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Dell, Lenovo Adding Solar Option for PCs
An anonymous reader writes "Lenovo just announced a solar power option for PCs, and Dell is about to do the same, according to Advanced Energy Group. But the solar hardware weights 86 pounds and costs $1,300! Lenovo officials admit they had to do this to reach the 75% mark to gain EPEAT Gold status; Dell couldn't be reached for comment. Hopefully the technology will get smaller and more affordable."
...could you plant for $1300? That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
Oh no... it's the future.
...here, have a few freebie trees on me! Go ahead, claim a dozen, they are cheap! You have to go way out of your way to NOT have trees gradually take over pastureland. We have untold *thousands and thousands* of wild trees sprout all on their own here every year. Carbon offsets and new green taxes and whatnot though are scams, pure bloated governmental bureaucracy/corporate dodgy scams.
With that said, solar PV *works* and works well, and is affordable now if you extrapolate probable electricity costs for a coupla decades into the future. I have a home made version of what is in the article (single good sized panel, charge controller, storage battery on a handtruck so it was movable, tied in with a long heavy gauge extension I made from scrap welding cables, and those went to more storage batts) and ran my old computer (a laptop, but it is what I had then) from it for years.
I am extreme pro environment, and I walk the talk and slap my wallet where my mouth is and have for a long time now, but I warn folks, watch for the conjobs from the globalist green movement. Parts of it are righteous, parts of it are pure con, it isn't all one or the other. We can do much better with energy conservation in our buildings and vehicles and gadgets (dropping our demand while still enjoying technology), and we certainly can produce a lot more green power now that economies of scale are seriously ramping up with solar and wind and geothermal and hydro, and because we can see how destructive a lot of "conventional" power is, but beware all the "new carbon taxes" and "carbon trading" and suchlike, they are designed to separate you from your cash and add another burdensome layer of onerous power tripping laws over you and add in even more disgusting middleman "traders" to skim off working guys wealth. So go green, but do it because you like it and we need it as a planet and it works and makes sense and cent$, not because they force you to swallow some serious propaganda and BS.
In terms of "saving the planet" or solving any kind of energy problem, these kinds of bottom-up approaches simply wont do much in most industrialized countries. Its simply much more efficient (energy efficient, cost efficient etc) to centralize power generation- even considering losses through distribution. Even if we expand our power generation capabilities through the consumption of oil or coal, using electric cars that charge off of that infrastructure will be more efficient than placing small ICE in cars they way things are currently done. In industrial-scale facilities its also easier / cheaper to install highly effective scrubbers than it would be to install similar technology in every single vehicle / generator currently in use. Replace those oil/coal/gas burning generators with nuclear and your overall positive impact on the environment goes through the roof. The point is, putting a few small and expensive solar panels on your house to run a computer isnt going to make a difference well, not as much of a difference anyways, as centralized industrial-scale efforts for alternate technologies. Its cheaper, its easier, its more painless and it doesnt really require people to change their lifestyles. Stop asking people to drive less, pressure your local government to phase in more and better public transportation systems. Enforce more rigorous controls on vehicle efficiency and put in place requirements for the implementation of transitional technologies such as hybrid and LPG powered systems. Build more nuclear and wind power plants, start a reprocessing program to reduce the amount of hazardous waste coming out of the nuclear plants. Expand power distribution infrastructure in anticipation of a greater demand as centralized power is utilized more for plug-in type vehicles and public transportation systems. Phase out oil and coal fired plants, keep expanding nuclear generation capabilities, increase funding in power storage research and invest heavily in battery recycling programs. With aggressive governmental and corporate backing of such policies I dont think it would be unreasonable to ban the ICE within the next 50-75 years, and either have significantly reduced or completely ceased the production of electricity through the consumption of coal and oil. It wouldnt matter if oil is going to run out in 50 years or 150 if we're prepared for it. It doesnt matter if we've caused the globe to heat up yet or not, it will never be something we have to worry about. All this bickering over whether its a problem now or not is completely irrelevant, even if it isnt yet, it will be. Maybe not in the next century, maybe so. It doesnt matter. The problem with democracies is that most are almost universally incapable of planning for the future. It doesnt fucking matter if its a problem today or not if its going to be a problem in the future. Expand our fiber networks today, phase out environmentally harmful technologies today, push the envelope of human technology and progress. FUCKING DO SOMETHING PEOPLE. We have the technology, we have the resources. It will cost a lot yes, but nowhere near as much as enacting hasty fixes to save our asses once its crunch time.
A more worthwhile goal is just to reduce the power consumption of your PC. The computer referred to in TFA draws 45 W, which is nice and low. I would just call that a victory and stop there. When I built my most recent machine, I decided to go for low power, and without using any particularly exotic hardware, I managed to get it down to 98 W, including the monitor, when the CPU is idle. It's a nice, snappy computer, with a dual-core AMD x64 CPU. If you're shopping for a power supply, make sure and get an 80PLUS model. Another reasonable thing to do, if you're concerned about your impact on the environment, is if you're just going to do word processing, programming, and web browsing, don't buy a gaming machine with a video card that gets hot enough to fry an egg.
The solar thing being discussed in the article is clearly a silly gimmick. You'd get more environmental bang for the buck by installing photovoltaics on the roof (and that's an option for businesses as well as homeowners). YMMV, but where I live in Southern California we get a lot of sun, and my roof faces south, so photovoltaics ended up being a good deal for me. (It's hard to estimate how long the investment will take to pay for itself, because it depends sensitively on how much electric rates go up in the future. The historical trend has always been up, but it's hard to predict exactly how much more rates will go up in, say, the next 10 years.) There is at least one theoretical situation in which a special-purpose solar panel for a specific device can make sense, and that's where you have a device that uses a lot of power, and can run on DC. The classic example is pool pumps. Pool pumps tend to be insane power hogs, and they use DC motors, so you can actually be more efficient by using special-purpose photovoltaics than plugging into the AC from a general-purpose PV system's inverter. A computer can also run on DC, and I believe in some big data centers they do use hardware that runs on DC, because it saves the electricity that would have been wasted by inefficiency in the individual computers' power supplies. If you were running such a center in an area with a lot of sun, and you had some roof space available, it could certainly be smart to get a big PV system installed, without an inverter, to supply DC to the machines.
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Just wait until you hear about my solution for server rooms...
lol: You see no door there!
I doubt if they even want to sell any. Do you think Dell wants to be taking support calls about solar panels? They probably deliberately priced it unattractively.
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That's something many environmental types love to ignore. They spend large amounts of money on things that have pretty small environmental benefits, and then say "every little bit counts" and so forth. Whereas what they should be asking is "how could I spend this money so as to do the most good/least damage to the environment?"
"They" are "ignoring it" because trees aren't the largest source of oxygen on the planet- phytoplankton in the oceans are. I've seen numbers as high as 90%, but I think most scientists would agree it is "more than half."
They" are "ignoring it" because trees don't remove industrial pollutants, they don't bring much in the way of renewable energy (they do have lots of side benefits, like preventing erosion, providing habitat for ecosystems, shading the ground and buildings from solar radiation in hot areas, providing renewable construction materials, etc) and so on. Planting trees does jack shit to address the pollution from power plants (more than a third of the United States electricity comes from coal, of which the soot contains radioactive particles among other things), planes, trains, and trucks.
The problem here is not that manufacturers aren't trying; it's that these companies make a business out of reselling other people's stuff. That Dell laptop was not actually designed by Dell; Apple is one of the few companies to design in-house. Dell goes shopping each year in Asia and sees what OEM laptops it likes, and then slaps their label on 'em.
What is needed is a company other than Advanced Energy Group slapping a $1400 price tag on what is essentially:
Far as I can see, they're making a 100% profit margin ON TOP OF RETAIL PRICES for all those components. The problem with most solar "technologies" is that everyone is exceptionally greedy. If they priced the stuff with more reasonable profit margins, they'd sell quite a bit more of 'em.
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Solar powered PC's for 1500$ are a prime example of what's wrong with the consumerist approach to environmentalism.
I doubt whether the energy saved by running a PC off this thing will even offset the energy used in it's manufacture, but hey it sounds good and people go "aren't dell good environmentalists".
Everybody goes out and replaces their (perfectly functioning) fords with a "green" Prius. Totally ignoring the fact that manufacturing the Prius itself requires large amounts of energy, therefore emitting a lot of carbon. It would be better for the planet to keep to old car for a few years, or even better to use public transport.
The consumerist approach to environmentalism is like trying to fight WWII by asking individual members of the population to buy guns and go out and shoot a few Germans in their spare time. If governments took this problem remotely as seriously as they claim to there would be proper regulation, as indeed there must be. Consumerism will not solve this problem, we need people who can actually add up working out how existing resources can best be directed to save the planet; not the bloody marketing department at dell.
If they really want to help out with alternative energy usage there are a few things they can do easily:
- Design the power supplies and charge controllers of laptops to accept reasonably "wild" voltages on the input jack, publish the specs and limits, and approve direct connection to panels or 12v renewable energy systems. Alternatively they could make available an INEXPENSIVE charging brick that accepts such voltages on its input.
By 'reasonably "wild"' I mean the voltages that would appear off, say, a 12v panel (about 14.5v) or a 12V renewable-energy battery bank (about 13.5, up to 14.something during equalization). Disconnect at a minimum charge to protect batteries from undercharge would be a good idea, too. (Make it resistant to voltage spikes from switching of inductive loads and it could also be plugged directly into a cigarette lighter in a car as well.)
Down-converter bricks for 24 and 48 volt systems would be good, too. Working through one step of conversion, rather than running the system's big (and thus lossy) inverter to get power up to 120VAC for a standard brick and then bringing it back down to what the laptop wants, would be a big win.
- Improve power management (including clock-speed management, disk shutdown, and screen backlighting control) for lowered power consumption when not needed for heavy crunch or display. (For linux: Provide the hooks for the open software to do this.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way