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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.
A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby.
The monitor might not, but what about the power brick? those things consume power even if no monitor is attached.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Empirically, they can't. It does not matter why, unless with that answer comes some insight into how to change it. It would appear that simply telling them to do better has no impact. If *you* want to save power, then that method has some hope of success. If a large organization or society wants to save power, that method is almost hopeless. So, given that you can't just tell people to conserve energy and expect it to work, what can you do? Incentives or mandates for more efficient standby modes is one solution that might actually have an impact.
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.
The biggest wastage in taditional designs is that they use switch mode power supplies designed to run at full power. They don't operate very efficiently at very low (standby) power. It is far better to completely turn off the power supply and just use a local capacitor to keep the micro going.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
No one is telling you to go out and buy one right away or we're all goners. It's just another option to consider when your current model fails. The same goes for the rest of that saving the planet stuff.
The game.
I like this trend. If a device wants to consume 0 power on standby then it finally means that they'll stop putting those damn blue LEDs on everything electronic. Then I could have a dark bedroom at night without the use of electrical tape.
So does that mean I can pull the plug and have the monitor remain in standby mode?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
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
Most very low power modern devices have nasty power factors. PC power supplies tend to be .6 to .8. CFLs run from about .2 to .6 while many phone charges are about .2. That means for every watt delivered to the phone, there line losses in the grid are at least 3 W if not more. There are also losses in the generator so getting 1 Watt into your phone (or CFL) may require more power than putting 5W into a resistive load.
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.
Oh crap. Maybe mechanical devices might have a problem - like spinning down and spinning up your hard drive - but not electrical devices. Modern electronic devices haven't been around for decades, maybe just over one. Most old fashioned electoronics - like old TVs and radios - did get turned on and off (they had no standby) and they did last decades.
Modern devices barely last five years before needing replacing. Add the fact that they chew up power when they are in "stand-by" and I wonder what the definition of "progress" really is.
We do not inherit the Earth from our parents. We borrow it from our children.
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.
Damn I wish I had points. That was the clearest rebuttal I've seen to date to date of the sort of numbskulled responses you see all the time on slashdot these days: "why can't people just take responsibility blah blah blah".
It seems a lot of people simply can't tell the difference between "not my problem" and "not a problem" - between placing responsibility for a problem and actually seeing it solved. You wouldn't expect the same people to argue "Why can't all world leaders just sit down and hold hands and sort it all out peacefully", but it's exactly the same sort of worthless argument. Well, I don't know why, but your rhetorical question doesn't mean whatever reasons there are suddenly disappear, and hurrah if they all did what you suggest, but I'm sure as hell not going to carry on with my life pretending "well that's solved, then".
This mental dodo is especially mind-boggling when the negative impact is on a third party and not on the one identified as 'responsible'. "Damn regulations. Parents should take some responsibility and screen their children's toys for toxic chemicals". Implicitly: "if they don't then they deserve what they get". Errr, OK, let's just for the sake of argument assume that they did deserve it. Does that affect what their kids deserve?
This last variant also incorporates another common logical gem: the scapegoat fallacy - the idea that responsibility for something is a constant amount. If you can blame someone, everybody else is off the hook. It's like saying that "the hit man was just doing his job", or "don't blame me, hire the hit man I hired". No. You are both fully responsible for all easily foreseeable consequences of your actions, including how you affect the actions of others, and a longer list of parties who share responsibility for the result does not lessen yours unless it lessens your control or predictive capability over what happened.
sudo ergo sum