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Monitor Draws Zero Power In Standby
fifthace writes "A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby. The technology uses capacitors and relays to avoid drawing power when no video signal is present. With political parties all over Europe calling for a ban on standby, this small development could end up as one of the most significant advances in recent times. The British Government estimates eight percent of all domestic electricity is consumed by devices in standby."
...when I see CRTs at work lighting up the room when they render "black".
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Then it just draws EXTRA power while running, to charge the capacitors. Electricity can't be produced from nothing.
A more useful version would be one that used solar cells on the top of the LCD to absorb the already expended energy of ambient lighting.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I believe the proper term is "hibernate". When my laptop is in standby, it still draws power. But when I close the lid on my laptop, and it goes into hibernation mode, it draws no power until I open the lid again. The same could be said of these monitors. They draw no power until a user does something analogous to me opening the lid on my laptop.
The game.
why can't people just be disciplined enough to switch off their monitors before leaving for home/office?
I just want an Off switch on my printers and scanners! Or if they do have one, put it in the front. I use my scanner once a month, it's crazy to leave it plugged in all the time (no power switch). My printer's power switch is way around at the back, hard to reach - I only print once or twice a week. At least my LCD has an off button on the front, but it is never really off.
What do they consider standby?
I guess this is more save the planet stuff.
Now I need to buy new monitors, tv's, vcrs, dvd players, microwave, oven, unplug my clocks every day, etc.. Lots more aluminum smelted. Lots more resources used up. Lots more pollution, but we all can sleep better knowing the residential power demand may shrink by a fraction of a percent.
I'll get right on that after I scrap my relatively new car and buy a prius, and pull and toss all my perfectly functional lighing in favor of compact flourescent. And if we all pitch in, the rate of increase of power demand of this planet will slow by a probably incalculably small amount.
Why do individuals need to change their lives so radically, for an extremely minor, and likely insignificant payoff - all the while lining the pockets of the worlds leading polluters?
If my PC didn't have standby, it'd simply be on all the time, and so would yours - don't lie. This is all getting a little bit silly. Where are the real problem solvers, why are we waiting for government to solve these problems?
My solution? "Consume" as little as possible. I got a ton of shit already, I don't need anymore. We simply aren't going to buy our way to a cooler planet.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I built a relay and cap circuit when I was in highschool to turn AC circuits on and off with a standard momentary push button. The result, zero stand-by current. holding the momentary switch completed a circuit which would cascade and latch a larger relay. This relay would hold itself closed until you interrupted the power. Simple, and makes a satisfying click.
I'm not sure how you can patent something that 1-2% of EE students discovered on their own.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes it's still a good thing, but meanwhile has anyone invented an airconditioner/heater or car that's much more efficient but at the same time as practical and as affordable as the conventional stuff?
My airconditioner uses at least 1kW. 1 hour of airconditioning = 20 days of monitor standby.
For those of you who live in countries that need central heating, the standby power isn't going to hurt as much during winter since you want stuff warmer anyway.
I need a better designed house (to reduce cooling bills etc), but I can't afford one... An "Energy Star" legislation for houses here might be good, but I'm worried the builders will just use it as a way to make a lot more money.
For one, their math is not based in reality. These are numbers pulled out of their asses, with no backing as to if they are correct. However even if there is some truth, you run in to the fact that most people are using LCDs (and more convert all the time) and most LCDs are backwards. All LCDs run their backlights on full (or rather at the full level the user sets) at all times they are displaying. They work by blocking light. Well, the most common form of LCDs, the Twisted Nematic, are open by default. That is to say when there's no current across the junction, they pass the maximum amount of light. As such to turn black they need full power applied to the junction. They actually use more power to do black then white. There are LCDs that do not work this way (IPS and VA variants) but they are by far the minority on computer displays.
So a "Blackle" would increase power usage on LCD systems, which needs to be factored in.
If these people really care about saving energy, maybe they'd look to things like old, inefficient air conditioning units. ACs use power like no other appliance in a normal home. However there are many different quality levels out there. Good modern ones can move a lot more heat per unit of energy input. This is generally measured in a term called SEER, which means how many Btus of cooling a unit does per watt-hour of energy input. For old units SEER values of 9 or less are common. These days, you can't get less than 13 (by law) and you can get them over 20 SEER. That means that you'll be talking about a unit roughly twice as efficient at cooling. That is some major, major energy savings right there. Doesn't take a lot of that to equal their theoretical Google numbers, and this is backed up by reality.
Practically no oil is going towards generating electricity on the grid.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Where does the micro come from?
/.ers don't, no matter what they think) then don't pretend to.
I realise that this is the third time that I've posted in this topic now, but FFS people if you don't know anything about discrete electronics (and most
I do know about it. It's my job to know about it. Standby power is part of what I do, I develop electronics for certain types of household goods. What they have done here is nothing new, except perhaps for the solar panel (it's unncessary, probably done for marketing reasons). It is trivial to build zero power standby circuits for most home appliances except those that use remotes to wake them up. It does not require magic, or micros, or cheating the laws of physics, or anything like that, what it does require is usually a little more cost. Hell, the standby power of most devices is double or triple what it could easily be because it saves a few cents, and a few cents on a few million items is a few years salary for a few engineers. In several of the designs I've done I've gone so far as tracking changes which would take standby power from ~1.5 Watts down to 0.2 Watts, they're on the PCB, but the parts are not fitted and the el-cheapo circuit is fitted instead. Because the beancounters said so.
Until governments require low standby powers on domestic equipment (and I mean really low, not energy star BS, although at least it's a start), manufacturers are going to continue the way they are because it's cheaper to make energy inefficient devices.
my sig could kick your sig's arse...