Slashdot Mirror
Standby Electronics a Waste?
gnunick writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that UK citizens waste quite a bit of electricity each year by leaving electronic gadgets on standby or charging. Critics are arguing that standby mode on electronics are completely unnecessary and should be removed for a number of reasons. From the article: "To put it another way, the entire population of Glasgow could fly to New York and back again and the resulting emissions would still be less than that from devices left in sleep mode."
...how they can come up with numbers like this. For every study like this that shows one result, you can find a mirror study that shows the opposite. Frankly, I don't know a single person that keeps any devices in standby.
When moving from the Americas to Europe I've quickly noticed how TV are different:
In Europe you have to physically push a button to turn them on in stand by mode. Unfortunally I haven't seen many devices (like radios) that work the same way.
But I guess TV was something that almost everyone has and everyone left on stand-by so it was a good choice for a device with mandatory off switch.
Lets hope this practices spread around elsewhere and in other devices. It's a small price to pay (moving you ass to turn it on) for big savings.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
If the UK is wasting that much on standby, I wonder about how much energy we use with standby here in the USA?
It would have to be a lot I would think. Something to think about- what really needs standby and what doesn't?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
For us that live in coldish countries, and I'd place Scotland in this group, as long as you have regulated heating, heat from PSUs is just as good as any other heat.
I'm not saying we shouldn't conserve energy, but these kinds of calculations are often off by orders of magnitude.
but... slow as you are, you still finished second!
616000 people is alot to fly. Think about it. That's 290 people per plane on 767's, or about 210 planes.
The study was about the UK. Reported by the BBC.
You can extrapolate whatever you want from the data. It's not saying that the UK is the only place this happens, but they didn't study the US, why should they report it?
I remember my first exposure to "standby". An HP laserjet 4L I bought in 1995 -- it didn't have an off button. That bothered me so much I bought one of those undermonitor powerbars with switches on the front so I could turn the darn thing off. Since then, more and more things have come out that can't be shut off and I've sort of accepted "standby" now
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The problem is that standby is very convenient. I don't want to have to walk upto my TV to turn it on. I want to sit down and press the power button on the remote. For me to be able to do this the TV has to be using a bit of power (how much I am not sure of).
Some devices, like my DVD player and amplifier, have no way turning them fully off. The power button on the unit simply takes them out of standby or puts them back into standby. It is not a hard power switch like devices of old. Even PCs these days (with ATX power supplies) can be considered to be on standby since there will be a little bit of power consumed.
Really, the only way you are going to stop this problem is by switching off everything at the wall. The power point for my hifi setup is behind a shelf and there is no way to easily reach it so that option is out. The only other thing that comes to mind is for manufacturers putting the older style power switches on equiptment, but I can't see that happening in a hurry.
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It's amazing the extent to which we either forget about or just don't care about turning stuff off these days. Ever passed through the business district of your town/city late at night well after working hours? Noticed all those office buildings with all their lights blazing out? How about that computer in your office? Can you put your hand on your heart and say you always turn it off before you leave work at the end of the day? Not only would it help the environment and reduce waste of finite resources, but it would probably save businesses a fair bit off their power bills too.
Believe me, there are more and more gadgets around that are a waste of energy when running as well. ;)
Money is not the only cost, you know; and that's what the article is about. Not that I'm suggesting to read it. I really don't.
Maybe not just oil companies, but they certainly contribute a lot. What i'm talking about is the western public's passive nature toward the coming energy crisis. Oil is running out fast, and everyone knows it. Natural gas is disappearing even faster. But for some reason, people have this "everything's gonna be fine" attitude to the whole situation. Oil companies inflate their expected barrels/year figures to keep stocks high, the government doesn't bother telling people to conserve energy on a large scale... Bad things are going to happen if the west doesn't wake up to this problem.
sudo killall humans
all consumer electronics in certain classes (tv, microwave, kettle etc) sold after a certain date must use less then x power when on and y power when off?
that would help the enviroment no end.
but how workable is it? (and would the industry lobbyists shoot it down?)
It's not working ! Look :
290 * 767 = 222 430
I always wonder whether it's smarter to turn my iMac(last PPC with 2GHz) rather completely off over night (~10 hours) or leave it in sleep mode. Considering the start up time and starting all the usual apps plus loading the documents I've been using the day before. I tend to think this is a waste of time and probably consumes as much energy as leaving it on sleep mode. Any suggestions on whether I'm right or wrong?
Maybe smarter electronics would help.
While stuff that needs longer "boots" (like PCs) can take advantages from "stand by" (or sleep) mode, everyday appliances like TVs, VCRs and so on could easily be smarter as far as power consumption is concerned.
Maybe the same could be for power supply units and AC-to-DC units. Once the device is charged a controlled circuit breaker could interrupt any further consumption.
But then how much pollution would be created by all those new things whose lifespan is within a couple of years?
Or maybe smarter people would be a much better solution!
Turn your appliances completely off if you know you won't need them for a while. Unplug your cell phone charger once you used it.
And don't leave anything turned on only because you think you'll save some milliseconds of your time!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
A: It's not a lot. It's exactly as much as the "minimum amounts of heat" you feel them giving off.
What kind of planes are you speaking of British planes?
In America, we do things right. It'd take, what, two or three SUV Planes (most preferably Hummers, F350s or something else GM or Ford) to ship that many people.
Jeez, Europeans these days always downsizing everything from planes to mini coopers to bathing suits.
My page.
Some electronic devices consume more than 10 W even in standby. Add that up for every device in your home, and you might even end up close to 100 $/year.
This is not a hair-shirt world.
It will be when the oil runs out.
Either way, you New Yorkers reading this wouldn't want the Entire population of Glasgow in your city ;o)
Transformers are equally culpable of silently sipping power.
I've read that 10% of a households energy use is from transformers.
That they use power is obvious if you look at the electrical diagram -- the things have a loop through which current travels. There is some waste power that gets lost.
Do we all go around the house unplugging our transformers, to stop from using power? I doubt it.
I figure that my electronic devices, with their "waste heat" are actually heating my place. I don't see that as a bad thing -- I want the heat.
If, on the other hand, I had to run AC to cool down the building, then I'd be peeved at them sucking up power.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
It's not that easy: Energiy is very cheap and I don't expect it to rise a lot in the near future.
The thing is that the costs of consequences of long term pollution and greenhouse gases are not included in the energy price - and they will never be. How could they anyway? The "cost" of the damage done to the environment can simply not be calculated.
So the only option is to try to save energy wherever it's possible. This is done by supporting a better isolation on newly built houses, on funding "green" technology etc.
One aspect among others is this standby issue.
It would be trivial to have a (rechargeable) backup battery in the device that powers the, well, powerswitch. You could even use a normally-closed relay, so that when the battery powers down, the device powers up, stealthily enters sleep mode just to recharge the battery, and the shuts down; though that would cost more energy and doesn't make much sense (why have a sleep mode at all on devices that are switched off for months at end?). Mobile phones don't power down by being unplugged and they do fine springing to life at the touch of a button.
The main reason sleep mode sucks though is that by its increasing ubiquitousness, it's pushing away good old circuit breakers to where you can't find them. Plenty of PC cases only have the soft-off button connected to the BIOS, and the only way to break the circuit is to remove the powerplug from the socket (which incidentally is just great for repair and maintenance, since now you've also removed the ground circuit). Many TVs have thoroughly hidden actual-off switches. And sometimes, when you switch something OFF you just want it to switch OFF. *sigh*
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
I want devices that can be controlled at a distance and that don't require me always around to control the damn thing.
Ah yes, I can see how that would be useful for televisions. Ahem.
Talk about the eco-nuts missing the point, its not about making this a harsher world. I suspect the eco-nuts believe that the world is going to get really very harsh quite quickly if people aren't willing to take remedial steps such as... oh I don't know - standing up to turn on the TV.
its.... about people being smarter.
Yes, yes it is.
Somehow I just don't see anything being done about this. While the net effect sounds large, it's still insignificant when compared to the energy cost of some of the other conveniences we enjoy. Any one can use meaningless comparisons like that to prove a quick point. No one seems to be doing anything about all that methane gas that milk and meat cows are producing, and I guarantee that there are enough emmisions there to get us all to New York and back.
It's true, though, that a TV-like device that uses 2/3 of the power on standby that it uses when fully on NEEDS FIXING!!!
I'd like to see that number quoted on the specs, which the government could enforce.
stay frosty and alert
..again?
Couldn't we all just switch of half of our devices that are in standby and fly the population of Glasgow to New York one way.
Or maybe the Huns could switch off their stuff and fly the Tims out, or the other way round... or better still fly each other out one way and then we could let Rangers and Celtic into the Premier League but wouldn't get their bigoted obnoxious supporters.
No but, yeah but, no but...
Where's a link, or even made up data, to show the average hourly power consumption of a TV on standby?
And comparing new TVs (many LCD/plasma/RPDLP) power usage to "old" tvs?
All the TV does while it's on standby is keep the IR sensor and a small clock active. It could likely run off a 9v battery for weeks at a time if it had to.
The real worry (and it isn't that big, to be honest) is non-switched ac adapters plugged into ineffecient chargers. If you feel your mobile phone charger, and it's hot, you're burning a lot of electricity and it's not doing anything.
An electronic device that is left on is using electricity, but that energy is converted into heat. If the device wasn't left on, then more energy would be needed from the heating system, so you're not using any more kilowatt hours (assuming your house is heated by electricity.
I live off-grid, charging a battery bank via solar and wind power, and as a result I've learned not to waste any electricity at all...I simply cannot afford to.
;)
My friends are aghast at "the way I live", wondering how I survive without microwaving everything, or without an electric dishwaser and clothes-dryer. To them I may as well be eating raw meat in a cave someplace.
At least I have enough amps to run my 533 MHz VIA mini-ITX system and read Slashdot...
Anyone wondered if the light of the fridge gets off when you close it?
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Err... the article didn't say that.
The data was gathered in the UK and therefore the conclusions were specifically pertinent to the UK, although applicable to the US.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Try posting something original...
There are actually a few good reasons to have the stand by mode on electronics. Without standby you wouldn't be able to use you remote to turn the device on or off. Granted, it does consume some power to light up the led and keep the infra-red working to receive the on\off message from remote, but that can't use that much power. Not 100 watts that a good tv or hifi needs to run. Some menufactorers claim that their devices use 2-3 watts on standby. True, it's not as good as zero but it's better then 100 watts or more if the device was to be left on. and lets face it, who wants to walk up to the tv to press a button when you have a remote.
Moving a little off topic now. Consider the 100 (as much as half a kilowatt fot a plasma tv) or so watts and then consider the "quality" on the tv, better off not owning a tv...
Another reason to have standby is to reduce the damage done to hardware by sonstantly turning it off and on all the time. There a big spike each time an electronic device is turned on, electronics need a little time to stabilize each time they are turned on. Components fail after continuos exporute to that spike.
Excuse me? are the entire UK the only people wasting electricity this way?? what about THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE US?
Are you retarded? WHAT ABOUT THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE WORLD??
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What cost isn't incorporated into the price of electricity, and why not?
The shareholder is always right.
You seriously think the entire population of the world has access to electricity ? Wake up please.
It's really a job for the manufacturers of TV's to come up with a decent power saving system. People are going to be as lazy as you let them be.
Also there's an issue which no-one seems to have noticed - perhaps not with all TV's, but at least on the two that I own.
If I turn them off on the set, they lose the settings. I have to reset the time & any preferences etc.
I do agree that wasting all that power is plain crazy, so why can't the manufacturers just have an on/off on the remote & off means a *tiny* amount of power is flowing just to keep the IR active. All prefs should be saved onto solid state memory that does not require power - regardless of how cheap the TV is, surely all manufacturers can manage that without a cost implication.
I guess Standby is a leftover from old TV's that took time to warm up - that's pretty much gone now & I imagine non existant with flat screen TV's
Seems bizarre really, 2006 & we havent thought of a way to turn a TV off
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
There is very little feedback for people to determine energy use. How many people do you think actually realize how much of their energy bill goes to something like this (or, for that matter, realize how much money they're wasting on old, inefficient fridges, washing machines and other household gear)? Every month (or every three months, depending) you just get a bill with total, with no breakdown at all on what you spent it on.
I'd say a study like this is plenty useful if it can alert people to just how much they really are wasting.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Maybe we should outlaw everything with a battery to, due to the losses in charging and discharging. By the way, a DC standard wiring would certainly be nice and encourage use of reasonably efficient DC-DC-conversion if they need another voltage. That would save a lot in standby (as AC-DC conversion tends to get quite inefficient when the drain is far lower than the normal drain the system is designed for), but also in use, with the simple assumption that the main transformer in the circuit would be high-quality.
Read what he wrote . Just read it . ... just plain stupid .
How dumb you gotta be . Not about right or wrong , but you know
> Focus on acceptable solutions and the big problems, please.
Big problem: a lot of energy (enough to transport a lot of people over an ocean) is beeing wasted for no reason.
Acceptable solution: turn the damn TV off.
Is it better this way?
Most power loss in standby is in the power supply. So charge a battery pack during normal operation and use it to deliver standby power.
If the battery drains over weeks of standby then you would just have to press a machanical switch to start the device.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
You think we're downsizing planes?
Just wait 'till Chirac turns up in his nice new presidential A380. "Hey is that Airforce One? What a cute little plain that 747 was".
A380 - When a SUV gets too cramped.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Ah, I was worried that the USA might not be at fault for once. Thankfully, you set me straight. The USA is always wrong, and is always at the bottom of any problem that the world faces. Down with Bu$shitler!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Assuming you can actually do that. Often enough, manufacturers are too cheap to put in a switch that completely separates the internal circuitry from the power outlet. The result is that the thing even draws power when it is "off" (not standby, but off). The only solution is an external switch.
The 'eco-nuts' are concerned about more than just annoying you. The fact is that many people just don't think about how much energy they might be wasting. They will never read about the issues, if they read at all. For them the only answer might be to pressure the manufacturers to make their devices more efficient. As the article says this can be difficult for one country to do when the manufacturers are on the other side of the world and that country only makes up a small percentage of their market.
Convenience has a cost. If I want to have cordless telephones I need wall warts (but they could be more efficient), if I want my kids to be able to watch DVDs I have to leave some devices turned on at the wall, if I want be able to record anything on my PVR I have to leave it in standby. If we're away for several days I will go around and turn off few sockets, and I will turn the heating down.
Electricity and gas prices are rising fast and are likely to become a large percentage of our expenses.
Ok, but i'd rather put research fundings to inventing better less-energy-waisting stand-by technology instead of only whining about energy waist.
enc.conf
They're listed to the right of the article. In other words, move your eyeballs approx. 1 cm (or 1/2 inch) to the right of the article and part way down the page where it says stuff like EU standby initiative. Not hard, eh?
This kind of study is just retarded but so are stand-by modes. In PC equipment standby mode is more annoying than useful and is just a hack fix for making PCs use less energy all the time and boot quickly.
On my laptop for instance it annoys me quite a bit that there is no way to disable it's need to go into standby mode when you shut it. Very annoying as I often have to move around when using it and need it to keep processing while it's closed. I find it hard to believe that this is saving any significant amount of electricity over just turning off the screen when the laptop closes. Besides that I've worked with thousands of computers over the years and many of them have off and on issues with sleep mode causing the system to hang or worse.
If they want to attack something useful that is seriously wasting major amounts of electricity why not complain that devices such as televisions and vcr's tend to lose their setting when power is cut - meaning that these devices must be on all the time. It doesn't save much power to turn something like a dvd player off if it's still plugged in because it has to use electricity to retain it's settings and because most electrical devices continue using electricty regardless to any use so long as they are plugged in. Easily fixed for a couple dollars per device but nobody is bitching about this so it's gone ignored for years. Sure a hell of an annoyance in general as even a brief power outage requires reprogramming every damn device you own that doesn't have it's own battery. Fix the problem and make manufacturers hard disconnect the power from their devices when the switch is thrown.
Maybe it'd get rid of the damn constellation of blinking little lights that seem to fill every inch of my house at night when I'm trying to sleep.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
you are forgetting, SUVs waste more resources then 100 commercial airplanes!
... what would happen if all those Glaswegians actually did fly to New York. I have a feeling it would be much worse than some wasted kilowatt hours.
Some perspective please. Turning your TV on or off with a physical switch is hardly the biggest hardship in the world. A TV which physically turns itself off after (for example) a few hours on standby is not a hardship. It might even reduce power brown outs, smog, respiratory diseases, global warming and of course your electricity bill.
I have a CRT television set (with a standby button), a VHS recorder (with a standby button), a DVD player (with a standby button), and a digital satellite set-top box (with a standby button). Only one has a real mechanical, circuit-breaking, power switch easily available (the TV).
In order to even turn all the devices into standby, I need to fumble for four different remote controls, else they all end up heating the living room when nobody is in there. Typically, the TV is the only thing that gets put into standby.
Given that the VHS has auto-set up and can recover from a power outage (save for timer recording, which many people don't use), I guess it might make some sense to hook them up to one of those master-slave power bars, whereby you set it up so that when the TV stops drawing full current, the other sockets are switched OFF.
The digital satellite set-top box has a few issues with losing power (it loses EPG reminders, and defaults to some silly promotional channel, which I guess is mostly due to design by BSkyB).
Here's another thought. Duplicate circuitry. All of those devices have DC transformers. The digital satellite set-top box has MPEG2 decoders, as does the DVD player, yet they are never used at the same time, but the circuitry is probably receiving their full power budget at all times. Likewise, the TV set and DVD player both have audio amplifiers, yet I've never used the speaker outputs on the DVD player.
If I had one well-designed appliance that had the screen, a DVD transport, a VHS transport (yes, they are still used), and an integral digital satellite decoder, it could use far less power overall. The problem there is obsolecence. In order to get that, I need to either sell, give away, or recycle the existing equipment, which uses energy. It also means that if I decide that High Definition television is going to be good, I'd have to discard the lot of it and replace it, but with something with a HD-DVD, or blue ray mechanism? turns into diminishing returns.
If all such equipment responded to a standard "enter standby" remote control code, then I bet more equipment would be going into standby rather than remaining on full-power. If they could all go into a mode where they use less than a watt in standby, all the better.
Clap on...Clap Off....Clap on, Clap Off, THE CLAPPER!!!
Someone save me from this sanity.
Welcome to the real world.
One of the most recent eco-suggestions in the UK parliament is to raise the tax on oldfashioned light bulbs until they even in price with the low power and fluorescent lighting.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
It's really so that the advertisers can still advertise to you when you're asleep. You think that the TV is switched off, but really it's waiting for you to drift off into REM sleep, when they will play their subliminal adverts to you.
From the article: "To put it another way, the entire population of Glasgow could fly to New York and back again and the resulting emissions would still be less than that from devices left in sleep mode."
It's not the entire population of Glasgow flying to New York that worries me. It's the prospect of them coming back again.
Wasting electricity is an expensive pastime, no doubt. But worrying about standby mode is a gnat-bite compared to our hopeless dependence on the motor car and in the UK's case our increasing dependence on importing energy from rather unstable parts of the world. This sounds rather like a typical UK New Labour gambit: encouraging people to feel good citizens while dodging the all the tough questions.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
No, it needs to be replaced. A modern TV set uses about 1 watt (or even less) in standby mode, where as it uses maybe 100 watt when turned on. That's for a CRT, LCD uses much less power when on.
I have one of those power measuring devices, and after checking every device on standby in the living room, the conclusion was that the money saved (very little) by turning them off would simply not be worth walking over to the wall to hit the button.
Thats why its best to use a USB phone charger at work :)
Even at home its more efficient. I my self use a usb battery charger, sure its not charge in 2hrs , but
im happy to spend 6-10hrs charging and have an on hand 10 batteries charged up at least to 90%
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Some perspective please.
Perspective, yes; this isn't the biggest deal at all. But it's not just that, it's indicative of an entire eco-obesession that frequently misses the big picture.
Example: I drive a car with a small engine and a catalytic convertor. It therefore is (relatively) environmentally friendly, no?
Except my previous car had a larger engine yet consistently achieved better fuel efficiency. I suspect the larger engine wasn't being thrashed just to get to 30mph is much of the issue - an engine being driven hard is never as efficient as one idling.
Example 2: I don't have double glazing. Oh dear.
Well, I don't have cavity wall insulation either. 30% of heat is lost through the wall, 10% through the window. Priorities, eh?
Example 3: I buy the majority of my food through the local supermarket rather than the local farmers' market.
You seen the prices at my local farmers' market? It's a special treat, I simply don't have the money to buy everything I eat there.
I often leave my PowerBook on standby and I've never had issues with the system hanging. Actually, my PB doesn't use too much battery power either in standby, I've left it off the the charger in standby for 3 weeks whilst I was on holidays and when I got back it still had a couple of hours battery power left.
Costs to the environment and health due to emissions. But you know that and are just trolling.
Well it would probably sort out late night crime in Central park .. having a bunch of pissed Weegies there would scare off any mugger.
It would probably replace the mugging with drunken disorderly though .
Not saying that Glasgow is all rough neighbourhoods , but being a Psycho is part of the Rent agreement in some areas
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Also, what do these critics say that my disabled wife should do to turn on the TV when she can't physically reach the switch? Maybe she should just sit there till someone can do it for here.
>>pissed Weegies
From Edinburgh are we? Hibs or Hearts scum??
Shall we make it simple so you can understand?
Population of the world > population of the world with electricity > population of the USA.
Ergo, to talk as though only the US population is somehow the "problem" is ludicrous. The USA is still only a minority of world electricity usage.
You've never even been in Europe.
Had you ever been there, you would've known TV's operate no differently in Europe than they do in the U.S.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I still find it weird that there never are studies that refer to electricity that is actually, almost on purpose, truly wasted.
The oil heater I have in my bedroom sucks up 2000 watts with both resistances on. I'd bet that's a little more than what my computer alone uses during the whole night, let alone our TV on standby. The thing is, we do actually make sure all doors are closed in the bedroom when the heater is on, so as not to waste electricity (especially since it's not exactly cheap in Portugal).
Compared to the multitude of devices we have, such as a 1100 watt microwave oven, the oil heater is the most wasteful.
However, I'm pretty sure certain neighbours would leave an equivalent heater on with the windows open, wasting energy in the fullest sense of the phrase.
"Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
This blog entry suggests fixing an even bigger waste of electricity: replacing radiators and heating elements with computers that produce heat as a by-product.
Nobody seems to have mentioned yet that power switches have moving parts, and moving parts are always the first thing to break. (Yes I am aware that 'standby' usually involves a relay which contains a moving part, but relays don't involve the 'human factor')
My parents routinely turn things off instead of using standby and get through a TV rougly every 4 years. Cause of failure? The power switch! Kettle? Hoover? Stereo? All die within a few years because of a dead power switch! In contrast I moved out of the house some 10 or so years ago and have yet to have anything die. Go figure.
Sure, not using standby may save a few watts per year but what about the extra waste generated by dead electronics
Anyone with any sense with a career in environmental protection tries to make people take one less flight per year (all the cars in uk produce 1 tenth the emissions all the airflights in the UK produce! They persuade people that if they recycle anything, to recycle their aluminium because the carbon savings from, eg glass, are neglible if not negative, but the savings from aluminium are immense. They persuade people to buy electricity from companies that at least pretend to care about emissions. They persuade people to buy food that doesn't have to be flown from New Zealand to get to their plates.
They do not have a go at people about leaving devices on standby.
Standby is there to make life a little easier, and almost all devices make standby easy, and full-power-off harder. Standby wastes relatively, bugger-all electricity. So put things in perspective and don't make people feel guilty about trivial shit, because they will assume that saving the environment is all as tedious and unpleasant, and choose to not do anything at all.
You live in some kind of crazy place then. All the lights in shops get switched off here except for those still open (one or two supermarkets are 24 hour now), and window displays of the shops that can afford to spend money on electricity for advertising (some shops close up their window displays after hours too).
Mind you, I'm in Ireland, where we have plenty of other problems (something like the most waste packaging per head of population in Europe - we're currently trying to decide whether to burn it - i.e. incinerators, find more places to bury it or pay to ship it abroad).
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Before anyone considers prohibiting standby mode, consider this: you're watching TV in your bed, about to fall asleep, and NOW you need to get out of bed to turn it off rather than press a standby button on a remote or turn on the clock timer... which will put it on standby. Consider the same when you wake up and just want to check out the news... and you HAVE to get out of bed to turn it on. What should really bug us is: why do we have to spend all those watts to light up a LED and have an infrared receiver ready? Why aren't manufacturers forced to have dual power circuits, one for full-operation and a different one for standby mode? Or even use an internal battery for standby?
A catalytic converter doesn't make your car more fuel efficient. It reduces harmful emissions such as carbon monoxide. Therefore it is environmentally friendly, especially to people, animals who have to breath the air and plants who don't have to deal with "acid rain". Catalytic converters undoubtedly save tens of thousands of lives. It doesn't reduce all emissions though and pumps out CO2 which while more "benign" than some emissions is still a greenhouse gas.
Besides which, it is your own damned fault if your new vehicle is less fuel efficient than your old one. You should have read the specs. As a general rule, smaller engine size does equate to better fuel economy but there is obviously going to be overlap.
Example 2: I don't have double glazing. Oh dear. Well, I don't have cavity wall insulation either. 30% of heat is lost through the wall, 10% through the window. Priorities, eh?
I fail to see your point here. Are you implying that we shouldn't strive to save energy in one way simply because there are ways that energy can be wasted? If we were to follow that logic, nothing would ever be done.
Example 3: I buy the majority of my food through the local supermarket rather than the local farmers' market. You seen the prices at my local farmers' market? It's a special treat, I simply don't have the money to buy everything I eat there.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. I'll guess that you're inferring the supply chain is longer in a supermarket, and therefore it's less eco-friendly. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps your farmer's market is ripping you off. Perhaps you should be buying local produce from your supermarket where the choice is available and talking to the manager when it isn't.
All of which is irrelevant to whether TVs should burn power in standby for 8 hours a day as they undoubtedly do in most households.
We leave our TV on, and just turn it on and off at the wall, with our X10 remote. Still get to sit on the sofa to turn the TV on. Still have the TV totally off. And the PIC (or whatever) that controls it must be running on milliwatts.
Ireland has got poorly constructed houses. Well, actually, the houses are built solid, out of concrete. And at the houses I moved into were modern, and the landlords very proud of the high-tech insulated windows. BUT (listen to this...)
Because of gas regulations all the rooms in the house has got a round 20 cm *hole* to the outside at the ceiling level, and it is illegal to block them. Ireland is a wet country to say the least. The weather together with the concrete and holes make these houses extremely damp and cold (and since keeping the entire house warm cost a fortune you can not have the heating on 24/7).
And the damp cause fungus to build up on the walls. Remember, all concrete, nothing else.
All foreigners I met in Ireland block these holes of course. We rather die of gas than of cold.
Try putting your pc into Hibernate mode (if you use windows). You can completly switch off your pc, plus your startup time is very fast
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Even worse than standby mode are electronics that consume electricity when turned completely off. If you have a television that is off, but it still plugged in, it uses electricity! How else would the remote control turn it on if it did not? This is true for very many devices. The only way to stop them is to unplug them. It really sucks.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Standby energy consumption is just extra heating for your house, reducing your expenses on heating your house using other means. It is only a real problem in areas, where the outdoor temperature is high.
(a) Makes you more likely to be noticed by passers-by.
(b) Makes you seem safe, friendly, and inviting.
(c) Informs people that you are open for business (tomorrow morning, anyway.)
Turning your lights off would, conversely:
(a) Make your less likely to be noticed.
(b) Make you seem dangerous and perhaps best avoided, like a dark alley.
(c) Admit doubt as to whether you are really in business.
Electricity is cheap, anyway, so what the hell.
My elderly friends had a "remote control" physical pulley system years before TV manufacturers came out with their infrared battery munchers.
Engine size is not generally an indicator of efficiency, g CO2/mile is. Most people who care look that number up before buying a car. 1.9L VW TDIs, for example, are more efficient than the 1.2L petrol version while being significantly more powerful.
Old news from the Brits...this was in New Scientist on 28 September 2002:
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
The US could switch off seven electricity power stations if home appliances such as TVs and videos didn't run on standby, says Cornell University energy expert Mark Pierce. "Off doesn't mean off any more," he laments....
I am not sure if this is really standby, but here it goes. I have rechargeable double A batteries I keep in the charger running all the time because as soon as they are free from being charged, they go dead quickly. The charger feels warm.
"The problem is that standby is very convenient. I don't want to have to walk upto my TV to turn it on."
Why not? How long would that take , 10 seconds? Or perhaps you live in some
manor house with a 100 foot long TV room. Or maybe you're just a fat doughball
who can barely wheeze his way out of bed. At any rate , you're just lazy and
more than a bit pathetic IMO.
MAybe someone wrote it already, but I haven't yet found it. There's quite an easy solution, unfortunately I'm missing a word as I'm not a native speaker. I'm talking about those multisocket things that have a plug on one end of the wire and multiple sockets on the other end of the wire (sorry, can anyone tell me the right word ?). They are available with switches too, at least where I live (germany that is). That switch will turn all sockets on and off at the same time.
For example my PC, monitor, speaker system and some more PC-periphals are hooked to one of these things. So I can switch them off all at once without having to use some master-slave socket or other complicated stuff. Just one switch and all devices are - really - off. The same should be possible for TV, VCR, DVD-Players and so on. Often the VCR is the problem as it looses it's time setting when powered off too long.
no it's not. I forget the exact number but at any given moment in time some 100,000 people are in the air above the USA.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The only solution is an external switch.
Like the one typically on the wall?
Or, if you're using a multiboard and you really want your PVR on, use a double adapter with individual powerswitches and get a second multiboard, and have all "turn-off" devices on one, and all "standby" devices on the other.
Just because the manufacturer was too cheap doesn't mean it's expensive or hard to do yourself...
What I'd love to make a comeback - and what is part of the problem here - is a simple "off" switch that actually means off.
The problem isn't that electronics are not smart enough. The problem is that electronics manufacturers aren't. As customer, I would like to have one very simple thing: A button that when I use it actually means "off" as in "absolutely no more electric power going into this device".
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Just a timely experience for this article: Last week I bought a DVB-T receiver. I noticed it is still very hot when put on standby, so I measured it, with the funny result of having the same identical consumption in power on state as in standby: 16W. That's price for total digitalisation: the CPU must be on to process a command or timer.
Solution? I sacrificed factory guarantee and I am currently in process of device modification. However, I mourn the electronics consumer droids without knowledge of circuitry and without soldering skills, not to mention I will never buy any AverMedia product in the future.
There you are, staring at me again.
...would the inhabitants of NYC _want_ the entire population to fly over?
You're off by an order of magnitude. It's closer to 2100 747's.
People like you need to be told , because it seems you're too dumb to work it
out yourselves. I suppose you think all that electricity you use comes from
an electricty tree maintained by magical electricity pixies, using no
resources at all and causing no problems.
Moron.
They're not talking about the valid exceptions to the rule you moron. God
help you're wife ifs shes stuck in a wheelchair and has to listen to your
thick witted ramblings all day.
"Sleep mode" is said to make up something like 10% of power bills.
Or you can do what I do and switch things off.
My PC, Monitor, powered USB hubs, speakers etc etc etc all run off a power board with an extension switch on the inner side of my desk. When I have shut down the computer I turn off the swutch leaving only the DSL router and answering maching powered up.
TV and DVD player the same...they get turned off at the power point when not in use.
An added bonus of all this may come into play when there is a lightning induced power spike.
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
or instead of being patronising and treating her like a victim you can use your brains and understand (as most people here would) that there are times when people need such things as stand-by and remotes...sigh...
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
I've recently brougt my 1st house, and in true geek style I've moved in and filled one corner of the lounge with cables and power leads. I've been thinking that maybe I should go a geek option and wire up for an X10 controlled solution. I could split the devices into always on (eg my mini, router, etc), and ones that just need to be on when I need to be entertained (eg TV, amp). Or is there a better geek way to controll this?
...because methane from cows wastes $millions. How can livestock methane emissions be reduced?"
Reduce, reuse, cycle
Perhaps, some of us do live in a Crazy world. However, orginal poster is right. In North America many stores, and mall keep their lights on 24 hours - non stop.
:P I guss some of us do live in a crazy world.
For example, I am in Toronto, Canada. Many malls don't shut down their lights, and music is turned on as well - this is when there is no one in the store! Infact there are huge LCD like monitors displaying ads in Downtown Toronto - even in nights.
In Ireland situation is bit different, you guys buy energy from UK - and they are also running out of energy - North Sea oil & Natural Gas peaked in 1991. We Canadian sell energy - Canada has more oil then Saudi Arabia! Bad news is that - it's dried oil - like coal
Ps: Sorry about my bad English.
Everyone else murdered last week.
Standby electrics seems to be unnecessary, but actually plays a very important role. Standby energy, interval between something, excess, all are a lubricant of our daily severe life.
Ancient Greek Philosophers -18c Enlightenment Thinkers -Slashdotters
Practically every power block I have has those neon lights built in, either one for the block or one in the switch for each socket. AFAIK they're rated about 1W a piece, so that's 4W per block, every hour of the year.
..
Now consider that these lights tend to be in the mains switch of every major appliance (washing machine, dish washer, oven) and you're coming to a seriously large waste of power again
Maybe another one to tackle
Insert
Yeh, because English club supporters are know the world over for their charm and good manners. Not.
Hey come on, we haven't had a shooting for nearly a week!
I brought this Energy Meter to see how much my computers were using (about 240 Watts per hour). So I hooked it up to my sterio system, 1 7.1 surround amp, 68cm TV, 5 Disk CD player DVD/VCR Cable Box, Saterlite Box and Sub Amp, in stand-by the whole thing pulls less than 34 Watts and when all is running less than 100 Watts. You would save more greenhouse gasses if you were to stop farting. If you really wanted to save greenhouse gasses, go Solar, or just get your gas and electricity cut off... PS. and stop farting :)
Access Point Live Mapping Access Points with Google
To be honest, the population of Glasgow wouldn't get further than the duty free shop at the airport.
I think non-functional fireplaces and electric fires are a different issue - it's down to humans and psychological triggers, including personal ideas of good taste. Humans are well known for doing things which aren't purely rational. Otherwise there wouldn't be a home decorating market, just one colour paint, one type of carpet, one small choice of automobiles, etc.
People want their homes to reflect their personality or what they consider good taste, and probably there is also some deep seated psychological stuff there as well about non-rational choices that never the less satisfy us on some deep animal level....
After all Christmas trees aren't "authentic", they are a socially constructed cultural icon that started in the UK (for example) by the import of such trees from Norway in the late nineteenth century.
And of course computer stand-by is a totally different beast - I do want instant-on as opposed to 2 mins all-things-boot.
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
None. Motion activated sensors would know if someone is in there who shouldn't be. I expect that local government could slash energy consumption by enforcing some kind of "out of hours" energy tax aimed at lights, computers etc. being left on over night. Companies would certainly enforce a turn off policy if it was hitting them in the wallet.
I agree. When investigating my large eletricity usage it came to my attetion that the freezer was running overtime. The freezer was old and its CFCs had leaked to the atmosphere which kept the compressor running 24/7.
I think issues like this are far more relevant than "Should I keep my DVD player on standby?".
Going solar wouldn't help you much in Glasgow, apart from the dozen days or so per year that the sun is out. :-)
"When I grow up, I want to be a weirdo"
...so there's probably enough wasted ink and paper to supply airport novels to all the passengers on these extra flights out of New York.
We're seeing skewed and misinterpreted results from statistics every day.
In this example, noone cared to compare the "on" time for devices with standby mode and those without.
In other words, if you device has no standby mode, you're more likely to just leave it on for the sheer convenience of it, and this wastes a lot more electricity in the end.
Of course summing up the electricity of zillions of households will earn huge numbers for even the most modest device needs, but it's silly to attack a power saving feature as a feature that wastes electricity.
Your 100% efficiency isn't acounting for the delivery costs of said gas, but it's still better than electric, I'm sure.
Nearly 5 years ago George Bush brought up this very issue. http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa062901 a.htm
"Vampire electrical devices in "stand-by" mode constantly draw small amounts of power while plugged in even though their main switch is turned off. They can also consume as much as four percent of all the electricity used in an average home. "If we multiplied the vampire devices' energy consumption across the country, we're talking about 52 billion kilowatt hours of power a year, or the equivalent of 26 average-size power plants," said President Bush."
The USA is always wrong, and is always at the bottom of any problem that the world faces.
Amen brother.
I did some calculations once, and I found out that even buying one of those boxes that you can plug your powered devices in and has an on/off switch, costs more than you will ever save in electricity using such a thing. And don't forget the energy it takes to make one of those!
-- Cheers!
You plug your PC into the main socket, and then plug your printer, scanner, monitor etc into the other sockets. When you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets.
It is called environmental impact.
.conf files) any Linux distro (I have used Mandriva 2006 ppack or Fedora Core 4) to enable hibernation mode, I do not know how difficult is it to have just a "Hibernate" button like MS Windows, so for me it means each time I finish working I turn off my computer (in fact, I just press the power button, while MSWindows goes to hibernation mode, any Linux distro will kill all the daemons and halt/power off).
I do not know where are you from, but my best guess is that you are from USA where there is a little consience in the environmental effects caused when producing energy (like CO2 emissions).
If you read the article you may note this table:
Estimated annual CO2 emissions from devices left on standby:
Stereos - 1,600,000 tonnes
Videos - 960,000 tonnes
TVs - 480,000 tonnes
Consoles - 390,000 tonnes
DVD players - 100,000 tonnes
Set-top boxes - 60,000 tonnes
(Source: Energy Saving Trust)
So, as you see, what is wrong is leaving your stereo or other electronic devices on "standby" just because you like to see the clock.
As for why it is not, mainly because some governments do not care. I am not really sure about UK, although I guess[hope] that the outrageous high taxes asked are used in some way to fight against pollution. And from the article it seems politicians are concerned (at least because that will give them votes). But of course, in the USA your[again, sorry if you parent are not from USA] government does not care too much about environment so I doubt your energy bills (electricity, oil or whatever else) includes taxes used to sustain your environment.
And, from my perspective PCs have also a great impact. I remebmer reading about a study about people leaving their monitors on all the time; that is also a real waste of energy, or to leave your PC "suspended" instead of hibernating.
I have read a lot of times in Slashdot that people say "Linux PC's do not need to be turned off", but I disagree, because there is no way I will leave my computer turned on 24/7. That is why I need a fast "turn on" button for those devices. This may sound like a bit off topic rant but, I have never been able to configure properly (of course I do not care reading howtos and modifying
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
A smart power strip can help you - should work with a PC, but I don't see why it could not switch off the DVD/VCR, etc with a television: http://uk.gizmodo.com/2006/01/12/this_just_in_powe r_strip_smart.html
Perhaps the power stations weren't buying enough oil - if this had been cars it would be a different story.
There must be so much fuel wasted by idling cars, sitting in traffic, waiting outside etc. Then there's wasted energy from grinding a clutch. The electronics industry has made so many incredible space and power reducing advancements over the years, the automobile industry has done very little except for some engine management systems and improved manufacturing, mileage hasn't changed that much, or if it has, people are just buying bigger cars to make up for it.
Can someone calculate the energy loss of sitting in traffic for an hour vs leaving your phone charger plugged in for a day?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
And those dozen or so days are the only ones where switching off devices would make any difference. The rest of the time the power from the devices on standby would help to warm your house, thus reducing the amount of energy your central heating needs to supply. So switching them off makes zero difference overall when your heating is switched on.
It seems to me that what should be done is to make the devices "stand by" more efficiently. A CRT television on standby isn't just keeping the circuits alive to react to the remote, it's powering part of the tube so that it will produce a picture faster when it's turned on. I wonder how much power would be saved if standby mode was to turn off the set completely and just keep the remote sensor active.
In the more general case, research should be conducted to find ways to make these devices more efficient so that when they are in standby mode they do essentially nothing. Hopefully such research would make for products that are more efficient when they are working too, which can only be a good thing. Such research might also prove useful for mobile devices running from batteries.
Actually "Chirac Airlines" use small-size / mid-size aircrafts: Falcon 50, Falcon 900 and Airbus A319. No Airbus A340, for example. Of these, the Falcon 900 are most commonly used. They're small, fast and practical - and they're 100% French-made.
In 2003, Chirac flew 245 hours in Airbus aircrafts, and 428 hours in Falcon aircrafts (source).
There would probably be a PR backlash if the President started to fly only in big, luxurious, expensive aircrafts a la Air Force One. Remember, this is France, not the USA: you're not supposed to show off your money, especially when it comes from the taxpayers' pocket. Announcing "big cuts" in spending on official transport is a popular gimmick among French politicians.
Thomas-
argument for taxing out-of-hours electricity usage
The article is right. Lots of small things do often add up to one big thing. But the real issue is lots of big things add up to one HUGE thing. The energy I waste in standby mode on my TV is really bought into to context when you look at how much energy people waste driving cars.
Here is a quick comparison. I'm insured on my Smart Car (0.6l petrol), and my girlfriends Rover 600 (2l petrol). If I use my car to get to work, my fuel bill is £50 a month. If I drive my girlfriends car its £90 a month. Can you imagine the national energy savings involved if everyone commuted in a small car? I can't see how they wouldn't eclipse the savings of turning lights and computers off. And thats nothing. When I cycle to work I not only save the fuel and maintenece on my car, I also save money at the gym!
But the most annoying thing about this is that there are some people who will read this article, take it too seriously and start switching my computer off when I get up to go and make a cup of tea, whilst tumble drying every item of clothes they own and driving toddlers around in SUVs. I'm not saying that I shouldn't take switching off the TV more seriously, but electronics on stand-by really isn't the problem. Would this really be an issue if the electricity was being generated using tidal, solar, geothermal or wind energies?
The real energy killer in modern homes is climate control. People insist on living at 27 degrees in Winter and 10 degress in Summer. In the UK, the energy peek is in the winter, not the summer (we don't really use air-conditioning), so the real saving can be made not by turning your TV off at the wall, but by investing in personal insulation: a jumper.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Quite right. ALL of your electronics usage is a drop in the bucket compared to what gets wasted due to poor construction practices: 2x6 vs 2x4, poor quality windows, tank on the water heater, not using the best R value insulation available & not using the best exterior materials possible.
On occasion, "home owners associations" will even go as far as to just plain ban the most efficient construction method available (brick being banned in some Vegas communities).
Heating and cooling are the big hits, especially cooling.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
your dvd on standby might not use much leccy but if you have a few million devices left on standby then the useage would be quite considrable - read the bbc article!
You seriously think the entire population of the world has access to electricity ? Wake up please
It is true some of the population simply does without electricity. Other parts of the population only get limited quanities of power when the sun is shining. (Solar cells for cell phone charging)
The truth shall set you free!
electrical equipment in sleep mode used roughly 7TWh of energy and emitted around 800,000 tonnes of carbon
He has calculated that the CO2 emissions from electrical equipment being left on standby are equivalent to 1.4 million long-haul flights.
Per second? Day? Month? Year? The units are never fully specified, except once in the title of the graph.
It's just lazy to write articles like this. The figures are all there for "shock value", but they are meaningless.
Additionally, there is no mention of the fact that energy "wasted" by a standby device is just heat, and thus offsets the energy that you would otherwise "waste" in your gas boiler or electric heater.
BBC News, go to the bottom of the class.
You're an immobile computer, remember?
Beating up people in little rooms, if you do it for a good reason you do it for a bad one.
That comment isn't an analogy, it's a warning. Once we sort out our energy efficiency, the US better do the same, or we'll send the neds over to do some damage. "Hooo, paaaal, turn aaf yer telly or I'm goana glass yer faaaace".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
What about the computers people leave turned on to download files overnight? I am guilty of this too but at least I turn off the monitor and leave just the PC on. Maybe an option is to use a laptop to do the downloading as these are not as power hungry as desktops.
I hate it when I walk by banks and see the screens turned on. Jesus, it's only a setting and the screen will turn itself on if you move the mouse. How hard is it to set to standby after 20 minutes of inactivity?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Some perspective please. Turning your TV on or off with a physical switch is hardly the biggest hardship in the world. A TV which physically turns itself off after (for example) a few hours on standby is not a hardship. It might even reduce power brown outs, smog, respiratory diseases, global warming and of course your electricity bill.
Some items draw secondayr power that many people ignore. A simple timer is the solution. I have installed fan timers in my bathrooms. Now when one of the family leaves the room smelly and the fan running, they done't have to remember to come back to turn the fan off in 10 minutes. The fan uses just a few hundred watts. The heated or cooled air it dumps out, when left on, is much more.
Do you have timers on your bathroom fans?
The truth shall set you free!
metal ain't affordable unless its mass produced
I expect that local government could slash energy consumption by enforcing some kind of "out of hours" energy tax aimed at lights, computers etc. being left on over night.
How do you enforce that? If you try to enforce by metered usage then what about ligitimate uses of overnight power such as water heating - which is often done at night when power is cheaper? What about companies that work 24/7, even if it's just the servers that are being used (so that some of those computers that are on are actually in use by someone, somewhere on the planet)? Where I work, we have both machines and people working around the clock - should we be penalized for that?
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
OK. This article first says that by 2020 there will be 76 million television sets which is more than the population of the UK. Later it says that there will be 80 set top boxes by 2010. I really should have something sarcastic to say here but instead I'll just stop while I am ahead.
Not people with some sense. There are idiots in every field.
Does the term fuckwit apply to you? By saying that devices shouldn't have standby mode then it does actually mean that people like my wife shouldn't be able to use them. Or do you get two choices of equipment, one without standby or one with that you have to show some form of disability id to get? I post one reply and the only two comments I get are from arseholes.
..... when vacuum-tube valves were all there were, "Standby" was a power mode on a well-built stage amplifier. This provided power only to the heater filaments; the HT was disconnected. The idea was simply to allow the amps to warm up without any danger to the speakers {or an unlucky roadie replacing a defective valve}.
Modern appliances with a remote control need to draw just enough power to run the sensor and decoding circuitry -- otherwise they would invariably have to be switched on at the wall socket. And since nobody has enough wall sockets, everyone uses multi-way extension leads; but extension leads rarely have individual switches like wall sockets.
Also, even modern appliances without remote controls tend to have the on-off switch in the secondary circuit of the power transformer. This seems to be something to do with a general reluctance of manufacturers to touch mains. In an ideal world, this would not matter; but in this real world, copper is not a perfect conductor and steel loses its magnetism. So a transformer is not 100% efficient {although it's about the closest anyone's ever built}. By the Principle of Equivalence, we can represent all the losses as a simple resistor in parallel with the primary winding.
Switched-mode power supplies are becoming more common {laptops, and even most telephones except Nokia, use them for their rechargers}. The basic principle of a switched mode supply is that you rectify the incoming mains to DC; then use a high-power oscillator to turn it back into AC but at a much higher frequency, typically in the 25-50kHz range {you could go even higher but LW radio starts around 150kHz and you have to be careful to avoid interference} which can then be passed through a physically smaller transformer, as the current spends less time flowing in any one direction so the core can be smaller {every iron atom is like a miniature compass needle which tries to align itself with an externally-applied magnetic field, which in the case of a transformer is imposed by the current applied to the primary and opposed by the current drawn from the secondary; when all the "needles" are aligned in the same direction, the core is said to be saturated and the winding is now behaving as a resistor which is not what you want. At 50Hz the current flows for 10ms in one direction, then 10ms in the other; at 25kHz it flows for only 20us in each direction}. In an SMPS it is mainly the leakage current of the input smoothing capacitor which determines the wastefulness.
If Standby mode is not going away {and it isn't} then the best we can hope for is to ensure through regulation that new appliances are wasting as little power as possible in Standby. And while we're making legislation for new appliances, this would be an ideal time to consider a few other factors; such as minimum standards for product lifetime {I still feel inclined to say "forever" would be an acceptable minimum}, field maintainability, manufacturer responsibility for end-of-life recycling, and whether working standards in the country of manufacture would be acceptable in the destination country.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Whenever I have done any interior work that involves exposing the frame I have insulated that bit, but it's very patchy.
Here in the states, we have "blown-in" insulation. They simply drill a small hole (maybe 3/4" or so) in your wall, and blow little flecks of insulation into it. Actally, I think they drill two holes, one low and one high, and when they see the insulation pasing the top hole they know the cavity has been filled. Because there are studs every 16" or so, they have to do this many times across the wall, but that's not that big a deal.
They also sometimes use expanding foam insulation instead of flecks/pellets, but the approach is the same.
At any rate, this is a fairly easy way to insulate old homes without tearing apart all the walls...might work for you.
(and, btw, as much as the US [seems to be] better than Australia as far as longer use of good insulation codes, I'm still amazed at how incredibly well German homes are built. Ours are all wood and siding, the German homes are all like brick and concrete. Crazy, considering we've got a whole lot more tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes than Europe has...)
Did you actually read and understand what I said?
My understanding is that most of the ineficiencies are caused by the need to comply with safty legislation and the costs of certification.
Most devices only require a few miliamps or mircroamps in standby to run a clock, maybe a LED and a remotecontrol reciever. Most of these devices need a few amps to run motors, backlights, fans whatever in on mode.
The manufacturer doesn't have the budget to get a power supply built to meet all the legislative requirements about earthing, coupling to mains (capacitive or resitive), RF interference, safety in failure mode etc. They also have to deal with changing supply voltages and plugs types for different markets.
It is MUCH cheaper to get an approved plug pack (wall wart) or an equivalent internal module that meets this peak power demand for the target market and not worry about it.
Historicaly these requirements have been met with transformer based powersupplies that have then been run at nothing like their expected output impedence and so very ineficient drawing quite a lot of their expected peak current even when not driving a load.
Today it looks like switch mode power supplies are taking over. Many of these chipsets have standby features that can detect load and power up when require only consuming very small currents otherwise. For example my newish nokia charger feels cold so it can't be disipating more than a Watt or two.
There appears to be a few dual power supplies on the market now. The example here is a new ATX power supply that I think uses a linear regulator to power a few mW for standby (very ineficient but only for very small currents) and leaving the big 400W power supply to only run when it is required. i.e. the 400W doesn't need to be able to run in a mW mode so can be more efficient and it only gets run near its peak efficiency. Newer cases don't have the warm spot near the power supply while they have been in standby where as my old one was quite warm.
Whats wrong with downsized bikini's?
Hmmm?
I for one welcome our Downsized bikini wearing overlordets
Help! help!, the termites are eating my DRAM!!!
Besides, these days some electric companies are raising prices "because of conservation". They claim they're not selling enough electricity anymore. So now you're damned if you do, damned if you don't: waste electricity and pay the tax, save electricity and pay higher rates so the company can keep their revenue stream going.
maybe because people have been saying this for fuckknows how long, just because slashdot, digg or bush says something, doesnt mean its new by any interpretation of the word. bush is a sheep. dont give that monkey any credit. ever.
seriously.
Urgh. East Coast US cities usually have a murder ~ every other day, with lots of non-fatal shootings tossed into the mix.
Glasgow sounds like a laid back place to me.
Furthermore, I'd wager that getting everyone to switch from incandescent globes to compact flourescent would be cheaper and make a dramatically larger savings in power consumption, substantially faster to boot.
In this house we replaced ten 80W incandescent globes with 12W compact flourescents. (We've had toroidal flourescents in some rooms for as long as I can remember.) Half of those lights are in the main living area and as such are on for quite a few hours each day. I would say that saves more than what it costs to run this mac mini 24/7. (Which also consumes substantially less power than the obnoxiously noisy PC I used to run 24/7) Hell, it probably pays for that and running the ducted evaporative cooling! (God knows we needed that the last few days... four days of >40c !)
I rather like this graph from the article. Notice how power consumption goes up and down for most of the graph, but skyrockets in the last two bars. Wow! Why are TVs suddenly getting so much more power-hungry?
Wait. The last two bars are for 2010 and 2020. Last I checked it is currently 2006.
So, basically, they're predicting that in the future, the trends in TV power consumption will have absolutely nothing to do with the past, but will instead simply go way the hell up. And they're confident that this trend will carry through to 2020.
Yeah... um... bullshit.
Also, we have another case of a totally meaningless comparison:
To put it another way, the entire population of Glasgow could fly to New York and back again and the resulting emissions would still be less than that from devices left in sleep mode.
Over what period of time!? You're comparing a one-time quantity (emissions from a bunch of plane flights) to a quantity-over-time (emissions from sleeping devices). It makes no sense. How does crap like this even get printed? Doesn't the reporter realize that the sentence is totally meaningless? Or is the average person really so easily impressed by things that sound big?
I'll tell you what: My car is so fast. So incredibly fast. The entire population of New York could walk to LA and back and they still wouldn't be as fast as my car. Isn't that fast!?
Wouldn't they be more efficient than a huge bank of VCRs on standby?
The power is used to pump heat from the outside to the inside + the waste heat, rather than just waste heat.
Probably the government. No other reason why the BBC would show it.
My monitor (an Iiyama 17" CRT) seems to have two modes of standby, the first seems to be where the tube is kept warm for a fast start, and after a few minutes in that mode it goes into a deeper sleep and turns the tube right off. Although my machine (run as a server) is on 24/7 I've almost always manually turned my monitor off.
Aside: If I turned on every single light in my (admittedly fairly small) house, I'd be using no more than 120W.
-- Soruk
Do you want your government telling you when you can turn on and off lights? Screw that. The freedom to be ignorant is as important as the freedom to conserve here. The idea is to convience the people to conserve not force them to.
-Xen
"Standby Electronics a Waste?"
Shouldn't that be an exclamation mark at the end instead of a question mark?
naah sig schmig
I have noticed that even a "turned off" ATX-based PC still draws 15-25 W continuosly. For no reason at all, it seems. I have this cheap and simple Watt-meter that plugs between the wall and my gear that I use to check things out. Everyone should get one.
I agree that there is no point in completely turning off tv sets to save electricity, but turning them off for the night is a good idea because they are a potential (albeit miniscule) fire hazard. The older your set the bigger the risk.
Oh come on , the rest of Scotland says "Pissed Weegies" as well.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
A survey by the Energy Saving Trust found that the average household has up to 12 gadgets left on standby or charging at any one time. It also showed that more than £740m of electricity was wasted by things being left ticking over.
£740m per year? That is about £2m/day... What does £2m buy, about 40kWh? With 24 hours in a day that comes to about 1.5Kw used by 12 devices on "Standby". That comes to 130W per device! Think of the heat put off by a 100W lightbulb. Does your cell phone charger get that hot? Does your DVD player? Does your stereo? I don't think so...
This is yet anyother article on the subject of standby power that is completely devoid of any actual calculations. Is it really so hard to show your work? How does the amount of standby power compare to the amount of "in use" power? Maybe standby power really is an issue, but until I actually see some real calculations I will remain a skeptic.
I can see standby may use power unnecessarily but what does charing have to do with it?
If you have something charging its not like you can just not charge it to use less power, unless you dont want to use it anymore, ever. Charging something doesnt use up power unnecessarily it just stores it for use later. The alternative is use up disposable batteries and I would bet that that isnt any better for energy consumption overall.
Even worse than standby mode are electronics that consume electricity when turned completely off. If you have a television that is off, but it still plugged in, it uses electricity! How else would the remote control turn it on if it did not? This is true for very many devices. The only way to stop them is to unplug them. It really sucks.
I've seen adapters at the home stores that basically put a switch on the outlet. I'm assuming that would accomplish what you want, though not very conveniently.
But there are several solutions to automatically save some standby power!
This saves me between 5 and 25 watt.
This saves me a COUPLE HUNDRED watt!!!
Back in those days when television meant large and heavy glass tubes operated at high voltages (about 5 years ago) Philips build TV-sets with an auto-shutdown mechanism.
...
You push the Off-button and the set goes to standby. Now push it again or don't activate for 30 minutes (configurable) and the TV ejects to main power button. No power consumption at all now.
Great feature! Don't know if they use this 'technology' nowadays.
It seems do be very expensive/difficult/... because I haven't seen it with Sony, Pioneer,
If your running solar or wind to charge your batteries for the inveter.
any way of turning off any phantom loads is a good thing (Stand By).
to give you more power when you need it not waste it.
My 2 watts
I am all for having real OFF switches available as an option. But if one is eliminating standby altogether to save energy, one needs to look at the changes in human behavior that might result and see if it would still save energy.
For instance, if Mr. Couch Potato needs to get up to turn off the TV, he might instead mute it. Granted, we could build a TV that you can fully turn off remotely but where you need a physical switch to turn it back on. But even so, Mr. Couch Potato may not want to turn off the TV if he can't get it back on with his remote.
This is even clearer with devices with a startup time like computers and cellphones. If the alternative to standby is power off and a restart wait, people may just leave them on.
A crucial thing to remember in policy work is that one cannot assume that present behavior will remain the same given the policy. A jurisdiction would not make more money from taxes than it does if it set the tax rate at 100%!
I think that's what's referred to as 'Mode Execute Ready' - not 'Access Standby' and certainly not the appallingly stone-aged 'Off'...
(panic!)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
... can a post speculating about the number of angels dancing on a pin (and the resultant raise of the universe's entropy) be modded Informative...
I think it's time for manufacturers to consider the problems that arises from spamming users with all those splash screens and delays that causes problems for users.
Another issue is that a full power-off often causes a memory loss in the device and requires a reconfiguration or software download before it's possible to watch the news (or whatever you want to watch).
Of course - not all devices are that stupid, and one way around it is to get a Master/Slave power-strip that switches on power to all sub-devices when you start the master device like the TV. By doing this you can minimize the number of standby-devices.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
How much power is being used even though that appliance is off? Measure with this: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001067.php -- Kill-a-watt.
Use this to turn off power to external peripherals when you turn your PC off: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/001087.php -- "hen you turn off your computer, the smart unit shuts the power off to the other sockets."
These are tiny amounts of power, but they add up.
I think you've hit the nail on the head - the problem is the main PSU, which is a bit leaky.
. html) to power the 'standby mode'. It needs to be capable of provising enough power to switch in the main PSU and read the remote control. It doesn't sound so difficult to do, but would cost a few extra pence (cents), so it won't happen without some legislation.
The answer seems to be to have a small transformerless PSU (first google hit: http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/joecolquitt/txless
Unlike radios, VCRs, etc., a CRT display encounters a fair thermal shock when switching from OFF to ON. Standby keeps a trickle warmth, allowing for BOTH faster ON and longer life. This is probably a good tradeoff Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)-wise, assuming that a TV is switched on once or twice a day on average.
Laser printers have a similar need to warm up the fuser prior to outputting paper. Standby mode, with a (probably, primitive) prediction of when you'll use it next, allows a good tradeoff of availability vs energy use. Smarter standby would be better, but turning it hard off means that you're spending some time serving your appliances -- preparing its bath, so to speak -- rather than the other way 'round.
I leave the question of the social value of watching TV to others.
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
My power supplier lends compact power usage meters for about one week (about like this (yes, they seem to have recycled the pun in the dept.-name))
Anyway, more or less coincidentally (/. has got these stories quite often, and I planned on posting about it as soon as I find the right occasion), I have got one pretty much right now. The claims you promote there, about the people with a career in environmental protection, not promoting anti-standby-mode but rather true power-off, seem false just by the existence of this article (and countless others).
So, a few bits of recorded data:
PC PSU ATX "standby": ~2W, an other model: ~7W, an external notebook PSU: ~3W
N64: ~2W (the switch is connected behind the PSU)
TV: ~2W (a very small one)
VGA CRT device: ~8W (it's got a pretty stupid switch that is more common with LCD devices)
Now, the more interesting stuff, but slightly off-topic:
PC, operational, max.: ~97W (~1.2 GHz Duron, Radeon 7200 Series) :) (opera))
PC, operational, max.: ~60W (~466 MHz Celeron, GeForce 2 MX 100/200)
Notebook, operational, w/ display on: ~16W (133 MHz, under "perl -e 'while(1) { }'" ~23W (same method for most other "under loads"), which I am also currently using
CRTs: ~55W (~17", textmode), ~45W (small TV w/ sound), ~70W (~15", older, in text-mode ~60W)
Radio alarm clock, w/ 7-segment LED displays: ~2W (sound makes not really a difference (yes, it does sound horrible))
And yes, I'm quite sure I forgot some interesting things. Also, most PCs draw much more power, because they might use a Pentium 4 CPU, more advanced graphics cards, more fans (the environment of the ~466 MHz device is ~10 degrees Celsius in winter, so the CPU-fan is deactivated by hardware (anyone got thoughts about removing the PSU fan?), and yes, the harddisk is quite "unhappy").
The device also correctly said ~40W for a 40W incandescent bulb (blecch), and I wouldn't know how to design such a device to not be able to cope with quickly changing power needs (quite old models they give out).
One more rumor I've got to eliminate: CRTs don't draw that much power while going on, only for very few seconds quite much (~225W the highest reading, and it can't be more than ~1800W), thereafter the information above applies.
...property is owned by rich people, who don't have to save electricity like a peon. It's the same reason that the airlines and trucks can contribute a majority of pollution yet you are encouraged to buy a 60 mpg econobox.
Speaking as someone who designs power supply systems, it sounds to me like there's a market here for having two power supplies in the system: one for full-power operation and a second one that can supply stand-by power at high efficiency. Since the full-power supply is optimized for supplying, well, full power, it's going to be pretty inefficient at 1/10 to 1/100 its rating. We design chips for powering cellphones, that do a 92% efficient job of power conversion at the 1-10 watt level. That'd do a good job of running a standby system. Yeah, it'd cost more: about $0.40-0.75. Triple or quadruple that for reworking boards, extra testing, and other manufacturing NRE for the actual cost passed to the consumer. I suspect that'd be recovered in two years through power savings.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
But flourescent lighting sucks. I have replaced several incandescent bulbs in my house with flourescent, but a lot of the lighting then becomes way too harsh. I don't want to read by flourescent light, for example. I also don't want the light in my bedroom to be flourescent.
Another problem I've encountered is that floursescent bulbs, even the compact ones, don't fit my lighting fixtures well... they are not as small as regular bulbs, and so the globes don't fit back on.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing against using them (I use them myself), but don't get all high and mighty about how you're using less wattage in your house than I am in my bedroom.
As a side note, we are replacing lighting fixtures in my kitchen soon, I will be sure to get ones that can handle flourescent bulbs. The way my house is designed, the kitchen is a central area that often has the lights on all day.
Back on the subject of TV's and other appliances... having to turn the power on without a remote wouldn't bother me. Nor would having to wait a few seconds to actually see a picture. I wouldn't mind if they went back to making electronics that way, but it should be the optional way, where there is a power switch that completely turns on/off the power, but if it's on then pressing power on the remote puts it in standby. There are some people - infirmed, elderly and so forth that would benefit from complete control by the remote. Not me, however...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
They make mini ones that are the same size as regular incadescent, but only under "60W" (The equivilent power output as a 60W incadescent). They also make soft-light fluorescent bulbs, which have the same "colors" as an incadescent. Also, they make instant-on bulbs for places where you don't want any delay.
I call B.S.
I keep my electronic devices (e.g. TV, Sterio, &al.) plugged in through spare surge-suppressors. When I am not using them, I turn off the switch on the surge-suppressor, effectively cutting all power to the devices. My monthly electric bill is generally less than 1/2 of that of most of my friends/family (and, by implication, so is my [home] electricity consumption).
Last month, it [my electric bill] was <$25USD.
Now, granted, I don't do things like sleep with the TV on (and I only watch ~5hrs/week, max), I use 40Watt bulbs in most of the fixtures in my apartment, &c., and I have a gas furnace. On the other hand, my computer has a 400W power supply, a 19" CRT monitor, and is usually on. I have an electric stove, which I use to cook at least one meal (at home) per day, and listen to music, on my surround-sound home entertainment system almost constantly, when at home.
Right now, only my 'fridge, and microwave are drawing power, at my place.
How about you? What's your electric bill look like?
"So, a few bits of recorded data:
PC PSU ATX "standby": ~2W, an other model: ~7W, an external notebook PSU: ~3W
N64: ~2W (the switch is connected behind the PSU)
TV: ~2W (a very small one) "
So, does anyone have a sense of what the limiting factors are in standby power draw? DC micropower design techniques would suggest that you shouldn't need more than milliwatts of power. Something like a PIC microcontroller in a low-speed application (lots of sleep mode usage) should use tens to hundreds of microwatts. Converting AC to DC power is somewhat inefficient (thought it was typically 60-70% efficiency for an ATX power supply at moderate load) and I'm sure using a linear regulator like a 7805 will kill your efficiency numbers. But, what's the best that could be done with a low-power switching regulator? Maybe you could put a battery in the device, which is only used to power a low-current standby circuit...that might avoid inefficient AC/DC conversion.
That being said, some of the other posters' comments are probably true...if you've got a limited amount of resources to spend on conservation, going after "suspend mode" probably isn't the most productive approach. Redesigning the standby circuit to be more efficient is probably less useful than redesigning the rest of the circuitry...saving 50% of 2W rather than 5% of 100W isn't useful, unless the device is almost never active. (A computer monitor, say, may be active 40 hours out of a 168 hour week) There may (or may not) be additional costs involved...additional circuitry to reduce power consumption may require more power for manufacturing, or produce more pollution. And still, there are more easy targets for conservation...like incadescent lamps, or construction techniques. Not that doing all of these together doesn't help, but if you've got $1M to spend on public service announcements, you might want to make sure you're making the largest impact with what you have. Or with cars...it would make sense to do cheap, easy things (like small manual-transmission cars) before expensive, difficult things (hybrid drive in SUVs), but there are tax breaks for the latter, not the former.
There could be special adaptations of equipment for the disabled etc.
When was the last time you saw a standard car that a disabled person
could drive? Stop looking for discrimination everywhere just so you have
something to bitch about and can feel self righteous.
Seeing as I got a flamebait mod for that, I'd like to apologise for any offense caused. I just find the image of planefuls of Glaswegians being shipped to the US amusing, and I could only imagine one possible scenario which would call for such action.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Standby devices and other phantom loads look a lot different when you're producing your own power. They make a noticeable difference to your energy availability - and my experience isn't primarily with solar (and all its attendant caveats), it's with hydroelectric. I want my heaters rated correctly (few are) and I want real switches. Relays are good.
I'm going to give
[|]
if i remember correctly, one of the biggest power wasters when it comes to standby mode is your doorbell - when multiplied for every house on earth.
I'm going to disagree with you, just as a personal opinion.
I prefer the light from the modern compact fluorescents to incandescents -- I find that rooms just seem a lot "sunnier" when lit with the higher-color-temperature lamps. I'm not talking about the old greenish/blue-white ones, they're pretty disgusting, but the last few "warm fluorescent" ones I picked up at Home Depot are a lot nicer than the incandescent lights I replaced. I think they're around 4000-5000K, and going back to 2800K (typical incandescents) isn't even an option. They just seem too yellow now.
Granted, I don't have much in the way of direct lighting -- I have mostly torchiers and 3-lamp 'pole lights' aimed up at the walls and/or cieling, so perhaps if you had nothing but direct light it wouldn't work as well. I also can't stand being in a dimly lit room; I have what would be the incandescent equivalent of 750W of lighting in about 250 square feet. If it was actually all incandescent, not only would I be broke from the power bill, but the room would probably be uncomfortably warm. (And possibly it would be a fire hazard as well.)
But since installing the CFL bulbs I've noticed I'm just a lot less tired, and less dependent on the weather outside -- it used to be that if it was a really dark, overcast day outside that the room would be noticably more dim; with more lighting I can just close the blinds and have basically the same illumination available as if it was a sunny day outside.
I also wouldn't want a TV that required a manual power switch on the front to turn it on and off. I have several TVs in odd positions (on top of book cases, etc.) throughout my house, and they would be a lot more of a pain to use if I had to touch them in order to start using them. If they didn't have standby, I'd probably just switch them to the DVD player's "screen saver" when I wasn't using them instead of turning them off.
Anyway, I'm not arguing with you, just offering a contrary opinion. To each his own, I suppose.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They persuade people to buy food that doesn't have to be flown from New Zealand to get to their plates.
Dude, I have been the UK. There is a damn good reason why all of your food is shipped in from New Zealand. When talking about the environment you need to be reasonable. Buy an efficient car, trying to use public transportation, cutting down on energy consumption, and recycling? All are reasonable. Having to eat native British food every single day for the rest of your life? Put a gun to my fucking head and paint the wall with my brains. There is environmentalism and then eco-terrorist-genocidal-lunatic. Advocating eating British food on a regular basis without a doubt fits in the later category.
Take reasonable steps to save the environment, but really people, you need to learn to draw the line. There are just some prices that we as a species can not afford to pay.
Don't know, whether you have any specific emissions in mind, but I'd call this statement plain wrong. Currently total airflight energy use is about a quarter of total car traffic energy use (but admittedly airflight is growing at an alarming rate). Airplanes produce more emissions per distance, and also some particularily nasty types of pollution (water vapor in high altitudes, for instance, is a greenhouse factor), but it's not anywhere near surpassing car traffic in total, yet. (energy consumption in the UK. See page 14)
On standy: Yes, in many cases it makes life easier. However there is no wrong at all in 1) informing people that standby power usage is non-zero. Note that in some cases of bad design it's even quite considerable. Some inkjet printers use 15 Watts in standby - what for? 2) Pressure manufactures to make full-power-off reasonably easy.
Yes, there are areas other than standby, where (greater) amounts of energy can be saved. But also in many, many, many cases, summing up to hundreds or even thousands of megawatts, standby is just plain useless. Standby for a TV - ok, nice feature to have, if you like. Standby for a PC / printer / CD-/DVD-player? Heck, I'm typically right in front of those, when I want to start using them. What do I need standby for? Provide me with the option, fine, but give me an easy opportunity to switch them off fully, if only to reduce the risk of fire, or the damage done if lightning strikes nearby.
No, sir, my current and future home networking equipment will not require 3-phase circuits.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Since I'm not the entrepreneurial type, I'll give this idea away to anyone who can make it work. (Unless it already exists, which wouldn't be too surprising). Put a microprocessor and a small display into an electric plug, measure power consumption, and make the figures available in some convenient way. Ideally it would be like a pedometer - zero the device, start using your TV or whatever, then after an hour or so check and see how much power you used, and how many W/hr that represents.
The user interface presents some difficulty, but if watches and mobile phones can be programmed as they are with tiny fiddly buttons, this could be too. Alternatively, it could incorporate something like a USB memory stick that could be carried to a PC and upload numbers for analysis by companion software or a simple spreadsheet.
It would be really neat to know exactly how much power your cooker takes to bake a meal for four, but that poses another problem: what if the power cable is hard-wired into the wall? Maybe some kind of induction circuit would work. The overall effect of a device like this would be to lessen the difference between phone bills, which can be itemized to show just where your money is going, and electricity bills, which can't.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Check out this graph. They seem the believe that electricity used by future TV's will grow faster than the amount of new TV's on the market. I am skeptical of this claim, since it seems to suggest that newer TV's will be more power hungry than the older ones. Does this not account for the new LCD, plasma, and projection (DLP, LCD, and LCoS), which should use significantly less electricity than their CRT coutnerparts?
In any case, looking at the graphs and trying to extrapolate the numbers, it looks like there's a projected 11 and 22% increase in the number of TV's in GB from 2000 to 2020, which (they claim) represents a 50% and 70% increase in power consumption by TV's. The numbers don't work out in any logical fashion, and don't represent the use of new, lower power technology that will almost certainly replace most new CRT's over the next 15 years.
This is beginning to sound like a bit of alarmism...which is sadly typical in the news (especially when it comes to issues of fear, including issues like terrorism or especially the environment and conservation).
Also, another bit of potential stupidity:
This is just silly, because the manufacturers will just pass this cost along to the consumer. The statement is a clear attempt to obfuscate the ultimate payor for the new regulations.This article leads me to the question of whether or not most people are able to question anything when it comes to conservation because it's not PC to question environmental rhetoric.
-Turkey
after a powerbill I decided to add a switch that would cut the power to my projector, VCR, DVD, Radio etc..
I actually bought one of those power outlet meters to try to reduce my home energy usage.
But after I tested two or three appliances, I realized that this whole endeavor is completely nonsense except in summertime. If my computer, power amp, water heater, or even incandescent lights, are running during the winter... every watt of power they generate will reduce my heating bill by almost exactly that watt.
Now yes, I do have electric heating. The tradeoff may differ for those who don't. But the fact remains that powering devices in the home is much less wasteful than it seems, for those who live in colder climates. Since this study was done in Britain, I wonder if they controlled for this factor.
In the summer, of course, I try to keep things off as much as possible. But this is primarily because it's too hot, and only secondarily to save power.
--
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
Furthermore, I'd wager that getting everyone to switch from incandescent globes to compact flourescent would be cheaper and make a dramatically larger savings in power consumption, substantially faster to boot.
Yes, but what of the cost in mental health? Think of how the crime rate would skyrocket as millions of britons are driven out of their fucking skulls into a murderous rage by the inability to excape from their garish flickering tormentor. Incandescence is essential for any quality of life.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
His point, if you care to think for a moment is that a few hundred thousand refigerator upgrades would save much more power than all those standby-mode devices use.
Really folks, this gadget-centric perspective is pretty ridiculous. If you want to save power, look at the bigger appliances and the heating and cooling efficiencies of your house. That's where the savings are to be had, not in obsessing about your roomba.
(Though as an aside I must say it would be real nice if the Linux Kernel folks would deal with making scsi spindown work as well as ide (or at all, even.) That would save me personally quite a few watts.)
Someone had to do it.
If I use it for standby (for my convenience!), that's my call. I bought the power, and paid for it.
The only complaint one could have is if generating power is subsidized by those who don't use it.
Go ahead, make that case. Try "air pollution", I'll just knock that one out of the park.
(I live solely on 170 watts of solar panels as my power source, currently on the beach in Mexico, I'm sticking up for the free-market principle here).
what I don't understand is why more devices aren't built like my NAD stero system, on the front of the unit it has a button marked power which actually disconnects the power, and one marked standby which still allows you to use the remote, the "power" button on the remote does the equivlant of "standby" on the unit... user choice... unlike most components where unplugging is the only true "off" option... I'm not against having a standby mode, I'm just against it being the only option, and definitely against it pretending to be an actual power off mode.
while on the topic of extra buttons on the unit... my other big pet-peeve (which again is done correctly on that NAD stereo system) is that most electronics these days REQUIRE the remote, the controls on the unit itself are so limited that you can't do anything without the remote... is a button REALLY that expensive?
Even George Bush was on to it before them (4 years ago!).
p
http://www.nrdc.org/bushrecord/articles/br_295.as
It's a serious issue, one that actually should have been addressed a long time ago.
Since people don't pay attention to standby power (except those few of use with Kill-A-Watt measuring devices), there is no incentive for companies to spend even an extra $0.25 reducing the standby power consumption of a device. So they don't, and much power is wasted as a result.
The Energy Star program has been very effective for refrigerators, it should be extended to standby power consumption.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
How do you enforce that?
They can enforce "not watering your lawn" during periods of drought by having cops patrol neighborhoods. Sure there are a lot of watering situations this method couldn't catch, but it's sufficent to pressure most people into compliance.
They could probably do a similar thing with wasted electricity. Drive through retail areas and notice places where the lights are being left on unnecessarily. There would be a lot of things you couldn't catch this way, and there would be a lot of special cases to worry about, but it could be done wisely if implemented at the local level.
Economic incentives might provide better ways to do this though... e.g., maybe a high tarriff on off-peak usage with exemptions for business who turn off lights and relax their thermostat settings. I don't know if anyone has explored the topic thoroughly.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
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I just wish it wasn't so stupidly expensive to buy the equipment!!!
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are other costs to consider. Do insurers lower premiums if security lights and music are on? There was a headline a while back, where gansta burglas tend to lose the mood if classical music is playing outside a store. Also, security lights allow passing police cruisers visibility into the store.
I'd bet that insurance companies drive the behavior of businesses much more than the power bills.
I know some of you mods a a bit thick in the head, but the parent is a JOKE not a troll. Learn to take a joke and laugh. The guy is clearly mostly kinda-sorta-a-little-bit joking. If you can't find it funny, then you have not tasted British food. In that case, you should mod the parent +1 informative.
Comparing total energy consumption doesn't mean anything. Compare energy use per pasenger and compare airplanes to car traffic and i'd imagine it'd look quite different. Planes also give off less pollution per passenger than most cars.
For televisions with CRTs the filament is partially powered during standby. This allows faster warmup and increases the lifetime of the picture tube. Why, the thermal cycling of the electron gun cathode from ambient to red hot causes failure due to thermal stresses. It is better to keep the thermal stresses down by keeping the filament partially energized. Yes this consumes a few watts but from a consumer's point of view, this is a cost saver since failure of the picture tube will result in replacement of the entire TV set. Ditto for CRT monitors. Interestingly when I was in Mexico this summer I observed that most incandescent bulbs had been replaced by compact fluorescents. Finally one of the first actions of the Bush administration was to reduce the required efficiency standard for new home air conditioners. Doubly bad increases energy use and particularly peak energy use. In terms of energy policy as the old Hank Snow song says:
"Warning signs are flying by us but we pay no heed,
Instead of slowing down the pace we keep pickin' up the speed.
Disaster's getting closer every time we meet.
Doin' 90 miles an hour down a dead end street."
Global Warming is HERE!!! And I am loving every minute of it. I live in a previously semi-tropical environment. Northern Louisiana ( We are not Cajuns up here... few people down there are really Cajun for that matter. ) It is Jan 23, 2006 and the temperature outside is around the low 50's instead of around the 30's. We have had several days in the 70's, flowers are blooming early, frogs croaking/mating early. Everything is coming to life earlier this year. I am looking forward to starting my garden early this year. If we make it past February without a frost, I get a full month headstart on eating fresh tomato and other good garden vegetables.
I am going to enjoy this "tropical" climate while it lasts. Climate is cyclic. I am more afraid of the next ice age more than "human caused" global warming.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I could have guessed that, and you didn't answer the second half of my question.
The shareholder is always right.
But of course, in the USA your government does not care too much about environment so I doubt your energy bills (electricity, oil or whatever else) includes taxes used to sustain your environment.
While that might be true, it's not clear to me why a government has to "care about the environment" before it will control externalities. Even if a government don't care about the endangered animals, it should care about costs to society such as health costs associated with pollution and costs to agriculture associated with deforestation.
I agree that improving startup / wakeup time for electronics is important. I think slow startup times and lack of sleep modes are largely responsible for people not bothering to turn computers off when they're not using them.
The shareholder is always right.
Comparing total energy consumption doesn't mean anything
True, at least on a certain level. I did, as the parent post did just that.
Compare energy use per pasenger and compare airplanes to car traffic and i'd imagine it'd look quite different
Yes, road passenger traffic is 40 tonnes of oil equivalent per 1 billion passenger kilometers. For air passenger traffic it's 1456 tonnes per billion passenger kilometers. I'm not sure, whether that's the direction you expected. (2003 prov; http://www.dti.gov.uk/energy/inform/energy_consump tion/table2_5.xls)
Planes also give off less pollution per passenger than most cars
To a certain extent planes give of different types of pollution than cars, so for some select emissions your statement may even be true. In general this is dead wrong. Planes give off much more pollution than cars, even per passenger.
All these new units are confusing me, how do you convert from Glasgow transatlantic flights to students/Volkswagon mile?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Ok, well, on second read, the numbers I cited can't be true on that magnitude. And either today my google skills are weak, or it's not quite easy to find definite figures. Anyway, I'm fairly certain, that at least on short-distance flights (~500 kilometers) air traffic needs between 50% and 100% more than road traffic per passenger-kilometer and on average. For long-distance flights air traffic becomes somewhat more efficient, as a considerable portion of energy is used during take-off. Possibly for really long distances (>5000 kilometers), air traffic may even be more efficient *per person-kilometer* than car traffic.
Yet, while my previous numbers were wrong, they are right at least in one respect: Air-traffic is evil on the short distance, as it's completely inefficient there. Air-traffic is evil on the long distance for the total amount of energy consumed on large distance journeys.
Sorry about the mistake
Precisely why American manufacturers invented Sleep Mode.
To keep Scottish people from spreading.
My parents got a brand new 33-inch set the other week, and I checked its printed specs. They said 0.6 or 0.8W in standby mode.
This surprised me; with all the recent media talk about the energy wasted in standby mode, I would have expected more. 0.8W, over 24h, is like leaving an old-fashioned lightbulb on for something like twenty minutes a day -- and people do that regularly without thinking about it.
I do think something should be done to the power consumption of home electronics. For example, there's currently no incentive for PC vendors to ship efficient PSUs, CPUs and graphics cards dimensioned for the average person's needs, et cetera. And people leave these things running day and night.
Are your eyes abnormal? Do you live in a cave? Have you not noticed that plenty of stores now use flourescents that work just fine and produce pleasing light?
Yes, You are right. Having reread it, instead I have this to say: instead of being patronising and treating her like a victim you can use your brains and understand (as most people here would) that there are times when people need such things as stand-by and remotes...sigh...
President ISES
(International Society for Elimination of Sigs)
Yes, exactly like the TV I was describing. My last stereo (circa 1985) was the same way. I only recently replaced it with a surround sound receiver that doesn't have that (but it replaced 5 components with one).
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are your eyes abnormal? Do you live in a cave? Have you not noticed that plenty of stores now use flourescents that work just fine and produce pleasing light?
Possibly, No, and No. I have never seen a fluorescent light that was not hideous. I've tried a few that claim to be nice, but they're not.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
This would make the swings between peak and trough energy usage even larger, making in even harder for electric companies to deliver reliable power. Spinning up and down kilowatt generators isn't something that comes without cost or losses in efficiency.
The energy directly used by the consumer would go down, but I wonder how much the net decrease in energy use would be.
Getting rid of standyby switches however is a great idea because it decreases energyuse across the day not just in off peak hours.
Businesses leave lights on all night to deter theft and vandalism.
People are less likely to commit crimes in brightly lit areas, even if they're reasonably confident nobody's around.
Case in point:
I worked at a pool for a couple summers; we originally had big problems with people coming in, throwing trash cans and deck chairs and all manner of mess into the pools and doing other petty vandalism. We installed two big floodlights that kept the whole pool area lit all night; vandals never came back.
Or, more realistically, the spec sheet for a Panasonic number PNA4602M infrared detector module lists maximum of current 3.0mA (2.4mA typical), and requires a maximum 5.3 volt supply. In other words, at full power, it dissipates .016 watts - two orders of magnitude less than your number.
So, (.016w)*(1kw / 1000w)*(24 hours / day)*(365 days / year) = .14kWh/year.
At $0.07/kWh here, that works out to about $0.01 worth of electricity per year. I can live with that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I imagine that the answer to this is that the average TV purchased today is physically larger than the average TV it replaces. If I replace a 26" TV at 200 W with a 50" TV at 300 W, I have nearly 4 times the viewing surface for 50% more power. Thus you have a 0% increase in number of TV's with a 50% increase in power usage.
I agree with you that many manufacturers throw in a standby mode where it is unecessary and frankly environmentally immoral. My parents have a gas-fireplace with a standby mode. It just sits there and uses very little gas with a tiny flame. I cannot fathom how this is a good thing or a useful thing or anything!
Governments would do us all a favor by making this kind of thing at least discouraged.
I think most people are aware that standby is non-zero wattage. But, I really don't understand why the standby-is-evil thing is quoted so often by Government and do-gooder alike. If most households just turned off their ovens 5 minutes earlier when cooking they'd save the equivalent in energy.
To reiterate my point, I care about the state of the world a great deal, and I worry that making people guilty for leaving their TV on standby just alienates them from our cause.
The graph in the pdf you linked shows less oil consumption, so perhaps my quote was wrong. Although I remember getting it from a similar reputable document.
What about electronic ballasts? They usually get the lights up to 20Mhz, rather than the 120Hz from the standard ballast. This makes the lights more efficent, and will also produce better looking light.
"bush is a sheep. dont give that monkey any credit. ever. seriously."
If someone brings up a legitimate point, they deserve credit for it, whether or not they're on your side of an argument. Hell, I think he's an idiot too - but statements like yours seriously hurt the credibility of liberal/democratic organizations. You don't have any position of your own or anything you're FOR; You're just AGAINST Bush.
Your habit of turning the tv on (and off) only once a day is probably a result of using the power button. I use the remote, and probably do it 3-5 times a day. It's quite possible that I use less total energy as a result, than if I had had the incentive to just leave it on all night.
All right, well back to your original post, do you think it would be millions of Britons, or only some number of thousands? That is, how commonplace have you found this opinion to be among others?
Laser printers have a similar need to warm up the fuser prior to outputting paper. Standby mode, with a (probably, primitive) prediction of when you'll use it next, allows a good tradeoff of availability vs energy use.
That's a rather bad choice for laser printers. Most use around 100W when in "standby" if you expect them to print the first page any faster than from when they were completely off. The "instant on" technology from Canon, and found at least in some small HP Laserjets on the other hand, heats lighter and smaller components right were they need to be heated. It also translates to "instant off", since not much excess heat must be removed after the print job.
But those motion sensors use electricity, so maybe we could install a big switch to turn them on and off.
His post wasn't crystal-clear, but he's not trying to say the draw from the IR receiver is 1-4W, he's trying to say that the total draw of a set you've turned off is 1-4W. You are indeed correct about that particular component. It is not, however, the source of most of the power draw when the TV is off. Most of that comes from the power supply.
It's not as "off" as you think it is, and his estimate for the total draw when on standby is ballpark correct. Just about anything with a AC to DC power supply like that, even a switching design, is drawing power even when the load is off. Just for kicks, see if you can find or borrow a power meter, and check out your various "off" devices. The total for your house is a stupendous amount of wasted power. Anything with a power supply or a transformer will draw power all the time-- chargers for stuff, the paper shredder you have plugged in in the office, all your "off" computer peripherals (unless you shut off at the power strip), all your home theater crapola, every DC kitchen appliance you leave plugged in, etc... it's a few watts here and a few there, but it's not hard to have a steady 100W draw from things you thought were off. Odds are at least one device in your house will be a "surprise offender," too, with an idle draw that is *unbelieveably* high.
For a simple meter, try kill-a-watt. For an easy way to fix it (besides just a switch), try an intelligent power strip. These generally have one "control" plug that can tell the difference between "standby" and "on". All the other plugs are truly off if the "control" device is on standby. This allows you to have a PC that turns off your printer, USB hub, speakers, etc... or a TV that turns off your receiver, game consoles, dvd player, and so forth. Turning on the key device reactivates power to the other outlets on the strip.
Smart power strips.
Of course, none of this should even be an issue. There's no reason these devices should consume more than a watt when idle, even the ones that need some power for a remote control. But since people aren't aware of it, and electricity is cheap, it's not cost effective to care about it yet.
1. Press eject on remote
2. Walk torwards player while the tray is opening
3. Insert and/or remove disc
I hate to tell you but modern science tells us that oil is probably not a limited resource. In fact not only is it a natural byproduct of a process inside the mantle but it isn't running out anytime soon either. Don't believe me? Search for the "biogenic theory of petroleum" There is also a scientest here in the US that can take turkey carcasses and run them through a process which will produce crude oil and distilled water.
As for natural gas? Well I don't know if it's running out or not, but we can always drill deeper and find different pools. Our geological technology gets better by the year.
Besides, the government has nothing to do with this really.
Libertas in infinitum
"Tragedy of the commons".
You do realise that modern flourescents operate at KHz frequencies? Compact flourescents are instant-on and don't flicker. Sure, some take a minute or two to warm up to full brightness, but in an area where you have the lights on for hours at a time, is that really an issue?
All too often these extra costs are ignored, which makes many people unhappy when they are eventually revealed. Of course, this requires the extra revenue actually be used for those costs, so since you can't trust a corporation to be responsible you'd have to gather it in the form of a tax or levy - and write sufficiently ironclad legislation to dissuade the government from making off with it either...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Some problems with that:
1. Cops would rather enter a lit building at night.
2. Cameras can't see in the dark.
3. Lighting things up upon motion so the cameras could see means the bad guys know they should flee.
Interesting post, but mostly wrong.
While the energy going into a transformer increases with the energy taken from the output, small 50/60 Hz transformers are usually far less efficient than large ones and can't be treated as being ideal. Most of these small transformers will waste several Watts or more even with no load.
Losses in transformers fall into two major categories, copper losses which increase with load and magnetic (core and leakage) losses which are closer to constant. Small transformers, such as those found in AC adaptors, have relatively high core losses. Using too little core area makes it easier to saturate the core. Using too few of turns on the primary (to save copper and space) results in the primary inductance being low, making the current and flux density fairly high with no load. That higher current flowing through fairly thin (high resistance)wire also results in no-load copper losses being higher than they could be. With many of those small transformers the energy consumed under no-load conditions is nearly as much as it is under full load conditions. These losses are what make most a.c. adaptors warm to the touch even when they're not connected to any load.
You have your monitor coils mixed up. The deflection coils on c.r.t.s are unrelated to any startup surge. There frequently is another coil that actually has nothing to do with normal monitor operation that does operate at a significant current for a short time, but that doesn't amount to much energy because it is brief. I'm talking about the degaussing coil. Typically it is energized briefly when a monitor or television is turned on cold. The combined effect of heating in a thermistor and use of a voltage-dependent resistor is to run a decaying alternating current through the coil for about 10 seconds. The decaying alternating magnetic field demagnetizes the aperture mask inside the c.r.t. and nearby mounting hardware. It's not unusual to hear a bit of a thud/buzz from the monitor at turn-on due to the field from that coil. If you notice a slight shaking of the image just as the c.r.t first reaches operating temperature, you're seeing the end of the degaussing process. The metal aperture mask just behind the screen inside the c.r.t. has the holes or slots needed to properly restrict the beams from the Red, Green, and Blue electron guns so that each only strikes the phosphor coating for the correct color. A magnetized mask typically causes blotches of switched colors, most often near the edges of the screen. Some monitors have a push button for manual degaussing instead (watch the wild colors and image shaking). That saves a little energy under operating conditions since there is no voltage dropped across a thermistor.
By having the thermistor in series with the main power to a monitor, it can serve the dual function of powering the degaussing coil and reducing the amplitude (but extending in duration) of the startup surge current flowing into the capacitors. That reduces the surge current extending the life of the power switch, and allows use of a smaller fuse which would give better protection against fault conditions. Turning a monitor off and on quickly won't degauss the c.r.t. again because the thermistor takes time to cool off. It has nothing do do with energy storage in coils. From an energy consumption standpoint, the startup surge and energy stored in the capacitors is unimportant. The only time it really matters is when a monitor is running from a U.P.S. If the startup surge is too high, a U.P.S. may shut down when the monitor is turned on. The same U.P.S. might run fine if it kicks in feeding a monitor that is already running.
When you fire up a monitor and most other electronics the surge is primarily from the initial charging of the filter capacitors in the power supply (in the case of a switcher, the first set after the rectifier). Like light bulbs with filaments, there is a bit of a surge when first applying power to the c.r.t. filament. That's because tungsten has a positive temperature coefficient. Resistance is lower when cold. Many monitors have a small series resistor in the filament wiring to reduce the surge current. That reduces demand and the power supply and lessens the stress to the filament.
Tick the "Shut down computer when downloads are finished" checkbox. Otherwise, get enough data to transmit overnight so you won't put your computer to sit there doing nothing useful.
"Companies would certainly enforce a turn off policy if it was hitting them in the wallet."
Facetiously: It'll happen when fossil fuels are severely depleted.
Seriously: I did an analysis for my company of after-hours power costs (had the building engineer set up a recorder for the power meter, had an intern input the readings). Implemented policies to minimize non-essential power use after hours. Cost savings: $800/mo, for an office with roughly 50 PCs and 30 MACs, plus 7 servers. Not a lot of money... but $9.6k a year of easy, low-impact savings helped justify that last pay increase...
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Except the lights are on at night time, when the power would otherwise go to waste due to the fairly fixed output of power plants.
Would the entire population of Glasgow want to fly to New York ? I mean, Christ, it is colder in New York than in Glasgow at this season. Is New York ready to receive the entire population of Glasgow ? I don't think so, somehow - unless some parts of Glasgow have gotten a lot calmer.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
It's not an issue in common areas where the lights are on most of the time, like the kitchen in my house, or a hallway... but it's not a "pleasing" light, you can't use a dimmer on it, and when natural light isn't available, I prefer to read by something other than flourescent.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You would be surprised how small a system you realy need.
Been looking into it for a while now for a cottage...or rural home.
you can start a system small and scale it up as needed.
from what i understand the only thing thats not realy scalable is the battery bank. unless its done in a short time in six months or less.
My 2 watts
There is a movement in the power industry to require all devices to have a standby power draw of less than one watt. That action alone would significantly reduce waste.
9 9/pdf99/Panel2/2-03.pdf
Here's an excellent paper on the concept: http://www.eceee.org/library_links/proceedings/19
My mother's friend, "Aunt" Nickie used to unplug her TV set every night for that very reason, when her husband brought home one of the neighborhood's first remote-control TV sets. She hated the idea it was using power even when "off". She leaves it on all the time now, of course.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
This is a much more coherent and accurate explanation than the grandparent. Shame it's posted AC, since nobody will ever find it and read it.
For places where the temperature isn't too cold for their use, heat pumps generate heat at roughly 400% efficiency. For every watt they use for power, they drag four watts of heat in from outside. (they work like a fridge in reverse, stealing heat from outside)
I'm not saying this negates the significant disadvantage of line losses, because I don't know the numbers for that. Just be aware that a fair comparison is slightly more complex. Obviously, the ideal is a system as efficient as a heat pump with locally generated power.
What I really want to do is replace my lights with the crazy PC tubes that I have in my planted aquarium. They're incredibly bright with surprisingly low draw. No visible flicker and they're available in color spectra that don't make you feel like you're in the cough syrup aisle of your local drug store.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
The reason for that is that buttons (being moving parts) break often. And the part with the broken button gets returned to the store. A remote is a lot cheaper to both replace and ship than the thing the remote controls.
On a stereo, you have stuff like knobs and sliders which are even more prone to breakage than a standard button, so it gets even more attractive there.
Sun used to ship 21" screens back in the day (circa 1997) that had basically just a remote and a power button. Nowadays, screens have some kind of on-screen menu system (or are usb controllable), but the idea is the same: Fewer buttons -> fewer returns.
"An object declared as type _Bool is large enough to store the values 0 and 1." -- 6.1.2.5, C99 standard.
If instead of HDMI, the electronics world had instead used something like Firewire where an encoded (or raw) stream was sent from A->B, then your DVD player and DVB could each send an 'MPEG-2' stream (decrypted by the original device) to the TV instead of a raw video stream. Then we could opt to buy HDTVs with good MPEG decoders, or put good MPEG decoders between our hardware and our TVs.
Just my $0.02.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
My parents have a gas-fireplace with a standby mode. It just sits there and uses very little gas with a tiny flame. I cannot fathom how this is a good thing or a useful thing or anything!
Without that, if there is a gas leak, you can get quite a build-up. Then one spark and boom! That's why gas stoves have a pilot light, and that's probably why your parents' fireplace has the tiny flame.
I have a gas fireplace that is like that, although you can shut off the outside tank and shut the system down completely during warmer months.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You can turn it off too, the modes are on, off and standby. The standby doesn't seem to have any real purpose.