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Efficient Power Supply Contest
A reader writes: "In the June (paper) issue of Scientific American, there is a mini-article descibing the energy being wasted by power supplies in computers. Those things are only 60-70% efficient in converting line-voltage AC to low-voltage DC, and there are so many millions of them out there that a modest efficiency increase could trim $1billion or more from the annual energy costs of the USA. Well, various governmental agencies are seeking to get improved power-supply efficiency into the marketplace. The central "clearinghouse" site is at efficientpowersupplies.org, and details of their contest are in this PDF."
Great idea! There are so many things that we keep doing in a wasteful and inelegant way just because it's "good enough" (or at least was in the past -- when things get wider distribution, problems are magnified).
Power supplies are a good example, as are cars (so much wasted energy -- hybrids are better in that regard, though, like in converting braking energy into electrical energy that can be re-used later to help the engine when it's at its most inefficient RPM levels).
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Also one should take into consideration someone using a 500W is only getting 350 at 70% effecient. If you had a PS that was 90%, you would only need a 400W.
Now that you have a smaller PS, you might could drop a fan or two. This now decreases your power load on your new 400W.
Savings on effeciency == savings everywhere
How much extra spent on power supplies? High efficiency, high-current (500W+, where PC supplies are headed) are not cheap to produce.
It would be far better if government worked to reduce the amount of petroleum being consumed through initiatives to encourage telecommuting, locating companies in locations that don't require commuting in the first place, and research into fuel cells and hybrid vehicles.
..don't panic
Because, as we know, IIS can't possibly power a big site. Particularly not one as big as microsoft.com (#4 according to Alexa) or msn.com (#2 according to Alexa).
In short, there is almost NO reason to not use those fluorescent bulbs and it would result in a far greater amount of energy savings right now...
You wouldn't want to provide most of these voltages remotely, because of the current draw. At higher current values, the resistance of the wire becomes more of a factor, and you'd either need very short runs (kind of defeats the purpose of a distributed run), or you'd need high current wires, which have a large diameter (wire guage). Think of running jumper cable type wires from room to room and you'd get an idea of what would be required.
You could provide a single higher voltage that gets regulated down as needed at the equipment, but you'd still have to deal with the current levels, just not as high.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
I really wish there were a standard 5V/12V DC interface for home/office use. If you want 60 Hz 120V AC (or 50Hz 220V AC for much of the world) you plug in your device into a standard power connector (ignorning the us, uk, and european connector divergance). Anyway, if you are like me, you probably have about 20 little wall warts (smallish DC power transformers) plugged in under your desk. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were an ANSI/ISO standard 5V/12V DC power bus that all these devices could plug into? Imagine the joy of not having 20 wall warts plugged into 4 power strips under your desk!
-Erik -- --This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--
I'm a professional engineer, and have done several designs of switchers that were better than 95% efficient. But they cost more to make, so dream on, it's not going to happen in the mainstream with out some sort of mandate. The tricks are simple, better inductors (cost more for bigger copper and more ferrite), synchronous rectification (fet and drive costs more than a diode), taking care to be clever about quiescent currents (more engineering time) and so forth.
Doug Coulter, owner
C-Lab
http://clab.mystarband.net
You're way off. In 1994, the U.S. alone produced over 1.3 billions tons of carbon (not CO2, just carbon; the CO2 weighs even more than that).
while about 500 million tons were produced by natural causes.
Natural causes do not "produce" CO2. They merely recycle carbon. The CO2 emissions of living organisms have no net effect on the global carbon balance, because all they are doing is moving it around, from the atmosphere into the biosphere and back again.
It is true that methane emissions from cows are an issue. This is because methane is many, many times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat. But the net amount of carbon still remains the same.
All the 'inefficiency' in your computer gets emitted as heat, noise, RF or light.
Ultimately, most of the non-heat forms of energy loss get turned into heat in the surroundings when they get absorbed by something, like a wall.
So if you are trying to maintain your house at a higher temperature than it is outside, then all the lost energy from your computer goes to do useful work heating your surroundings. Hence a 100% power efficient computer.
Now if we could efficiently generate electricity, we might have an efficient total system. I don't see that happening soon.
Evil people are out to get you.
The official model of the US, put in place by the Founding Fathers, is "E Pluribus Unum" or "Out of many, one". The founders did not share the philosophical view of Ayn Rand, and creating a state was exactly what they were committed to.
Besides, energy efficiency is a national security interest. Over-dependence on oil imports means the US is more likely to engage in foreign wars.
It is a popular Slashdot cliché that small, weakly administered sites use desktop PIII systems with IIS, with the Windows 2000 Server install disc titled in felt pen, on the corporate DSL line and in the same room as the Coke machine and copier.
To no small degree that cliché is based upon a grain of truth. I've seen those sites. It is also true that such sites are not the exclusively Microsoft. But the parent of your post knows his audience and isn't ashamed to go for the easy performance.
This is a boring sig
The space savings are significant in the computer labs especially. Students now have room to put their books out in front of them, between themselves and the screen. (we had crowded labs before, the desks are narrow and close together.).
The power savings are good. Before, students would forget to turn off the monitors when class was done. It still happens, but when those LCD's go into powersave mode, they use almost nothing.
The rooms stay sooo much cooler. Our AC was always running in the computer labs before, with 30 17" CRT's going (and PC's). but the LCD's produce so little heat that the room stays nice and cool, and the AC is off more than it is on. (lots of energy savings there).
My back is very thankfull, and every time i have to move a CRT monitor across campus, I am reminded about how thankfull my back is.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It's worth mentioning also that most are rated 400W max. Much like CD-ROMs (40x max), speakers (150W Max vs 30W RMS), etc it is a measurement of peak and not nominal output.
That being said, even currently all PSU's are not created equal. A decent 400W will power most computers very nicely, with closer to the rated output. A cheap PSU will die, or cause anomalies, or just not do the job as well.
While it's not always true that heavier=better... if your PSU is quite light then chances are it's a cheapy, and you aren't going to often get near the "max" rated output.
I wonder though, if the better PSU's are also more efficient in this manner as per the draw from household current?
"i want an efficient AC to DC UPS which connects directly to a DC powersupply for my box(en).
that would rock."
It exists. The only useful feature of a laptop computer (apart from being able to play Myth2 on the train) is that it's got a built-in UPS with hours of battery backup.
Ignore the crappy small screen that's too low to see, ignore the crappy keyboard that's too small to type, and ignore the crappy touchpad that makes you think it would be easier to control the cursor by blowing on a straw. Just plug in your big monitor, your proper keyboard, and your optical mouse, close the lid, and it becomes a proper computer again, which will carry on working even after your power company's totally capable 60-year-old equipment takes a short nap and redirects your power to Oklahoma.
And if you've got enough laptops in the area, the wireless mesh network might even survive cuts in the telephone system. If only we could create a mesh network without getting spam sent 'from' our connection...
Out of many (states), one (nation). Basically this statement refers to the representative government (republic) that was established, not a pure democracy.
It has nothing to do with the role of the citizen, let alone imply any obligation of citizens to a collective.
Though we do agree that energy efficiency is indeed a national security issue.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Three cheers for liberals and a centralized federal government, then! Without them, the city streets wouldn't have lamps--let alone the power to run 'em--and we'd all be walking down long, dark...
Um...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Nobody except liberals consider 'the annual energy costs of the USA'. People do (and should) consider THEIR annual energy costs. [...] The USA is not the Borg, and no country should be.
Bravo.
Pointing out the "central planning" aspect of the press release highlights its futility.
If the central planners had been thinking more clearly, they'd have been lobbying for power-supply efficiency labeling, ala the energy-usage labels on major appliances such as furnaces, water heaters, refrigerators, and the like.
(Disclosure to the individual purchasers of the information necessary to make informed choices, in a standardized format, puts the market forces to work constructively for all concerned. It's an intervention that even minarchists can often find it in their hearts and ideologies to forgive. B-) And a case where even an inadequate standard can be better than none.)
But of course the liberals don't think that way...
Mod me down, and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
Having already commented elsewhere in this thread, and reviewed your recent postings on other topics (which often bring up insights others have missed), I've decided to mod you "friend" for a while. B-) (Let's debate Godwin's Law some time. IMHO it's all too convenient for neo-NAZIs.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There are a lot of problems with this kind of idea.
One big problem is that you can't just put Gigabit Ethernet wires in the same cable as 120VAC because of the noise it will induce. Another is that you can't route 5V lines around a house because the resistive losses will eliminate any efficiency you gain from having a single 5V supply, and also because the 5V at the supply will only be 4.9V in one room, 4.6V in another room, etc. This obviously won't do for electronic equipment which requires tight regulation.
An internal house network would be great too; in fact, many people do have these in their houses today. However, for most such set-ups, there aren't that many ports: maybe 1 or 2 per room, certainly not one for every outlet. Having that many would require a lot of switches and a lot of wire; ethernet isn't like 120V power where you can bus all the outlets in one room together. Each wire gets a separate connection to the switch/hub. Even if the switch isn't expensive, the labor for the wiring is.
And now for the monitor: video requires far too much bandwidth to simply connect through a home ethernet network. There has to be (given current technology) a direct connection between the computer and monitor for good performance.
And of course, the biggest problem of all is "legacy": rewiring all the houses in the country for a new standard would be insanely expensive, and simply isn't going to happen. Neither is everyone going to bulldoze their houses and build new ones simply because some cool new technologies have come along. Equipment makers are going to make their goods to support 99.9% of the customers out there, which are people who still have regular 3-prong 120VAC outlets, cat5 ethernet (which may be wired in the walls or just strung across the floor), etc. No one's going to jump on the bandwagon for a revolutionary new electrical connector standard when existing standards work just fine (even though it means two or three connections to the wall instead of one).
SilentPCReview is the best online sites for silent pc's. One of the prime mantra(s) of the site is that electrical consumption causes heat, which needs to be moved/dissapated, which results in more noise from fans etc...And that eliminating excess electrical consumption has very positive downstream effects on making a PC more silent. Enough said, this is a very intelligent, accurate and well maintaned site...considered the gold standard for silent pc's.