The True Cost of Standby Power

Luther19 writes, "How much do all of our computers and electronic devices sitting in standby mode cost us? The author of the article concludes that he could save $24.44 per year by switching out wasteful power supplies. The article also touches on a global initiative to cut down on standby power, called '1-Watt': 'The idea has been promoted by the IEA, which first developed an international 1-Watt plan back in 1999. Countries like Australia and Korea have signed on officially, while countries like the US require 1-Watt in government procurement, which will have ripple effects throughout the economy. The goal of the program is to have standby power usage fall below 1W in all products by 2010.'" It's estimated that in industrialized countries, devices on standby consume on average 4% of the power used.

Comments

Pareto

[EaglemanBSA]

The way we engineers do it is by pareto analysis - you try to cut out of the largest portion of your power consumption. I'd like to see what lines up as the numbers one two and three consumers of electricity, and how that compares to the cited 4%, and how much was saved by going to standby mode as it stands today. I'm guessing that there are better places to focus the effort, but perhaps that's just my own bias.

Cost benefit?

[suparjerk]

I'm not sure the effort and materials costs associated with replacing a power supply are worth $24 per year...

True, but that's not the goal.

[Vellmont]

You're right, few people are going to bother with replacing power supplies because it's just not worth it economically to replace them.

But, the point is that if the industry had spent just a few dollars (maybe pennies) more in designing the devive, they'd be saving you money and it's be worth the extra costs. Right now most consumers have no idea the amount of money it costs them for these inefficient electronics, so there's no incentive for manufacturers to bother.

Small Potatoes

[oiper]

You want to fight the war on power consumption? Incandescent light bulbs. In regards to energy consumption, they are perhaps the most inefficient piece of technology today; and they are everywhere.

GT saved $2mil

[Malluck]

I know Georgia Tech went on a campaign a few years back to replace as many incandescent bulbs as possible.

As part of it they replaced all of the 300 watt bulbs in the Van Leer build (old EE building) with 20 watt fluorescent lamps. Each lab probably had 10-15 twenty of these power hogs. After the switch our labs were freezing cold! All that extra cooling wasn't needed any more.

Over the course of a year it saves the institute over 2 million dollars. the first million was in direct power reduction, the second million was due to reduction in cooling cost.

Simply don't drive. Or ride a bike.

[raehl]

Then you don't use any gas, and the world is saved! Of course, your food spoils before it can get to you, but you didn't waste any petroleum!

0 watts is better than >0 watts, but only if EVERYTHING ELSE IS EQUAL.

But it's not. If you turn off your computer instead of leaving it on, that affects many things other than just how much power you are using while the computer is off. It means you have a boot squence where you use a *LOT* of power. And where you do a LOT of reading/writing to/from disk. And you have to sit around and wait for your computer to boot. And then reopen everything you closed when you shut-down.

Saving $24/year in power is not worth spending $25/year on failed hard drives. Or on time lost turning your computer on and off again. Or on the power you use booting the thing back up.