Slashdot Mirror
Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A tech columnist looked around his home and wondered, 'All these TVs and cable boxes and computers and computer gear and chargers for various adapters have to be sucking up a lot of power, right?' So WSJ.com's Jason Fry bought a power meter to find the biggest power hogs in his home. They weren't his newfangled gadgets: 'The heavily used agglomeration of PC / two monitors / printer / hard drive / speakers in my downstairs study costs a bit more than $10 a month. The PC in our bedroom costs about $6 a month. The upstairs laptop? Less than $1 — a bit more than other always-on gadgets such as the router, cable modem, wireless repeater and Airport Express. So what were our apartment's power hogs? The lights and the dryer. I estimate our lights cost us around $30 a month, nearly a third of that from a chandelier with eight bulbs. Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"
If he hung his wet laundry on that chandelier's hot bulbs, he could save $25 a month.
--
make install -not war
He owns a PC and a hard drive. The Wall Street Journal must be paying rather well, nowadays.
Time to get those compact fluorescents. I have them in all but a few of the sockets in my house, and I estimate they save me big $$ given how much we have the lights on (there's almost always someone home, and I'm a night owl).
This isn't a suprise at all. Residential energy use is well documented in the EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey. The DOE runs these once every 4 or 5 years. Heating > A/C > Lights/Fridge/Cook/Clothes > gadgets.
Things might change as people consume their 8h/day TV on 60" plasma space heaters.
You need a wife. As my Daddy used to say, "A wife is an appliance you screw on the bed to get the housework done."
I'm about done with replacing the light bulbs (that I can) from incandescent to fluorescent, but we have a smaller chandelier that's hooked up to a dimmer. I generally keep it at 75% of full power. The light bulbs also last longer because (hearsay warning!) apparently, the fact that the lights don't flip on/off immediately helps the bulbs not burn out as quickly.
Anyways, somewhat on topic, I hear that in California all new development and remodeling requires fluorescent lighting. Is that true?
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
I fail to see this article's relevance to the Slashdot userbase. Being nocturnal, underground dwellers we have no need of light other than the soft glow of our displays and diagnostics. As for the rest of our energy needs, we tap into the power grid of the mysterious beings that dwell above us. They provide us with nourishment and also manage the laundry.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Well, that $25/month that you pay to run your dryer (even less if you spend a little more upfront and get a gas model) is just about a wash in the long run as compared to the $1.50/load that it would cost at a laundromat. We used to spend $40/month on quarters for laundry. About two-thirds of that was for drying and the rest for washing.
But yeah, those multi-bulb units will really kill you. Once you realize how much it costs per month to operate a 100 watt incandescent light bulb, that's the real incentive for switching to compact fluorescent wherever you can (slow startup-time and all).
Who is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
True enough, though they've gotten a lot closer.
Nonetheless, I remember having a computer room full of always-on PCs, a giant tube television, a huge power sucking amp, and so on -- my furnace never came on. Since switching to a lot of power efficient gear, a low power LCD screen, CF lighting throughout, and so on, suddenly the furnace seems to always be one, so my conservation has been offset to a degree in the winter.
Wasn't there an attempt to force a label on every appliance saying "this device will cost you $x.xx per month if it's kept running" or some such? Can't remember. That would definitely make a lot of sense.
On the other hand, as long as everybody I know never turns off the light in their office I don't expect them to do that at home either. That tells me that energy is still far too cheap.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
He also failed to give real numbers and total things up. Sure, maybe the electric clothes dryer is an energy hog as compared to say the a computer. But it does not let us know if the dryer is twice as bad as a computer, 10x, or 100x. If you have say 3 computers up and running constantly, then it still makes sense to unplug them instead of 'the energy hog' dryer, if the dryer only uses up twice the power of a single computer. I would have loved to know relative strengths, such as 1 electric stove = 7 laptops.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Our dryer died one day, and since it did not belong to us (it belonged to the landlord; he did not want to fix it; long story), we just left it there and started hanging our clothes instead. We were a little irritated by the inconvenice at first, but after that first electric bill we were sold. $25/mo less per month. I made sure to compare all the transmission/generation charges just to be sure it was all from the dryer.
Now this was in 2003. We've noticed that the generation charge has been going up, so that, compared to 2003, we are paying roughly $10 more a month for the same number of kWh (roughly 180 kWh/mo). So you'll even save a bit more now.
Anyhow, that prompted us to walk around and replace all of our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, and so on (saving us another $10/mo). Considering that none of these bulb have died (save the one that our landlord dropped), I think the $40 or so we put into bulbs has paid us back quite a bit.
I did the same experiment with the power meter. I was quite surprised to discover that under normal load, my Soekris router consumed less than 1W. Very cool. The same can't be said about the laser printer (LaserJet 4M Plus), though. 700W peak, ~30W at idle. We leave that one off most of the time.
I live in Bellevue, Washington, a large suburb between Seattle & Redmond (the land of Evil).
0 03482933_stormmainbar18m.html
Almost the entire city, plus the environs, has been without power for the past 4
days.
Ref:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2
Thus we are major leaders in energy savings!
Erm, no. The sticker on your power supply shows the PEAK wattage available, not the actual current draw, which is undoubtedly much less.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
That's better than a 26% per year ROI. The 100 Watt equivalents are about than $2.70 each when purchased in 3 packs at Walmart. I replaced every bulb that didn't have an occlusion due to a light fixture (about 30) in my home for around $80.
It's a better investment than the stock market any day.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
but just a moment of reflection should tell you that yes, anything that generates heat is going to be a huge draw of power. one can directly express heat power in Watts; yes, the same watts used to express electrical power.
electric heaters are usually 1500 watts. light bulbs from 60 to 100 watts. appliance motors in the home are around 1/4 to 1/2 horsepower (1 horsepower ~= 746 watts).
let's keep this in terms of heat for a second. in case you're wondering what uses more power -- your hair dryer or wireless router, you can do this simple test. put your hand on the hair dryer -- in just a few seconds, it will burn. perhaps a 1st degree burn. now, put your hand on your wireless router. warm, but not burn. in fact, it might feel cozy depending on your clime. therefore, i give to you the severity of the burn is proportional to how much electricity a device is using.
another indication is the size of the power cable something uses.
i dunno. i thought every self-respecting nerd had a handle on basic home power and loading.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
I've spent time thinking about this recently.
Assuming that you're spending money heating your house in the winter, isn't it effectively impossible to "waste" electricity? Any electricity you consume is going to end up as heat (minus an irrelevant amount as light and kinetic energy), which you want anyway.
Of course, if your main heat source is not electricity (e.g. gas), electricity might be slightly more expensive. But I think the basic idea holds.
So you do not know how many watts your dryer is, yet take the liberty to 'estimate' the $25 figure.
I would start with reading the wattage close to the handle.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
he doesnt have a 30" Inch LCD screen as his computer monitor and a dual-core GeForce 7900 GTX with 512 MB RAM and a 7.1 Surround Sound System.
All the electricity these gadgets consume is turned into heat, so in the cold season, they are completely free. Every watt they use results in one watt less used to heat the house.
The same goes for lightbulbs and any other electric appliance except the ones that heat the outside (like the clothes drier)
On the other hand, if you run the A/C for a long time in the summer, you pay twice for the electricity these gadgets use. First when the gadget turns it into heat, secondly when the A/C pumps the heat out of the house.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
I wonder how long he estimated he left his lights on and how long they actually were on. On anouther note I would have thought that an always on device like the fridge would have ranked alot higher on the cost range. I mean I can go weeks without washing my cloths, my friends stay away but sometimes thats a plus. The fridge on the other hand is always plugged in and doing something even if its not cooling. I also wonder if he included the light in the fridge as part of his math for lighting. Lord knows that things always on...
Nah...in the long run, that will prove to be VASTLY more expensive, especially if you ever decide to upgrade to a newer model.
That's why I just live with them....more like leasing with an option to buy.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
One shouldn't confuse consumption with waste, he's talking about total consumption here. A dryer running constantly with no clothes in it is wasted power. Yet no one sensible would do that.
Most newer computers can ramp down power consumption when not in use, but they're still using some power. Lights left on when no one around is wasted energy (and bulbs), just as a computer running at full tilt with no one around is usually wasted. But if you're google using however many thousands of computers that they are running constantly isn't a waste.
Wasted power are things you don't see any benefit from. Yes, I could air dry all my clothes, though I live in canada, so 6 (now thanks to global warming 4) months of the year I could air freeze my clothes. So a dryer is an inefficient use of power at least part of the year but it isn't wasted as such. Leaving the refrigerator open 24/7 is wasting power. Running the dryer 20 minutes longer to make sure your clothes are extra dry is wasting power. Leaving a computer running full bore when no one is using it is wasting power. Inefficient power use is when you don't insulate your house (or open air it depending on your climate and house) but they obviously don't work for everyone. Incandescent bulbs are inefficient in terms of power, but total cost of ownership is harder to quantify. I find fluorescents burn out as fast or faster than regular ones, and the fluorescents cost more, that may be a matter of tolerance to humidity, electrical fluctuations and air temperature but I don't know. It would be nice to reduce power consumption but not if it costs me 30 or 40 bucks a month in replacement bulbs to save 10 bucks on my power bill.
The hierarchy of power consumption is:
- Electric heating (resistive heating: Driers, room heaters, heating appliances.)
- Motors
- Lighting
- Consumer electronics.
Electric heating (by resisitance heaters) consumes an ENORMOUS amount of power.
Switching from electric to gas drying (so the electric load is just the motor) will cause a big savings in the electric bill, while the gas bill won't go up anywhere neer enough to compensate. Ditto (even more so) if the house has electric heat.
Same is true of the other heating appliances (hair driers, toasters, stoves and ovens, etc.) But (except for ovens if you do a LOT of baking) they tend to only run a short time so it doesn't make all THAT much difference on your bill.
Motors are the next big load. Air conditioners are the worst, due to the heat pump. But moving anything around (even air) is costly. One horsepower is almost exactly 3/4 KW (and motors can be very efficient - 80s to 90s percent - but they're still not lossless). (Nevertheless, using a heat-pump for HEATING - especially if the weather outside is above freezing or so - uses a lot less power than resistive heating. But except for merely cool days it's still more expensive than gas.)
Lighting is next. Incandescents are especially hot heaters, and the light is the visible part of the hot-wire glow. Much more is heat. Switch to fluorescents (compact or otherwise) and you get about four times as much light per watt. (LEDs may beat that in a few years but right now they're trailing fluorescents.)
Consumer electronics is 'way down there - because it's improved a lot and because there has been serious effort to increase its efficiency and reduce its losses - as well as to reduce localized heating of the components. (When I got my first linux box it was a good space heater - and most of that was the disk drive. Nowdays things take a LOT less power.) With cheap semiconductors modern power supplies are now highly-efficient switching-mode devices, which also helps a lot.
(Other appliances have also been re-engineered for efficiency, so switching to a modern large appliance may save you significant power and/or fuel. But electronics has had a much bigger improvement.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
You can get LED christmas lights now, for around $7.00 a string of 35. They're pretty bright.
I drank what? -- Socrates
If you look at a spectrogram of the light output of an incandescent bulb and a fluorescent bulb, you will see one of the major problems with fluorescent lighting. The incandescent bulb produces uniform energy over a wide range of frequencies, while the fluorescent bulb produces a very spikey output, most of its energy is emitted in a very narrow range of frequencies. See here for some examples.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Recently I bought a Fisher and Paykel washing machine from an appliance outlet store. It's quite the unique little washing machine. Instead of having a clutch and transmission, it runs off of a brushless electric motor. This thing spins and spins fast! The ending cycle spins the clothing at 1000RPM to sling all the water and soap out of them. Since this purchase, my clothes take about 1/2 the time in the dryer that they used to. Instead of pulling out soaking wet clothes from the washer, my clothes are only a few steps from being dried. I have a dryer with a moisture sensor built in, so they spend no more time than they have to in the drying cycle. I actually prefer them to be slightly damp so that, when they fully dry, they will be wrinkle free. I seem to be saving an average of $10 a month on electricity, and my clothes have never been so soft and clean smelling....
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Slap a carbon tax on Microsoft, Intel, AMD and graphics card makers.
In the end, it's you and I who would pay it. Such taxes serve only to depress the standard of living for regular people and give governments more money to waste on pointless bullshit like lobbying for additional taxes.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
And Americans fondly imagine they live in a free country.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Dude, just have a shower with your cloths on, get 100% wet, take them off, and hand wrince them dry.
Place them on a clothes rack and they will dry indoors in hours.
1) no washer needed, just uses soap from shower
2) no dryer needed, all natural
3) you wash in FIFO order, not 5 days worth at a time.
4) you save water
5) its dry by the morning to wear again, so you only need 2 pairs of everything at most
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Yes, it still gets a bit hot. But you can easily touch it (for less than a second). The people who give demos actually put their hands on it for longer times, but they're used to it.
Imagine putting your hand on a halogen cooking device...
So far I cooked on gas, plain electric, halogen, and finally induction. Induction cooking beats everything else!