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Standby TVs Waste Electricity, How About ACPI?
twitter asks: "There's power management and there's standby, do you know the difference? The BBC is running story on how much electricity is wasted by TV standby mode. Thanks to the very useful EnergyStar program, I'd be the one in seven who thought they were saving electricity, with the standby button. I've been very happy with APM and hibernation on laptops, and want to do something similar with the desktops I use. What's the state of APM / ACPI Wake-on-LAN for Linux these days?" Slashdot touched on this issue, earlier in the week, but that article was more on TVs, not on computer power saving technologies.
Okay... Suppose it costs an extra $10 for the battery, smart circuitry to run it, design costs, etc etc. Suppose disabling the transformer for standby saves you 2W. Suppose it's on standby year-round. That's 8,760 hours, or 17.52 kWh. Say 8 cents per kWh, you're now saving $1.40 per year. It would take over seven years for you to make up the initial cost.
Meanwhile we're filling the landfills and oceans with dinky little transformer-saving batteries.
The standby circuitry in most devices could probably run for days on the charge in a $1.50 capacitor.
I'm an electrical engineer, and no, it can't. That's why there is a transformer. The real solution would be to get off your lazy ass and hit the power switch when you are done watching instead of turning the TV off with the remote. The other solution is to put in a very high-efficiency switching power supply, but those are very expensive.