage it doesn't need.
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:3)
Wasted energy is still wasted energy no matter how you produce or buy it. Getting the energy from solar is no excuse for sleeping devices to hog that much amps.
I prefer simple solutions so i connected all my consoles and receiver and media players to an extension chord that powers on via USB only when TV is on. 8â i spent on has probably already been saved. My receiver (sony, 2013) is quite warm to the touch and makes an audible buzz while sleeping. As I power it totally off as described, i have not bo
Wasted Energy? (Score:2)
That's ridiculous. If you are tapping a constant, otherwise non-utilized stream of energy -- sunlight certainly qualifies -- if you're collecting more energy than you're using, and not running out during low-generation periods (clouds), there are no serious utilization issues unless your system is put together poorly or outright wrong.
You want to p
Re: Wasted Energy? (Score:2)
It is MUCH easier to power them off than to build a solar+battery+inverter+separate cirquit to power them.
If you DO build a solar power system anyway, you are much better off connecting it to your mains and again NOT building a separate cirquit just for wall warts - this idea is totally ridiculous.
I am not bashing solar energy here - the post that i was answering to, suggested a solar powered sockets in my house for just wall warts. To which you can not plug a vacuum. So you need dual electricity cirquits a
Re: Wasted Energy? (Score:2)
And one more thing. It suggested using solar to charge batteries to power inverters to connect AC/DC wallwarts to. If you were to build a separate solar powered cirquit just for charging low power DC devices, it would be totally moronic to convert it from DC to AC only to convert it to DC again. Not to mention costly.
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:5, Interesting)
Either way, being able to physically flip the switch to cut off all those game consoles and those sound systems and those cell phone/laptop/whatever chargers, etc. etc. really helps.
I even installed a timer switch on my water heater (until I can get around to replacing the thing with a tankless instead). I found that the long-cycle heating up of the water when it's turned on via the timer, actually uses less power than "maintaining" the heat throughout the day. Though that certainly depends on your usage, of course. I'm a single person and generally only need it powered for a shower. The water remains hot enough even in the unpowered tank throughout the day for things like hand washing. I was surprised what a difference it made. Most of us Slashdot types probably already have programmable thermostats for HVAC, but you don't really think about your water heater sitting there sucking up power all day maintaining hot water you're not using.
I even have my damn dishwasher on a switch, conveniently right next to the garbage disposal switch. Only gets turned on when I need it. Sure, all this was a pretty fair amount of work at first, but once I'd done it, I literally cut my power bill in half. No joke, no exaggeration. Though again keep in mind I'm a single person and don't generally use a lot of power to begin with, admittedly, but still, slicing my usage in half just by putting crap I wasn't using on switched outlets made a tremendous difference to me. And I really don't think it's inconvenient to go over to the entertainment center and, say, flip the Playstation switch when I want to play that.
And as an added bonus, an unpowered device is one less possible source of circuit failure and fire hazard. That's just a nice little icing on the lower-power-bill cake.
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Hadn't thought of a timer switch for the water heater. Only thing I did was lower the temp to 115F. That seems to be as low as you can go and still have a hot shower. Run the shower at maximum hot. Safer too, can't get scalded.
I really want to go to a solar water heater. But $5000 and up, when a cheap tank is only $350, is too much money. Would take a century to pay that difference back. I want payback times to be no more than 10 years, and that's stretching it. I'll take 5 year paybacks every tim
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There is the most common, the electrically ignited, which you are familiar with.
Then, there are, if you hunt, standing pilot light models, which work much like the cheep end gas water heaters, with a constantly
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Note: skylights are poor thermally and let a lot of heat out. Also I had one in a previous house in the bathroom where the seal was so bad (thus clearly leaking air too) that I had the surreal experience of being hailed on in the bath.
Also, have skylights ways from south (if you're in the northern hemisphere) to avoid excessive glare and overheating.
BTW, I have triple glazing now! Overall heat consumption from natural gas was 3000kWh last year and electricity 1700kWh.
http://www.earth.org.uk/saving... [earth.org.uk]
Rgds
Da
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10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?
If it bothers you, then turn them off. You're not FORCED to leave them on. And accept that for those that it doesn't bother who don't turn them off have every bit as much of a right to leave theirs on as you do to turn yours off.
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Yes, refrigerators are more efficient now, but they don't last nearly as long as they used to.
Do you have any data to back that up? The myth that appliances, tools, or cars lasted longer in the past is mostly false nostalgia.
Most now only have a year warranty, in the past they had 5 year warranties.
That is not because they don't last. It is because manufacturers have figured out that they can make a lot of money selling "extended warranties" to dumb people.
Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:4, Interesting)
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My less-than-a-year-old water heater failed. It was "repaired under warranty." Know what that meant? It meant free parts, and about $300 in labor.
Man, were we pissed.
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Back in the 1950's, unless you were willing to take extraordinary care and do a lot of rebuilding, cars started failing at about 50,000 miles. Many brands are much better now.
The case with tools and appliances is much different. High quality, long life tools are still available, but due to inflation they seem very expensive. Much cheaper tools are available today, but they've been designed right to the edge of accep
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We can thank the Japanese, and to some extent the Europeans, for that. They kicked Detroit's ass back to the starting line. To their credit, I have to say, they got the message and cleaned up their act, and yep, modern American cars and trucks are nothing like what they used to be. Fit, finish, longevity, performance, handling, mileage, amenities, safety, it's all better.
But my refrigeration gear is shite.
Um. My moderns sure have not laster... (Score:3)
That's not been my experience. I've been through quite a few "modern" refrigerators in my life (I'm 58.) My most recent purchase, a standup freezer, only lasted about a month past the 1-year warranty, and the compressor went nipples north. Cost a fair bit to have that compressor replaced -- even though it's a sealed, lightweight POS. My frig is about three years old, and we're already thinking of replacing it, as
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I'm not sure who you're buying from if you're burning out a refrigerator in less than 5 years, but if you're buying any of the major brands, you shouldn't really be seeing functional issues five years. Are you running it off of an inverter?
I would worry. I do. Saves me money overall. (Score:2)
The gains from savings can help defray the cost of the transport.
Savings you can implement without inconvenience are always worth doing as long as they have a payback you can measure within a practical time frame.
No. Not ten. (Score:3)
$10 a month is $120 in a year, $1200 in ten years, $4800 over a working lifetime (40 years or so.) The question isn't what can you buy with $10. The question is, what could you buy with $4800? That, and how much will it cost to save that $4800, because that has to be taken right off the savings.
Math. Do you have it?
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yeah I really hate when people use the argument "well if it is so little give it to me then", it just doesn't make sense.. because if you are spending the money, you are clearly getting some sort of value.
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My parents installed geothermal as well. Since they were out in the country the only way to heat the home was oil and wood. Well with the combination of old air leaking home, and the rising price of oil it was costing them $800 every 3 weeks in oil. So they installed geothermal, and replaced a bunch of windows, doors, and reinsulated attic and basement, now they only go through 1.5 tanks worth of oil per winter, obviously eletric bill went up a bit but no where near the cost of oil. This was about 6 years a
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Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount? (Score:5, Informative)
Not if they're 'energy star rated' [energystar.gov] Then the limit is less than 1 watt.
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EU regulations require appliances in actual standby to use no more than 0.1W, which is less than a neon indicator bulb, and *is* good.
My cable TV box uses 15W and consequently I make sure that it is turned off completely, along with TV and DVD else it would be responsible for ~10W of our entire electricity bill.
http://www.earth.org.uk/saving... [earth.org.uk]
I have prototype voice detection circuit sitting on my bend that is using tens of microwatts to detect occupancy, so milliwatts should be plenty to do the instant-on
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I design products that need to run from batteries for at least 5 years. I can do a wake-on-IR that needs around 2.5uA and costs about 15p in parts (that's about 20 Euro cents). It's just a phototransistor, comparator and an RC circuit that makes sure it only reacts to fast edges from remote controls and not passing shadows etc.
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Indeed. We should be targetting microwatts or at most tens of milliwatts not tens of watts. We're talking lazy engineering and insufficiently discerning end-users here.
(I'd like to chat about your stuff off-line, BTW. as part of our public IoT Launchpad project, see sig!)
Rgds
Damon
What really is happening? (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? "Sleeping" should draw way less. It doesn't take a lot of power to keep a couple of sticks of SDRAM alive. Okay, probably also the NIC and a MCU to monitor the remote. I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.
Power supply costs (Score:2)
No question they could build something that uses a minuscule amount of standby power but consoles themselves are a loss leader. That wasted standby power is probably consumed by the power supply itself.
Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5 (Score:2)
Leaving the phone charger plugged in, for example, uses an average of .26 watts versus 2.24 when your link to the civilized world is charging... and, don't get me started on the cost of leaving a single DVR cable box plugged in year round. According top the 1st random study google provi
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Ok, 0.26 watts. Let's pretend you never have to charge your phone (or you got a new charger and forgot to unplug the new one). There are about 8766 hours/ year. (This takes into account that one out of four years is a leap year.) So that charger is using about 2200 watt hours/ year, or about 2k. The average price for electricity in the US is 12 cents/ kw-hour (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-price-of-electricity-in-your-state). So we're talking 25 cents per year to keep this ch
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It's still not a good reason to waste something that is trivially easy to avoid wasting.
So, 0.26W would be somewhat over 0.1% of my house's mean grid consumption (1700kWh gross ignoring my solar PV). I have a family of four.
I still make an effort to charge devices off grid because it helps me think about my energy use for the bigger items too.
tl;dr: an efficient charger not doing anything isn't a killer, but 900kWh/month is a travesty.
Rgds
Damon
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Plugging and unplugging a device 730 times for $0.25, really isn't worth it, the wear and tear could end up costing you more.
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0.25 watt is not going to heat anything much.
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That wasted standby power is probably consumed by the power supply itself.
No modern power supply is so inefficient that it would leak 10W when not loaded.
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First off, a power supply is less efficient at the low end than at the high end. A 200W power supply may be 80% or 90% efficient when running at its design load of 150W, but when you want 5W in standby mode, you can easily get into the 50% or lower efficiency range.
And 5W is
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A 200W power supply may be 80% or 90% efficient when running at its design load of 150W, but when you want 5W in standby mode, you can easily get into the 50% or lower efficiency range.
For a few bucks more, they can add a separate standby power circuit, optimized for low power and high efficiency.
And 5W is probably perfectly reasonable for keeping SDRAM alive and refreshed
My phone, with 12Wh battery can easily stay alive for 48 hours, so that's 0.25W. Admittedly, it has less RAM, but on the other hand it's still connected to wireless networks, and running various apps in the background.
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My MacBook Air draws http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...
Rgds
Damon
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Sorry, the input parser appears to have eaten the post.
My MBA uses much less than 2W with maxed-out RAM in sleep mode.
So 10W is tragic.
Rgds
Damon
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I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.
This much is plainly obvious. They don't even try to hide it. An update for the Wii-U added quick load to the console, but the same update also added adve... .I mean "special offers". I could walk past the Wii one day and see no signs of life. Walk past it the day after and the home key on the remote is flashing blue telling me that there's an adve.... notification from the console.
I would be very surprised if the PS4 and Xbone didn't also call the mothership.
Waste is heat! (Score:2, Funny)
What all these articles about appliance waste ignore is the fact that if you use electric heat, your Xbox waste heat is just as efficient as any other electric heater (ignoring heat pumps). If its cold outside, running your xbox 24/7 as long as the heat is in a necessary area isn't being wasted.
Re:Waste is heat! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, media pans a game console, ohhh, look at the power it consumes when you a playing with a pretend mega yacht but when it comes to the sheer insane waste of an actual mega yacht not just lost resources, a corrupted economy necessary to pay for it but the sheer volume of pollution generated in say one minute consuming the energy of a game in stand by mode for a year and this the quisling shit heads celebrate. Ever hear of main stream media picking on private jets, now how much energy do they waste not only during run time but during operation in year, what something like 10,000 game consoles and TVs to watch the output, again the whine about the energy use of us nobodies but when a somebody consumes at rates 10,000 times the average they through parties and celebrate. Want to see real waste, that is us, letting the 1% exist.
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It sounds as if you're proposing murder.
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The people who "generate the most wealth" are often responsible for massive amounts of unemployment. If we look at the Walton family empire (Walmart Stores Inc), we see a string of relatively labour-light retail outlets that push smaller companies out of business, resulting in a net loss of jobs. Amazon has taken this trend to ridiculous levels, exports profits to tax havens whenever and wherever possible, and then whenever criticised for sharp practices stands up and demands that we "celebrate" the billion
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's because it's assumed that you're just going to run the AC when it's hot out. Even doing simple things like positioning windows with respect to the prevailing winds to get a breeze going through the house isn't done either.
Re:Waste is heat! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's very inefficient to turn electricity into heat directly. If you wanted heating you'd be better off using a heat pump or other indirect means.
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A heat pump will heat the house the same amount but it will use only 1/3rd of the energy. Like a fridge/freezer in reverse.
How a heat pump works [google.co.uk]
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And electric resistance heating is usually *terrible* compared to any number of available alternatives.
It represents a *huge* waste of exergy, when a heat pump (as you allude to) can produce several units of heat for one unit of electricity.
So, in summer it's all bad and in winter it;'s at least 75% bad. And that's ignoring (eg) CO2 and other emissions from the generation mix.
Can we stop with this "waste is good" meme?
Rgds
Damon
waste? (Score:2, Funny)
Oh Nooooooo (Score:2)
Wait.
"ANNUALLY" YOU SAY?
What is this treachery!? Laws must be past. Children need to be protected. This electric menace will rape your wife* and spend your childrens** college fund on beer and pot.
It's game over guys. We need to populate Mars and the get the hell out of here.
Bring the consoles though. Barren wastelands can be pretty boring.
*Husband/wife/extraterrestrial lover
**Children and/or favourite pet
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Not a whole $12.
Wait.
"ANNUALLY" YOU SAY?
Per device.
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As an individual you may not care much, but at a wider scale can be a noticable impact on power usage.
If every household in the US (~120m) draws an extra 10w average power, total requirement is arround 1Gw or 1 extra mid/large size coal/nuclear plant (E.g. Three mile island).
If you start adding all the devices you have on standby (inclucing some of the nasy cable boxes that drew upto 50w standby) it starts adding up. This is esentially where the EU regulations for standby power came from in conjunction that
Use remote outlets if concerned (Score:2)
Standby mode can be convenient because (I think) all of the consoles will download updates/newly purchased games while in standby (maybe a slightly elevated level).
But, if you are truly concerned with power usage from consoles (and other devices) on standby, here's my advice: Get an outlet adapter that has a remote. These can be had for super cheap shortly after Christmas, as they're mainly used for switching external or Christmas tree lights on/off at will. I have one between the outlet and my entertainmen
Not calculated correctly (Score:2)
Their calculations are ludicrously incorrect.
All of that energy is dissipated as heat. Which means in the winter months when you are paying to heat your house the cost of sleep mode is the difference in price between heating your home with electricity which the console uses and heating your home by whatever other means you have, wood/gas/coal, whatever. In the summer months if you are running your air conditioner then the price is the sum of the console electricity and the added amount which running your a
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Instead of limiting to Game Consoles (Score:2)
You really should get a whole house monitor and get ready for an eye opener on how much power draw all those little " trivial " devices can have. Believe me, they do add up quickly. Also great for showing your significant other why you don't set the thermostat to 75+ in the Winter. My heater pulls 11Kw when running :|
The one I use is called TED ( The Energy Detective ). It's not the current generation model, but it gets the job done. The newer one is more accurate and has a few bells and whistles I don't
EU regs state standby power must use 0.5W (Score:2)
This was probably a US-based test - I'd like to see an EU-based test as well. EU regs insist that standby uses 0.5 watts, so all these consoles would be breaking EU law if they used the standby power in the article.
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Do the EU regulations specify gaming consoles? Or are they like the USA - TVs, DVD players, and VCRs are specified, but DVRs and consoles aren't (yet).
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1) I thought that the EU limit was now 0.1W.
2) I think that if the manufacturers don't call the mode 'standby' then they may be able to draw what power they like: cue unholy mix of engineers and marketing bods gaming the regs with euphemisms...
Rgds
Damon
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IIRC units are shipped in the EU with the 'instant-on' mode disabled by default, which would meet regs.
So it's superficially a software issue pandering to a chunk of their consumers being by default happy to waste lots of energy all the time (or never realising what's going on) rather than press a button. And we wonder why some places have an obesity and a power-consumption problem!
Rgds
Damon
Time for a standardized DC power outlet in homes! (Score:2)
Not sure if that should be +12V, +18V, or +48V, but it's time to have an integrate power management for all your home, avoiding power supplys on standby.
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The reason for electricity mains operating at a dangerously high voltage is that it reduces the current flowing through the wiring which therefore reduces voltage drops and wasted energy due to heat dissipation in the wiring.
IMHO the best way to maximise power efficiency is to use a decent quality switching power supply, either a wall wart or built in, which is correctly matched to the requirements of the equipment. I think manufacturers are getting better at this, for example my Virgin Media "Superhub" whi
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Not sure if that should be +12V, +18V, or +48V, but it's time to have an integrate power management for all your home, avoiding power supplys on standby.
Great idea for those who own or have stock in copper mines. Counterproductive and pointless otherwise.
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One thing that does help is virtualization and downsizing equipment. For example, moving from a desktop to a laptop, buying (or building) a decent server for virtualization, and even using low power devices for LAN services (I use an older Android phone to run a caching DNS service) can make a significant difference.
Especially with older hardware. Almost everyone has that old computer with sturdy hardware that works well. However, those older machines can eat a lot of power.
Then you must really like (Score:2)
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Buy three computers for three apps (Score:2)
JavaScript lets you run web applications on any platform that supports JavaScript. If developers are forced to make the applications native instead, they are likely to make the applications exclusive to a particular computing platform, which is not necessarily the platform that you happen to run. Does JavaScript use more energy than it costs to manufacture and run three different computers, each for an exclusive app?
Besides, a lot of these "managed" environments provide type safety guarantees. Preventing yo
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It's very annoying to buy a radio for $20 that uses $5 in electricity a year.
Wall clocks are an interesting example. One that runs on AC could be using $3 a year, but a battery powered wall clock can run 2 years on a single AA cell.
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Who would leave their console on and just turn the TV off?
Quite a lot of people. And they even think they're switching off.