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The Insatiable Power Hunger of Home Electronics
An anonymous reader writes "A Wall Street Journal columnist recently got his hand on a power meter and decided to write about his findings, the resulting article being discussed here on Slashdot. That author concluded that gadgets are getting a bad rap, and are relatively insignificant power consumers in the grand scheme of things. A rebuttal has appeared, arguing that not only are modern electronics significant power consumers already, while everything else is becoming more efficient, home electronics seem to be getting worse. This echoes the Department of Energy's assertion that 'Electricity consumption for home electronics, particularly for color TVs and computer equipment, is also forecast to grow significantly over the next two decades.' Are gadgets unfairly maligned, or getting an unearned pardon?"
In general, an LCD TV is 2x more energy efficient than a CRT. Modern dual-core processors are more energy efficient then older processors. However, as with all gains in efficiency, we're using MANY more of them. That's just what happens.
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I think it's more regional than anything else. The current definition of National household electricity consumption is, in effect, an average of household electricity consumption in different regions across the United States and is affected by many factors. However, hot summers increase the amount of electricity used for air conditioning and other space cooling, so households in southern States will tend to use more electricity. Similarly, cold winters increase the amount of energy used for space heating. Although U.S. households more frequently rely on natural gas than on electricity for heating, in the South the reverse is true, meaning that households in southern States will tend to have a peak of electricity use in winter as well as in summer.
Humidity is another climate-related factor that affects electricity consumption. Households in more humid regions tend to use air-conditioners and dehumidifiers to remove humidity. Households in arid regions, such as the Mountain States, are able to use evaporative coolers instead of air-conditioning for space cooling.
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Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
So, who is right? The WSJ or the article referenced? Actually both.
The article referenced talks about the trends for energy consumption. And, in that respect, the consumer electronics win hands down, since more and more people buy computers, flat-screen TVs and assorted electronic gadgets. On the other hand, the WSJ is right, since the overall energy consumption of these gadgets is still a very small fraction of the total.
One thing that I'd personally like to do soon would be to compare the electricity used by all my computers (6 and counting, including a big Sun workstation, 3 laptops, a modem/router, a wireless access point, a laser printer, etc) vs the overall electricity usage in my home. I have relatively modern equipment, and I am currently switching everything to low-power equipment.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Sure they might run instant on feature that takes some current drain 24x7 so they can do a warm start. Or a clock.
Chase down the Off-Grid living web sites and you'll soon find that one of the biggest problems people have when they first try to do off grid is all their appliances that drain just a little power all night long, leaving insufficient power for the morning routines.
I have three digital clocks in my kitchen, two in my entertainment center... I don't own a watch anymore because I realized that there is no place except the bathroom that I can stand in my house and not see a clock face. And I don't own any clocks!
The need for everything to have a digital clock and instant on takes up a lot more power then you think. Turn everything off and go look at your meter. it's still chugging along rather nicely. We could do much better if we dropped the clocks and dropped the instant on. Tube televisions took minutes to warm up. Solid State televisions take a few seconds to warm up. Instant On only saves me 3 seconds at most.
He's absolutely right. Ignoring AC costs, IMO its house size that is causing the increase in usage, and its changes in how houses are lit. 20 years ago houses were lit typically with a single fixture in a room, and lamps. (Or, if you're in the northeast US, typically just lamps, although I couldn't tell you why that is...)
These days lighting design is all the rage, and its common to have 4 or more fixtures in a room, often R30 can lights at 65w each projecting downward so you need 4 or more to light a room. The room I'm in right now visiting my parents has 4 can lights, a light with 4 60 watt bulbs in it, and two recessed spot lights of unknown power. Ignoring those, its still 500 watts to light this room.
My house is 60+ years old, but was renovated six years ago -- most of it is can lit as well. It has 24 65 watt R30 can lights in it, among all the other lights.
I saw a nearly $30 a month drop in my electric bill switching the entire house to CFL. Dimmable R30 bulbs are pricey, $12+ each, but they will have payed themselves off in a year. I typically am facist about keeping lights off, too... I'm sure the savings would be double that if I had kids leaving them on all the time.
On a geek note, I also got a $30 savings a month by making changes in the data center in the basement. An old HP rack server was replaced with a much less power hungry desktop box which was faster... that saved 75% of the electricity it used to use. Three other desktop boxes which were slower were replaced with two free laptops with broken screens I got from friends who tend to break their laptops. The upside as well is that one small UPS can power everything for almost an hour.
Yeah was about to say your missing a 2x multiplier if your in the UK. None of the equipment complains about running on 50hz instead?
A lot of equipment is completely oblivious to this shift in frequency. Most affected are appliances with AC motors and clocks. If the first thing an appliance does is convert AC to DC (as with almost all electronic appliances) then no difference will be noticed. If there is a transformer before the first rectifier, then there may be a slight loss of power.
www.wavefront-av.com
When we first got a TV (1988), the TV had a power switch, five channels and definitely no remote. So, whenever we didn't need the TV, we just switched off the power and turned it on when we needed it.
When 1999 dawned, the TV was a flat screen 25" with a remote. And lo, we would turn off the power for the TV only when we left the house (locked up) or at night. And that was just because my house was on the very top of a hill and power lines were often hit by lightning (yeah, I had my modem explode once).
And finally, now in 2006 (in a different city), I have six things plugged in - from DVD player to the TV itself. And it is such a big mess that nobody ever unplugs anything at all - just use the remote to turn it on & off. That sleep mode does take a fair bit of power (well, tens of watts) which is just going to an absolute waste (well, heating the room).
It is these un-noticed devices which suck a constant, but econonomically neglible drain - which could be avoided. The things you can fix aren't always the biggest consumers (water heaters, refrigerator) but small things like these - in a global level.
It is not just such permanently on stuff that you have - the average geek still has more connectors than you'd think. I realized this when I was in the high himalayas - and we were charging stuff before we left human habitation. (Oh, took the laptop to 18,000 feet).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Two comments:
First, these are Volt-Amps, not necessarily Watts. National Grid is going to charge you for Watts. The "Watts=VoltsxAmps" formula only works for 100% resistive loads or DC. On AC, you have to adjust for reactive power.
Second, what is going into your power converter that you are using to run your Canadian appliances in the UK? In other words, how much have you increased the insanity?
On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of the night barefoot! :-)
www.wavefront-av.com
A friend of mine rents a loft in my house and he asked me to check out why his part
of our power bill was so much greater (he now has a meter). Turns out his standby
power on all his devices is half of his total average power draw. They are on all the
time, after all, whereas the bigegr items are used mkore rarely. He also has more
gizmos than you can shake a stick at. To sum thar up: when he's away from the house
on vacation or whatever, with TVs and compuetrs off, his power draw is still at 50% of
the noraml amount. For what's it's worth...
Maxim'
1) Off buttons that really turn off the power, not just put the device in a 'standby mode'.
2) Manufacturers should be obliged to make low-voltage devices have transformers internal(and wired after the power switch), and make those really annoying power bricks you now get with everything illegal.
Apart from usually being a ridiculous single-piece design that occludes several other sockets in a power strip, they cause massive cable tangles and practical use requires that they be left permanently powered-on.
Right... When the kids start demanding broccoli, we'll serve it. Until then, more candy.
On a side note, don't you just love those British 3-prong plugs? Just be careful not to step on one in the middle of the night barefoot! :-)
Or, more generally, don't step on anything pointy barefoot. Time of day and intended purpose of the pointy thing are not important.
I admit it, I now have more gadgets drawing current than I did five years ago. I have also reduced power consumption in the past five years. Five years ago, my typical electric bill was US $125 a month, it is now in the $75 range. None of the changes have caused any hardships or reduction in quality of life.
1. Replaced heat pump with a more efficient model and installed set back thermostat. I lucked out, the compressor crapped out and I had a service policy. The impact on quality of life is nil, I had to learn the new thermostat.
2. Replaced refrigerator with a more efficient model. It was expensive but the old refrigerator was about 30 years old and was reaching the end of it's service life. It is a nicer refrigerator than the old one and it is quieter.
3. Replaced commonly used light bulbs with compact fluorescent. This was an inexpensive change and it had the most impact on quality of life. The color and light quality of the new compact fluorescents compares to the old lights but they take a few minutes to produce full light output. They remind me of a tube type radio warming up.
I think that the most interesting replacements were the night lights. I replaced the 6 night lights that used to draw about 4 watts each with LEDs. I connected a wall wart to an unused wire pair in my home telephone wiring and I use the phone wiring to transport power to my night light LEDs. I had the wall wart, LEDs, and other parts in my junk box -- and they work great.
The light conversion is both saving power used for lighting and reducing the summer air conditioning load. Someday I might even figure out how long it will take to save any money by replacing those lights. The main light in the living room was a 300 watt halogen torchiere which I replaced with three fluorescent flood lights which cost $35 for a new floor lamp and bulbs, rated power consumption went from 300 watts down to about 75 watts; and I frequently don't turn on all three of the bulbs. This summer I noticed that the living room was much cooler with the new lights. The kitchen is saving a similar amount of watts but the lights in the kitchen are not used very often.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
Grins.
When My younger brother was about 5 my mother was rewiring a plug to a vacuum cleaner.
She turned around to do something else leaving the plug in parts. For those of you who have no experience with British plugs most of them can be unscrewed and reconnected by hand. the fully molded ones that are common in the US have only started to show up on British equipment in the last 15 years or so.
So my little brother ever the curios little brat picked up the separate prongs.
He was smart enough to work out that if he inserted the ground prong (we call it earth in the uk) the slot opened for the other two prongs.
so he industriously inserted the other 2 prongs and was thrown across the room.
He came out of it with nothing more the a few bruises and lots of crying. And if I am honest he was lucky to survive.
But 20 years later it is funny to look back on.
I was 9 at the time and came in just in time to see all the lights go out and my little brother flying across the room.
As for the size of our plugs. They were designed at a time when the average electrical device was the size of a small washing machine. And as such the size was not an issue.
And given the fact that we have a much higher voltage and current possibility from our standard system then the US. A better comparison is not US to US plug but US to the US plugs used for washing machines and ovens. you know those big 3 phase ones that use the save voltage as British houses have all over.
As a Britt living in the US. I can assure you I get more annoyed by having to straiten out bent pins and stuff then you do by the rare occasions that carrying a large plug from one location to another is needed.
But I do remember standing on the odd plug myself in the past. Think of it as a British right of passage. you really haven't lived there until you have spent a few mins hopping around on one foot screaming.
The Wall Street Journal is right (for once). The vast majority any house's electrical costs are Heating-Air Conditioning, and Water heating (baring designs using solar water heaters, and below ground air conditioning, I acknowledge that you exist, but let's face it, you're far less than 1% of the population). If electrical usage is rising, its the fault of the rise of McMansions, and generally larger housing in general. Most housing in the US is poorly designed and piss-poor insulated, with dozens of windows. All of which add hugely to HAC. Windows in particular are a huge elephant of electricity costs, especially the huge ones popular today, built with no consideration at all about where the sun is going to be at different seasons.
From the article theorizing that home electronic power usage seems to be getting worse:
We could probably save the Earth a little more if we didn't do one to two loads of dishes a day, and if we didn't wash a dozen loads of laundry a week, but hey, that's modern life with small children. These are luxuries of modern living that I'm going to clutch onto until the ocean is lapping at the door.
I wonder if his kids and grandkids will feel similarly about Dad's attitude?!
Don't get me wrong, the guy seems to be doing more than most people. My point is that we are not "entitled" to lives of such "luxuries" (his word) as we kill off species and, indeed, the entire planet.
We have a helluva lot of change to do -- either willingly or it'll be forced on us -- and most of that change needs to occur between our ears.
I have a 2.5GHz P4 with 1GB of memory and 4 HDD as well as two 21" CRT monitors.
After 10 minutes in sleep mode it all consumes 5W.
1. PC It runs 24/7, and consumes 43kWh or $6 a year.
2. Clothes drier runs 6 hours a week at 4kW thats 416kWh or $60 a year
3. PC when CPU doing actual work sucks 147W thats 1300kWh or $206 a year. When I discovered this, I immediately disabled the protein folding project my PC was participating in.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
i remember reading about a proposed dc bus in pop sci some years ago that really grabbed my imagination. basically, in your house, along with the 120 vac outlets, there would be connections for +/-12vdc and +5vdc -- the most common voltages for analog and digital electronics.
the horribly stupid situation we've gotten ourselves into is that now we have a myriad transformers in our houses. i can think of five that are currently plugged in right now in this room. put your hand on one of these -- that heat is wasted electricity.
the thing that should be investigated, i suppose is whether one big power supply is more efficient than a bazillion little ones . . .
also, electronics required 9vdc, eg, will still need to convert the 12vdc, and newer cpu cores use 3.3vdc....
the cool thing about an installed dc bus means that a small solar power system to drive it would become quite economical -- a solar cell and a battery, and you could power a good percentage of your electronic gadgetry.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
polorized plugs are quasi-grounded. the larger blade ensures that the one conductor (don't ask which one) is connected to neutral. in your electric box, the neutral and ground bus bars are bonded, and the utility also bonds the neutral to ground every .25 mile or so.
...For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
It's not just size. 60 years ago, your entire electrical appliance list probably consisted of a toaster, a television, a radio, and a clothes iron. You didn't have three televisions, thee DVD players, two TIVOs, two (or more) computers, two external hard drives, a home theater receiver, four cell phone chargers, a laptop charger, three CD players, a breadmaker, baby monitors, three hair curlers, two hair dryers, an air conditioner, and about a hundred other things.
The NEC has constantly revised the electrical loads to provide more and more outlets precisely because people use more and more electrical devices over time. It's just how things go.
On an unrelated note, I've tried using CFLs in my house for about four years. I still can't find a model where the color doesn't make me want to vomit.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
If that leaves you with some question as to whether you will have an operable earth ground when the ground prong is plastic, you are not qualified to plug appliances into the wall. Please contact a trained professional.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
With the move to HD, one of the proposed solutions was HAVi over Firewire. Basically, each device would have a firewire port (well, two so you daisy chain), you run the daisy chain between the devices, and they provide their interface via Java.
The studios HATED it, because it meant their content was moving around the network digitally (in MPEG-2), which was the point. Want to record something to D-VHS or AVHDD, just choose to record it. The devices tell everyone that they record. No more PVR, or if you got a PVR, it's just software, and can dump to an AVHDD system. The whole thing was encrypted for DRM purposes, but the studios hated it. They loved Component/DVI because nobody could make a direct digital copy (too much space needed, would need to compress). The consumer electronics companies hated it, because it meant you'd have a single MPEG-2 decoder in your television (or receiver, then run Component/DVI to the monitor which would have no knowledge), and everyone else made cheap stuff. There is no room for a "better" DVD player if all the DVD player does is read the MPEG-2 stream and send it over firewire.
So instead, we are in a digital domain, we have lots of codecs, and everyone needs to do D/A conversions (to support components). The problems people have with HDMI are short-term (hopefully), but the CE companies know that if all they do is serve the bits off the disc, and don't do anything to make the picture better (quality digital/analog conversions mattering in DVD/component land, but not in DVD/HDMI land), there is no room for higher end models. Moving digital bits around is unimpressive, and there are only two parts of the system that convert to "analog," the receiver (for audio to go out to speakers), and the monitor... and now most of the high end monitors are "digital" devices, so no D/A to upgrade, but how they process the signal matters, because eventually YOU are looking at the analog (light wave) output of your digital set.
Part of the reason that we're seeing a massive drop in CE prices is that there is a decreasing benefit to quality systems. If you look at projectors, Panasonic is playing with smoothing technologies to gain an edge, because the convention edge is somewhat neutralized when digital data comes in and then powers an LCD (or DLP) system. Regarding the devices talking, Firewire was the correct technology. What's PATHETIC is that we carry SO MUCH data on the HDMI cable (up to 1080p video, up to 8 channels of 24-bit audio), but no control information. If you want automation, you're stuck with IR blasters (retarded), macro'ing remotes (slow and annoying), or a central automation control that runs RS-232 cables for serial control. The other option is a DC "trigger" where we have the fancy, high tech solution of sending a small amount of energy from device A to B, and B does "something."
On the plus side with HDMI, and cheaper analog to digital converters, we're seeing more receivers that can "upconvert" old RCA Video, S-Video, and Component signals into digital easily. While videophiles may not want their receiver doing video conversion (on the believe that the monitor should... and high end display devices probably do a better job of handling the signal), we're AT LEAST at the point that if you set the receiver to the right input, the "television" is truly a monitor only needing one input, and the trigger to turn it on and off can work. If you want to avoid the receiver based solution, there are plenty of component video switchers (that also switch digital audio, coax or toslink), that autosense what device is on. My dad used to use a receiver with multiple sourcing because he could record a DVD to audio cassette for the car, while running a VCR through the system for the television/stereo, but I don't know of anyone that does that any more, few people convert to analog sources, and they normally do their copying on the computer, not in the AV cabinet with the asinine inter
There are actually several different kinds of British plugs. The giant square prong plug is only the most recent incarnation. There are the "lighting" plugs that have round prongs and are more akin to a US plug in size. They were actually the standard until the 70s or so. There are also shaver sockets with two prongs spaced similarly to US sockets. Some even have a voltage switch to select 115V or 230V.
UK plugs are ridiculously overengineered, but I can't say the same about the rest of their house wiring. Having an entire floor of a house on a single 30A circuit is still shockingly common. As are "ring mains" where all the outlets are connected in a giant loop with hot and neutral returning to the fusebox in two directions (this is still a parallel circuit). The problem is if one branch of the circuit is broken, the other side may be asked to carry twice rated current.
-b.
No, that computer isn't *remotely* power effecient.
The ridiculously high 130+watt idle numbers are probably due to the S2K Bus Disconnect bug/issue AMD had before the switch to 64bit CPUs. Running a program like VCool or FVcool would likely reduce that number by 20-60 watts.
The trend in CPUs (still the biggest single power drain in modern computers) is for MUCH more power-effecient models (especially when idle). A newer CPU and motherboard would be using significantly less power than that old Athlon, despite vastly outperforming the older chip.
The recomendations are probably due to the ridiculous power consumption of Pentium 4 CPUs (which are thankfully behind us now) and $5 "500w" PSUs, which can't possibly deliver half the power advertised. Stay away from those two issues, and a 300W power supply is more than enough for modern systems.
Additionally, 80% effecient power supplies like Seasonic's units are becomming more common, and more widely available, helping to significantly reduce power consumption as well.
With all of this, many people are putting together new towers that use less power than their notebooks.
That's not a fair comparison. Those 19" CRTs probably have a "viewable" size of 17.9".
Besides that, a jump of approx 50% power savings is still huge, and better than you'd get trading-in your old refridgerator for a new one... And with other improvements on the horizon, I predict computer displays will continue to out-pace refrigerator effeciency gains for many years to come.
I fail to see how a DC motor is inherently more effecient than an AC motor. For one thing, it comes into your house as AC to begin with.
I sincerely doubt most people watch TV with a surround-sound amplifier on, 40 hours a week.
I don't see the majority of TV programming (things like news, game shows, soap operas, etc.) getting any more exciting when played over 6 speakers instead of the two built-in to the TV.
I don't know why anyone would leave their TV on to listen to digital music channels for hours a day, when it has already been established that the person in question is using a seperate amplifier for their TV viewing already...
But that didn't stop him from using this in his calculations, not to mention claiming that he's trying to save the earth...
No, it isn't. As I've repeated on /. many times before:
"An electric heater will be a purely resistive load, giving you a nearly perfect power factor of 1.0, whereas your VCR probably has a cheap power supply with a power factor as low as 0.4. So the VCR is causing a lot more power loss [line losses], even though it's the same 5watts."
No doubt this test was done on the same 32-bit AMD Athlon system (without S2K Bus Disconnect enabled) WHICH DOESN'T IDLE P
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