Measuring How Much "Standby Mode" Electricity For Game Consoles Will Cost You

An anonymous reader writes: Modern game consoles have a "standby" mode, which you can use if you want the console to instantly turn on while not drawing full power the whole time it's idle. But manufacturers are vague about how much power it takes to keep the consoles in this standby state. After a recent press release claiming $250 million worth of electricity was used to power Xbox Ones in standby mode in the past year, Ars Technica decided to run some tests to figure out exactly how much power is being drawn. Their conclusions: the PS4 draws about 10 Watts, $10-11 in extra electricity charges annually. The Xbox One draws 12.9W, costing users $13-$14 in extra electricity charges annually. The Wii U draws 13.3W, costing users $14-$15 in extra electricity charges annually. These aren't trivial amounts, but they're a lot less than simply leaving the console running and shutting off the TV when you aren't using it: "Leaving your PS4 sitting on the menu like this all year would waste over $142 in electricity costs."

Comments

What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

So about a dollar a month for standby. What would the author consider to be trivial?

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[kungfuj35u5]

Yeah seriously 10 watts isn't bad for an appliance like that, I'd be willing to bet a TV display on standby is in the same ballpark or more. If it were sipping from a battery I'd consider this bad but it isn't a laptop or a phone.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[newcastlejon]

This is the new ars, almost entirely unlike the old ars.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

So about a dollar a month for standby. What would the author consider to be trivial?

That isn't trivial at all. 10-13 watts are ridiculous. It should be 0.5 watt or less. Take that one 13 watt appliance and then multiply it by a household of appliances. Suddenly, have a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb running on 24/7 in every household in America souds like it would be frugal in comparison.

I just found out my DVR STB is using 30 watts electricity whether on or not, just so I can turn on a show, and if it happens to be on a channel I like with a show I like, I can go back up to 15-30 minutes and not miss a thing. You know how often that happens? 0. And yet I'm paying in my area nearly $5 a month for this "feature".

Now multiply that by a household of people with a household of appliances, and it will add up to real money. I loved it when things had a hard switch. Now too much shit has a "soft" power shit, initially so it can sense a remote or do something at some time, but in the meantime too much shit has "convenience" few people use.

Here's a list of typical shit that's running constantly (obviously some is useful to have 24/7, but just to get an overview):
-Coffee Machines/many kitchen appliances
-Microwaves, Ovens, Induction Stoves (sorry, I have enough watches in my life, don't need another one to program and be on all the time)
-computers/cell phones/tablets/phones
-wireless landline phones
-stand top boxes / cable boxes for TVs
-video game consoles
-dvd/blu ray
-security camera
-anything with remote, including standing fans and what not
-alarm clock
-refrigerators
-water heaters
-water pump
-sump pump
-ac
-ac/heat controls
-anything with nonstandard on/off feature - motion activated, solar activated, etc

There are obviously a lot of essentials (fridge, etc), but a lot of the countertop appliances and electronics tend to be just energy vampires and if it matters to you, should be put on a outlet which can be turned off completely (without running to the fusebox). It's also wise to switch off all the nonessentials at outlet or fusebox at vacation time (also will help prevent the odd electrical fire).

And companies should be encouraged to cut down the rates via an energy star program and provide that info of offtime usage to the consumer so they can decide at purchase instead of being surprised at home.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[bzipitidoo]

10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?

I have done a lot to cut my power use. And it's made a big difference. Went from about 10,000 KwH per year to 5,000 KwH. You don't get there by ignoring 10 watts. I did it by living with higher temps in the summer and lower in the winter (83F and 68F respectively). That was the biggest. Even after that, heating and cooling is still by far my biggest energy user, accounting for about 50% of my total usage. Have always had heavy drapes. But it's always frustrated me just how bad the cookie cutter house I have is for keeping temperatures comfortable without wasting megawatts of energy. The moronic builders put the outdoor part of the A/C on the west side of the house. Those guys who want to sell the expensive double pane windows could never justify the price. 30 year payback? Not doing that. I changed all the incandescent light bulbs for fluorescent, and now am moving to LED, and would like to employ skylights. Have had too many times when the electricity went out while I was in the shower, leaving me in total darkness though it was daylight, as the bathroom is an interior room. A skylight would fix that, and save energy. I got low energy computers, basically laptop designs that were packaged as a desktop. My best one uses 30W max, and that only when running an intense 3D game. If playing video on Youtube, it takes 20W, and if just reading and writing email, it takes 10W. Even so, I have them set to go to sleep after 10 minutes and use almost no power. The best old style desktops with the classic +12/+5/-5 volt power supplies take around 80W. The 80plus program helped with those kinds of power supplies, but it's better to run off a single voltage as laptops do. Another big help was the move from CRTs to flat screens. A CRT uses from 50W to 120W, depending greatly on how bright an image it's displaying and the resolution. Early flat screens use 30W no matter what's being displayed, and now with LED backlighting, that's down to 20W. In 1996, refrigerators took a big leap forward in efficiency. Unfortunately, we had a 1995 model. Finally ditched it, and got one that's twice as efficient. Another appliance that used an unexpected high amount of power while off was the Maytag gas drier of all things. 5W while "off" and doing nothing! Felt warm to the touch on top.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

-Microwaves, Ovens, Induction Stoves (sorry, I have enough watches in my life, don't need another one to program and be on all the time)

On the other hand it's nice to not have to dig in my pocket for my phone whenever I wonder what the time is.

-refrigerators

The fridge light is only on when the door is open and the compressor only comes on when the internal temperature rises past a setpoint. These things are pretty well insulated and have seals on the doors, so if you fridge is on ALL THE TIME then something is very wrong with it.

-water heaters

Only if yours is electric. Most gas ones have no electrical connection at all and even the powervent kind only fire up the fan when the burner comes on.

-water pump

Aquarium or well? If it's the well then that only comes on when your pressure tank falls below a set level or during heavy, extended use like during a shower.

-sump pump

Do you live in a swamp or something? Even during a heavy rain storm it shouldn't run more than once or twice an hour for a few minutes each time.

-ac

Do you live in an uninsulated house somewhere in the Mohave?

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

More tips for you:

• Sleep on the floor. The mattress savings really adds up.
• Grow your own food. The food savings really adds up
• Gather firewood. The fuel savings really adds up
• Go to sleep after sundown. Wake up when the rooster crows
• Get a cow or two for milking.
• Get a butter churn
• Get a time machine and go back 150 years.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[techno-vampire]

Now too much shit has a "soft" power shit, initially so it can sense a remote...

If you really want that stuff to turn off and stay off, don't plug it directly into the wall. Plug it into a power strip with a real on/off switch and turn it off there.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, refrigerators are more efficient now, but they don't last nearly as long as they used to. Most now only have a year warranty, in the past they had 5 year warranties. You're lucky if one lasts five years now. You might be saving on electricity, but you're sure giving in back in more frequent replacements.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't you read? It was just an overview of stuff that runs 24/7, not that I was against it.

Also that stuff is on/running, not necessarily working.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[dalias]

In comparison, my systems use about 10W when powered up and running, and the Minnowboard uses about 3W running. So using 10-15W in sleep/standby it utterly ridiculous. A reasonable amount would be something like 100mW.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the time to unplug not only game vosoles, but everything frm computers to TVs to water heaters to cooking appliances to not trivial. It adds up. I'll pay a buck or so a month for the convenience factor. Also, seeing how butthurt environmentalists get when I tell them this is more than worth the price.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surprisingly, growing your own food DOES save money.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[ShanghaiBill]

Yes, refrigerators are more efficient now, but they don't last nearly as long as they used to.

Do you have any data to back that up? The myth that appliances, tools, or cars lasted longer in the past is mostly false nostalgia.

Most now only have a year warranty, in the past they had 5 year warranties.

That is not because they don't last. It is because manufacturers have figured out that they can make a lot of money selling "extended warranties" to dumb people.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, I misread the title to be "Nauseating how much Standby mode..."

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the money that is not trivial, is the energy that is consumed that is not trivial. Just to power all those device in stand by, doing nothing at all, the world needs hundreds maybe even thousands of nuclear or coal fuelled power stations. And this only because devices that aren't doing anything, but idling on standby are wasting electricity.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if you can view this from outside of Canada, but CBC's Marketplace show did an expose on this with some repair guys who were in the industry for over 3 decades.

Faulty Appliances: Repairmen Unplugged

In short, yes, they do build 'em like shit now.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[tompaulco]

Well, I can vouch for the fact that we have over the last 12 years replaced just about all of the water heaters in our rental houses. The water heaters which were replaced were built in the 70s and 80s. I guess I can expect something 30 years old to fail. In fact, it probably wouldn't have failed even after 30 years if we would have checked and replaced the anode. However, the new water heaters which we have replaced them with have already had problems within just a few short years. We have had to replace pilot assemblies, thermocouples, and one has a safety device with a well known calibration problem which causes it to fail and close the dampers so that you can't light the water heater. The suggested fix is to replace the water heater because the safety is not considered field serviceable. The safety device on that unit failed after about a month of operation. One month of use seems entirely to short for a water heater, especially compared to 30 years or more for the previously installed unit.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[tompaulco]

There was an article maybe a year or two back about TV standby power. It was about the same. 10 watts to as much as 15 watts. I'm sure the new fancy phone home TVs use even more in standby mode.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[fisted]

Or even better, use one of those USB switchable power strips!

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[mlts]

One idea I've found that works, provided this is possible (i.e. you own the property), and one has the electrical ability, is to have a dedicated circuit for the little devices that comes from an inverter [1] and a set of batteries that charge from a PV panel array.

This doesn't have to be expensive. A common setup winds up being two 6VDC golf cart batteries in series (12 volts total), 2-3 PV panels, a decent charge controller [2], and an inverter. This won't run your air conditioner unit, but it will be big enough to handle a number of low amperage devices, and one can build a decent setup for well under $1000.

In fact, I did a jerry rigged setup to light a shed on the far side of a friend's farm using a cast off extension cord (it had the proper gauge wires when stripped), a cast off 200 watt panel, a $8 PWM charge controller from eBay, an old deep cycle battery, and a DC-DC converter so I could use some 340 lumen SunJack LED bulbs (with built in switches) that run from a USB port. All of this cost well under $100. The SunJack LED bulbs would run 8-10 hours on a 1.2 amp (or 12,000 mAh as the packaging says), so a 200 amp-hour battery that only has 50-75 amp-hours left can run the bulbs for a very long time without solar.

Another added benefit of having all the devices on their own circuit is that they are essentially on a UPS, so if power fails, they will still keep running.

[1]: Don't skimp here... buy a reliable PSW (pure sine wave) inverter, and go for a 1500-2000 watt model even though running at full tilt will discharge the batteries quickly. This is so that if one plugs something in that has an inrush current (refrigerator compressor, microwave), the inverter can handle it.

[2]: You can go with a MPPT controller, which allows for higher voltage panels (as it converts the voltage higher than what the batteries use into a lower voltage with more amps), or have more panels to handle how a PWM controller "lops" off any voltage it doesn't need.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[mcswell]

Better yet, saw (with a hand saw, of course) and split your own firewood; it'll warm you twice, the saying goes.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[mcswell]

What is this distinction you're making between being "on" or "running" on the one hand, and "working" on the other?

I suppose the microwave has a LED display that shows the time (or shows nothing if you didn't set the clock after the last power outage), but we can run wristwatch LEDs for a couple years on a tiny battery, so I don't think that's using much juice. Likewise the LED display on our oven. Maybe a land line phone would use a tiny bit of electricity for an LED too, but I long ago traded that in for a cell phone, which doesn't appear to use up much battery juice on standby. (Yes, the office where I work still has a land line phone with an LED display. Again, I can't imagine the LED and accompanying electronics is using much electricity.) As for something with a remote: most cars now have a remote, since you can click a button on your key from several feet away and get them to do something. Does that use up your car's battery very fast? Ever leave your car at the airport parking lot and come back a week or two later? My car's battery seems to be none the worse for the wear. (Yes, a car's battery is pretty big, but _no noticeable effect_.) And so on.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[olsmeister]

I had my water heater replaced in my house two years ago. The guy installing it told me point blank "don't expect this one to last as long as the last one did."

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Sounds cool. Can you get one of those with a remote?

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[davester666]

So, they only gave you a 15 day warranty? Otherwise, you get a new water heater.

Hell, the ads for water heaters here actually list the warranty period 5/7/10 years.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Firethorn]

Not if they're 'energy star rated' Then the limit is less than 1 watt.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[shitzu]

Wasted energy is still wasted energy no matter how you produce or buy it. Getting the energy from solar is no excuse for sleeping devices to hog that much amps.

I prefer simple solutions so i connected all my consoles and receiver and media players to an extension chord that powers on via USB only when TV is on. 8â i spent on has probably already been saved. My receiver (sony, 2013) is quite warm to the touch and makes an audible buzz while sleeping. As I power it totally off as described, i have not bothered to measure how much power it wastes, but it has to be quite substantial.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[shitzu]

You are operating on the assumption that these LED displays and clocks operate fron battery. Yes, they NEED very little energy and work long from battery. However most of the time the manufacturer has saved a penny by ditching the battery, and runs the sleep mode operations, remote or clock directly from the power supply. the energy is wasted inside the power supply's AC-DC converter, not clock or screen itself.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[DamonHD]

EU regulations require appliances in actual standby to use no more than 0.1W, which is less than a neon indicator bulb, and *is* good.

My cable TV box uses 15W and consequently I make sure that it is turned off completely, along with TV and DVD else it would be responsible for ~10W of our entire electricity bill.

http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...

I have prototype voice detection circuit sitting on my bend that is using tens of microwatts to detect occupancy, so milliwatts should be plenty to do the instant-on job for those too damn idle to press a button.

tl;dr: 10W is *crap* for an always-on device doing nothing.

Rgds

Damon

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[DamonHD]

Note: skylights are poor thermally and let a lot of heat out. Also I had one in a previous house in the bathroom where the seal was so bad (thus clearly leaking air too) that I had the surreal experience of being hailed on in the bath.

Also, have skylights ways from south (if you're in the northern hemisphere) to avoid excessive glare and overheating.

BTW, I have triple glazing now! Overall heat consumption from natural gas was 3000kWh last year and electricity 1700kWh.

http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...

Rgds

Damon

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[DamonHD]

My old microwave oven uses enough power for its clock that if left on 24x7 would use more for the clock than for all the cooking I do.

Newer devices (especially those for sale in the EU) should be better behaved.

Rgds

Damon

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in the suburbs (which you probably do) you already waste a ton of energy on transportation. So I wouldn't worry about a few KwH of electricity.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have done a lot to cut my power use.

Heating and cooling is a significant cost. When we built our house we installed a geothermal system instead of a traditional HVAC. ~2800 sqft home, 9 ft. ceilings, $0.11/kWh, keep it at 68 in the winter and 74 in the summer. Actual costs - $120-$200 each month for electricity bill, and that's being fairly wasteful on our part with a huge gaming desktop running 24x7, plasma tvs instead of LEDs, etc.

Net cost of the system after tax incentives - about $5000 more than the traditional HVAC system. ROI time - about 7 years. And system was sized for expansion when installed - additional 1600 sqft. unfinished upstairs right now.

Really interested in solar to supplement the geothermal, but the costs are still too high - ROI time is 15 years. Will keep an eye out in the future.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[EdwardFurlong]

With no data I think it is true for some things. Newer gas furnaces are more efficient, but far more complex. Growing up I do not remember a single appliance needing replaced. Newer cars are more reliable I am sure, but try to figure out how to repair a prius...

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[gl4ss]

it's pretty fucking trivial if the standby means doing some background work, network downloads or whatever.

if it's just a standby led and remote control wakeup, then it would be pretty bad.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[EdwardFurlong]

When I was single my power bill was next to nothing. I can't even get people to turn lights off now. It's sad the hoops that need to be jumped through to keep vampire devices from drawing power. It is probably not worth it, but after the dishwasher finishes the leds stay on, I hit cancel to turn them off. I just hate to see waste really.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[EdwardFurlong]

I am not sure how well they work, but I have seen power strips where they will not supply power if the load is too low. They are supposed to not allow vampire draws.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[EdwardFurlong]

I have a garden and cut firewood... I would have chickens if I could. There is nothing wrong with being in control of your needs and expenses.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[tompaulco]

Apparently they were at first honoring the warranty and replacing the entire water heater, but that got to be too expensive, so they stopped doing that and started saying it was installed incorrectly.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

- A console,
- a dedicated BD player,
- a TV,
- a computer,
- a computer screen,
- computer speakers,
- a dedicated USB hub,
- a network/Internet modem box,
- an Internet TV box,
- a landline phone,
- a mobile phone,
- a microwave,
- an oven,
- an induction table,
- a washing machine,
- a drying machine...

It adds up... Sure you may still not care money-wise, but many people do, and electrical consumption reduction in general (not just idle power) adds up too, and are quite significant regarding the social and ecological cost of energy production.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[zippthorne]

I'm not sure who you're buying from if you're burning out a refrigerator in less than 5 years, but if you're buying any of the major brands, you shouldn't really be seeing functional issues five years. Are you running it off of an inverter?

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[ChrisMaple]

The myth that appliances, tools, or cars lasted longer in the past is mostly false nostalgia.

Back in the 1950's, unless you were willing to take extraordinary care and do a lot of rebuilding, cars started failing at about 50,000 miles. Many brands are much better now.

The case with tools and appliances is much different. High quality, long life tools are still available, but due to inflation they seem very expensive. Much cheaper tools are available today, but they've been designed right to the edge of acceptable durability and often have poor assembly. Stall a cheap drill and it starts smoking in 3 seconds. Buy a $30 food mixer instead of a $200 model, and there's a good chance it won't run, right out of the box.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

you could be spending $10 per month

Oh no! That's, like, 2 whole coffees!

Forgive me if I don't find that to be very wasteful.

And before someone chimes in with "well why don't you give that $10 to me then?", you are missing the point. I am still getting some value out of that $10 when I give it to my power company. What benefit do I get by giving it to you instead?

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it warms you three times, once when you cut the tree, once when you split the wood, and once when you burn it. Isn't it net carbon neutral as well?

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[AmiMoJo]

You can get one with a foot switch so you don't have to bend down. I use a few of those.

I've seen devices that use less than 1W in standby and have remote power control, but only in Japan. Given a few years the technology will filter down to the west. In Japan energy saving is a big selling point. People feel like they want to contribute to the country's efforts to save energy, particularly after Fukushima and because energy is expensive.

Are you really that lazy that you need a remote control for power on/off rather than using a physical switch, even if it costs you money? A lot of set top boxes and other crap devices pull 20-30W in standby. These consoles are actually pretty good in the scheme of things, which is a bit depressing.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[AmiMoJo]

I design products that need to run from batteries for at least 5 years. I can do a wake-on-IR that needs around 2.5uA and costs about 15p in parts (that's about 20 Euro cents). It's just a phototransistor, comparator and an RC circuit that makes sure it only reacts to fast edges from remote controls and not passing shadows etc.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[DamonHD]

Indeed. We should be targetting microwatts or at most tens of milliwatts not tens of watts. We're talking lazy engineering and insufficiently discerning end-users here.

(I'd like to chat about your stuff off-line, BTW. as part of our public IoT Launchpad project, see sig!)

Rgds

Damon

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[quenda]

So about a dollar a month for standby. What would the author consider to be trivial?

For a prototype, thats trivial.
For specialist equipment that sells a few thousand units, its a bit sloppy, but still tiny.
For consumer equipment with 70 million units sold, it is fucking obscene.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

Extension *CORD* - not extension chord...

A chord is a section across a circle, not a string simile.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[mcswell]

No, I was not assuming they run from a battery; I was just using the fact that LEDs can run off of batteries to show how little power they use. As for the AC-DC converter itself, I guess you can tell how much energy it's wasting (as heat) by touching it. Most modern ones don't waste much.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Half-pint HAL]

I think that was a joke, because any device with a remote would have a standby mode, and would therefore be soft-power-down rather than hard-power-down.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Mousit]

Another very simple idea is to just turn this crap off. Sometimes you have to MAKE it do so, since plenty of electronics nowadays don't have a true "off" option at all. So I put everything on surge protectors that have individually-switched outlets. Easy to find plenty of those on Amazon. Either the power-strip style, or I use the desktop models (the ones intended to sit under a monitor), depending on the application and where I'm putting it. The desktop models look nice inside an enclosed entertainment center, and make for easy switching of the electronics in there.

Either way, being able to physically flip the switch to cut off all those game consoles and those sound systems and those cell phone/laptop/whatever chargers, etc. etc. really helps.

I even installed a timer switch on my water heater (until I can get around to replacing the thing with a tankless instead). I found that the long-cycle heating up of the water when it's turned on via the timer, actually uses less power than "maintaining" the heat throughout the day. Though that certainly depends on your usage, of course. I'm a single person and generally only need it powered for a shower. The water remains hot enough even in the unpowered tank throughout the day for things like hand washing. I was surprised what a difference it made. Most of us Slashdot types probably already have programmable thermostats for HVAC, but you don't really think about your water heater sitting there sucking up power all day maintaining hot water you're not using.

I even have my damn dishwasher on a switch, conveniently right next to the garbage disposal switch. Only gets turned on when I need it. Sure, all this was a pretty fair amount of work at first, but once I'd done it, I literally cut my power bill in half. No joke, no exaggeration. Though again keep in mind I'm a single person and don't generally use a lot of power to begin with, admittedly, but still, slicing my usage in half just by putting crap I wasn't using on switched outlets made a tremendous difference to me. And I really don't think it's inconvenient to go over to the entertainment center and, say, flip the Playstation switch when I want to play that.

And as an added bonus, an unpowered device is one less possible source of circuit failure and fire hazard. That's just a nice little icing on the lower-power-bill cake.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[bzipitidoo]

Hadn't thought of a timer switch for the water heater. Only thing I did was lower the temp to 115F. That seems to be as low as you can go and still have a hot shower. Run the shower at maximum hot. Safer too, can't get scalded.

I really want to go to a solar water heater. But $5000 and up, when a cheap tank is only $350, is too much money. Would take a century to pay that difference back. I want payback times to be no more than 10 years, and that's stretching it. I'll take 5 year paybacks every time, but between 5 and 10 I have to think about it. Mroe than 10, forget it. Just too many other random events can intervene: dramatically improved tech or lower prices, or you might move or yoru house is damaged or destroyed by vandals, fire, tornado, earthquake, or flood. Well, I don't have to worry about a flood, as I refuse to ever live in a flood plain.

I looked into tankless as well. They cost about $1000. But mine is a gas powered unit. To change from tank to tankless, have to put in a larger diameter gas pipe, and a larger diameter flue pipe. The tankless unit is not freestanding, has to hang on a wall. It also needed an electrical outlet. To make all the changes needed to switch added about $500 to the cost. At $1000, switching was a toss up. At $1500, the tank wins.

At any rate, the new tank is way more efficient, using about half the energy of the old one that was made in the 80s and lasted 27 years. Only a 6 year warranty, and it's been a bit more than that now. I was hedging, hoping it lasts just long enough that solar will be a good deal by the time it fails.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[wallsg]

10 watts is bad. It's also typical. Last time I checked, some 6 years ago, AT&T's U-verse DVR box used about 10 watts while on standby. While 10 watts at a cost of a dollar per month doesn't sound like much, it adds up. If you have 3 game consoles, 3 DVRs, and a bunch of wall warts for recharging cell phones and whatever other battery powered devices you have, you could be spending $10 per month. And why burn it if a better design can work just as well and not use so much energy?

If it bothers you, then turn them off. You're not FORCED to leave them on. And accept that for those that it doesn't bother who don't turn them off have every bit as much of a right to leave theirs on as you do to turn yours off.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[fyngyrz]

Hell, the ads for water heaters here actually list the warranty period 5/7/10 years.

My less-than-a-year-old water heater failed. It was "repaired under warranty." Know what that meant? It meant free parts, and about $300 in labor.

Man, were we pissed.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[fyngyrz]

Many [car] brands are much better now.

We can thank the Japanese, and to some extent the Europeans, for that. They kicked Detroit's ass back to the starting line. To their credit, I have to say, they got the message and cleaned up their act, and yep, modern American cars and trucks are nothing like what they used to be. Fit, finish, longevity, performance, handling, mileage, amenities, safety, it's all better.

But my refrigeration gear is shite.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[TechyImmigrant]

But a standby to listen for a remote need not take more than a few 10s of milliwatts.

The reason they have a stupid standby draw is because it's cheaper to just use the 200W power supply and not put in the extra components for a standby power supply.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[master_kaos]

My parents installed geothermal as well. Since they were out in the country the only way to heat the home was oil and wood. Well with the combination of old air leaking home, and the rising price of oil it was costing them $800 every 3 weeks in oil. So they installed geothermal, and replaced a bunch of windows, doors, and reinsulated attic and basement, now they only go through 1.5 tanks worth of oil per winter, obviously eletric bill went up a bit but no where near the cost of oil. This was about 6 years ago. They calculated payback would probably be about 7-8 years. Well with the continue rising in oil, payback was done in 5.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[master_kaos]

yeah I really hate when people use the argument "well if it is so little give it to me then", it just doesn't make sense.. because if you are spending the money, you are clearly getting some sort of value.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Jarik C-Bol]

You're in luck, as I recently spent a great deal of time searching for tankless gas water heaters that fit a very particular set of requirements, and they happen to match a great deal of your requirements. I learned that there exist three types of tankless gas water heaters, in terms of ignition.
There is the most common, the electrically ignited, which you are familiar with.
Then, there are, if you hunt, standing pilot light models, which work much like the cheep end gas water heaters, with a constantly lit pilot light. (I've read that these take about 20$ worth of gas a year, if that is a concern at all)
And finally, there is what is known as a Hydro Ignition models, where the flow of water through the heater spins a flutter-mill of some sort, which somehow sparks and lights the burner. I've read that these models take some getting used to, as you must let the water flow for a while to get them to light, and then heat. Bosch makes a whole line of tankless heaters, using either Natural Gas or LP. I've taken the liberty of finding a Natural Gas Standing Pilot light model in the list for you:
http://www.prowaterheatersuppl...

As you'll see, they are currently offering it for 645$, which is a good deal less than the 1000$ you mentioned. If that is not to your liking, (as I can't speak to your gas line and vent, as you didn't mention dimensions) here is the search listing for all the models that do not require electrical hookup:
http://www.prowaterheatersuppl...

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not really news. Just about everything in the home that plugs into a power outlet draws some power even when in its so called "off" state. The other poster is correct that anything that has a wireless remote control has live circuits all of the time waiting for a signal from the remote. In addition, chargers and "wall wart" type power supplies are always drawing a small amount of power when plugged in. Individually the amout of power drawn might be small (or maybe not so small), but in most of todays homes it can be sigificant when adding up all of the power drawn by all devices when they are not actually in use.

Some of this power usage can be avoided by only pluging chargers and wall warts in when the devices they power or charge are in use or need charged. Or you can use outlet strips that have a power switch to accomplish the same thing. Of course its less convenient than leaving things plugged in and powered all the time.

Re:What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[beerdragoon]

You laugh but this is actually a real thing. Personally I like the ones that connect to your wi-fi. That way I have to find my phone, unlock it, open the app then turn off the power bar from there. I find it far simpler than simply reaching over and moving the single switch to the "off" position.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[lsatenstein]

Another very simple idea is to just turn this crap off. Sometimes you have to MAKE it do so, since plenty of electronics nowadays don't have a true "off" option at all. So I put everything on surge protectors that have individually-switched outlets. Easy to find plenty of those on Amazon. Either the power-strip style, or I use the desktop models (the ones intended to sit under a monitor), depending on the application and where I'm putting it. The desktop models look nice inside an enclosed entertainment center, and make for easy switching of the electronics in there.

Either way, being able to physically flip the switch to cut off all those game consoles and those sound systems and those cell phone/laptop/whatever chargers, etc. etc. really helps.

I even installed a timer switch on my water heater (until I can get around to replacing the thing with a tankless instead). I found that the long-cycle heating up of the water when it's turned on via the timer, actually uses less power than "maintaining" the heat throughout the day. Though that certainly depends on your usage, of course. I'm a single person and generally only need it powered for a shower. The water remains hot enough even in the unpowered tank throughout the day for things like hand washing. I was surprised what a difference it made. Most of us Slashdot types probably already have programmable thermostats for HVAC, but you don't really think about your water heater sitting there sucking up power all day maintaining hot water you're not using.

I even have my damn dishwasher on a switch, conveniently right next to the garbage disposal switch. Only gets turned on when I need it. Sure, all this was a pretty fair amount of work at first, but once I'd done it, I literally cut my power bill in half. No joke, no exaggeration. Though again keep in mind I'm a single person and don't generally use a lot of power to begin with, admittedly, but still, slicing my usage in half just by putting crap I wasn't using on switched outlets made a tremendous difference to me. And I really don't think it's inconvenient to go over to the entertainment center and, say, flip the Playstation switch when I want to play that.

And as an added bonus, an unpowered device is one less possible source of circuit failure and fire hazard. That's just a nice little icing on the lower-power-bill cake.

It reads more like your in a high lightning strike area and are protecting your equipment. Still, I appreciate your efforts at cutting out waste.

Re: What Would be a Trivial Amount?

[bzipitidoo]

Yes, warranties are weasely that way. LG pulled the same stunt on the front loader washer we bought. Not only was labor not included, but work had to be done at an "approved" facility, which charged inflated prices for labor! Way to turn a warranty on its head, into a way to make more profit. Except we didn't bite. Was cheaper to pay for the part and do the work ourselves. We could have paid for the part and had an independent repair center do the work for less than what it would cost under their so-called warranty plan.

Another weasel was that they didn't cover everything, only parts they knew would last. Drum and motor were covered, but not the spider to connect the drum to the motor. The spider is conveniently defined as not being part of either the drum or motor, although it is the shaft of the motor.

Just disable it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure don't leave anything in standby, ever... That's just a waste, especially if I'm not going to be touching that device for months...

Re:Just disable it...

[toejam13]

One problem with modern electronics is when the manufacturer figures that you're always going to put your device to sleep instead of fully powering it down, so they don't put much effort into optimizing the boot time from a cold power up.

Take for example desktop PCs. There are some motherboards where the firmware initialization is around two seconds. But I've seen it as high as fifteen seconds for a desktop motherboard and over a minute for a server motherboard, even when you have all of the options set to allow the fastest boot possible. That is a very wide difference from one motherboard to another.

When I read motherboard reviews, very rarely is boot time ever mentioned. So is this a chicken-vs-egg scenario where users don't care about cold boot times because they're happy with standby and hibernate modes? Or do users care, but it is so rarely reported that we always end up with motherboards that drive us to standby and hibernation modes?

Re:Just disable it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disable sleep on my laptop and have it go into hibernate so it doesn't use any power. Takes about 5 seconds to resume.

Re:Just disable it...

[techno-vampire]

Just out of curiosity, is that the time between turning the power on and the OS starting to load or does that include the time it takes to load the OS? I know that you started out talking about firmware initialization, but boot time generally includes how long the OS takes to come up. In the latter case, there are ways to optimize that, by turning off services that you don't need started at boot. (As an example: if you only use MS Office once or twice a week, do you really need it loading in the background?) How you do that and how much control you have is, of course, very OS specific, but I don't know of any current desktop OS that doesn't let you do it at all.

Re: Just disable it...

[DigiShaman]

POST (Power On Self Test). The time doesn't include bootstraping to the OS. For example, Dell OptiPlex machines boot very fast when compared with a 3rd party motherboard. Dell PowerEdge servers take a very long time. For those POST includes RAM, DRAC, PERC (raid card), and the IPMI bus.

Re: Just disable it...

[techno-vampire]

Thank you for clearing that up.

Re:Just disable it...

[mlts]

One thing that does help is virtualization and downsizing equipment. For example, moving from a desktop to a laptop, buying (or building) a decent server for virtualization, and even using low power devices for LAN services (I use an older Android phone to run a caching DNS service) can make a significant difference.

Especially with older hardware. Almost everyone has that old computer with sturdy hardware that works well. However, those older machines can eat a lot of power.

Re: Just disable it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I spend five times a week three minutes waiting for a Dell Precision to start up. This is my third Dell machine in the office, and they have only gotten worse over the years. The machine has only a software RAID, but it still needs to spend ten seconds to display its messages on boot. As a comparison, my home laptop boots into Debian faster than my office workstation spends on the BIOS. The boot time really should be measured on benchmarks as the boot will waste real money.

Re:Just disable it...

[toejam13]

I was specifically referring to the POST that the firmware executes from cold boot until the OS bootstrap begins.

Re: Just disable it...

[DigiShaman]

Sans an actual PERC card, a Dell Precision shouldn't take that long. Two things that I can think of that would prolong the POST. Firstly, check the boot options to ensure Network is at the very bottom. Also disable PXE boot. I've seen it take an obscene amount of time hunting for a non-existant PXE server via DHCP. Secondly, disable an SATA ports not in use, otherwise the system will hunt for non-existant devices on that channel before giving up and moving on. Just remember to re-enable them should you need them later.

seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

my apartment's electric bill costs about $25/month avg. I have several computers & a server that run 24/7, along with other standard apartment electronics. Plus everything is electric (heat, a/c, etc). I can't believe the high numbers cited by the article.

Re: seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are no telling us the truth, or you don't know it. You cannot run AC even for one day, and have a 25$ bill.

Re:seriously?

[fermion]

If it is apartment,it might be that low. When I don't run air conditioning, the house, with a DVR and several computers, can be $50 for electricity. It depends on rates in your area and how much other stuff you have. For instance, I have a TV that probably only takes a couple dollars a month to run in electricity, but some easily take $10. If you have equipment supplied by your cable company, that could be double than if you bought your own.

Re: seriously?

[mcswell]

An apartment that has another living space above and below, and on three sides? So heat transfer takes place through only one wall of the six (counting ceiling and floor as "walls"). I can imagine his AC not having to do much, especially if he lives in a moderate climate, like parts of California.

Re:seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

My bill is $35 average for the year. That's the nice part of living in Seattle. I estimate my bill would only be about $7 per month w/o my servers running.

Of course most of my $17 per month is just wasted power. Republicans love to waste power. Their kind wants air pollution from coal power plants. That is why the Republican rulers of Microsoft made the XGarbage waste so much power. According to my Kill-a-Watt meter, my XGarbage is wasting $8 per month of power. That is nearly half of my non-server power usage per month. Microsoft is very successful at being wasteful. They hate us and want to waste all of our money on power. They are succeeding.

Re:seriously?

[ChrisMaple]

Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates appear to regard politicians as people who have to be bought. They each contribute slightly more to Democrats than Republicans. I doubt that either has any political conviction deeper than "Me! Me! Me!", although Gates gives the appearance of being serious about some charitable causes.

What really is happening?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? "Sleeping" should draw way less. It doesn't take a lot of power to keep a couple of sticks of SDRAM alive. Okay, probably also the NIC and a MCU to monitor the remote. I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.

Re:What really is happening?

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? "Sleeping" should draw way less. It doesn't take a lot of power to keep a couple of sticks of SDRAM alive. Okay, probably also the NIC and a MCU to monitor the remote. I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.

Yeah, most of the consoles check the update servers at least once a day. It adds up pretty quick.

Re:What really is happening?

[TitusC3v5]

I'm pretty certain the linked article's numbers are simply wrong.

Re:What really is happening?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is one more authoritative than another? I looked up other findings and saw that the numbers for the Wii U in particular vary widely. The other numbers are reasonably close to no be too concerned about it.

Another thing on the Wii U was found that how to put the console into different power states were confusing to users. It also self-updates. That .4W figure could be completely powered down. The 13.3W could not actually be standby either but "idling".

Without very specific test criteria, which does not seem to be available from any of these places claiming tests preformed, there really is no way to be certain of which is most accurate. Until such a time, an average, or at minimum weighted average would be appropriate.

Re:What really is happening?

[tlhIngan]

WTF? "Sleeping" should draw way less. It doesn't take a lot of power to keep a couple of sticks of SDRAM alive. Okay, probably also the NIC and a MCU to monitor the remote. I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.

First off, a power supply is less efficient at the low end than at the high end. A 200W power supply may be 80% or 90% efficient when running at its design load of 150W, but when you want 5W in standby mode, you can easily get into the 50% or lower efficiency range.

And 5W is probably perfectly reasonable for keeping SDRAM alive and refreshed, the NIC and other bits alive. It's just the power supply is only 50% efficient, so it draws 10+W at the wall.

Re:What really is happening?

[itzly]

A 200W power supply may be 80% or 90% efficient when running at its design load of 150W, but when you want 5W in standby mode, you can easily get into the 50% or lower efficiency range.

For a few bucks more, they can add a separate standby power circuit, optimized for low power and high efficiency.

And 5W is probably perfectly reasonable for keeping SDRAM alive and refreshed

My phone, with 12Wh battery can easily stay alive for 48 hours, so that's 0.25W. Admittedly, it has less RAM, but on the other hand it's still connected to wireless networks, and running various apps in the background.

Re:What really is happening?

[DamonHD]

My MacBook Air draws http://www.earth.org.uk/saving...

Rgds

Damon

Re:What really is happening?

[DamonHD]

Sorry, the input parser appears to have eaten the post.

My MBA uses much less than 2W with maxed-out RAM in sleep mode.

So 10W is tragic.

Rgds

Damon

Re:What really is happening?

[thegarbz]

I bet your console is reporting to the mother-ship or something.

This much is plainly obvious. They don't even try to hide it. An update for the Wii-U added quick load to the console, but the same update also added adve... .I mean "special offers". I could walk past the Wii one day and see no signs of life. Walk past it the day after and the home key on the remote is flashing blue telling me that there's an adve.... notification from the console.

I would be very surprised if the PS4 and Xbone didn't also call the mothership.

Re:What really is happening?

[sanf780]

There are two services that are also kept alive:
a) Bluetooth / other wireless link in order to be able to power up the console with the wireless gamepad, plus whatever authentication these gamepads might have. TVs do use IR, a technology that is proven cheaper and that draws very little power.
b) USB charging, so that your gamepads are fully charged next time you want to play
c) HDMI-CEC link, a link that works with 1ms bit times

And in the case of the Xbox One, you need to add:
d) HDMI pass-through
e) Kinect voice recognition

Re:What really is happening?

[ChrisMaple]

Computer RAM is optimized first for storage size and second for speed. It's dynamic RAM and has to be refreshed. That's a recipe for high power; that's why computer RAM has heat spreaders / heatsinks. Phone RAM takes power into consideration during design, and might even be static CMOS or flash: low power.

Re:What really is happening?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing marketing "sleep" mode with technical reading "sleep" mode. I have an Xbox One and I can tell you that "Sleep" mode means "low power" mode. It still listens for voice commands, runs updates in the background, and who knows what else. Sadly it takes forever to turn off and on. I don't think it has a real sleep mode, at least it didn't the last time I checked.

Re:What really is happening?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most computer RAM does not have heat sinks/spreaders. I did once buy some that did, but the heat spreader on it never felt really warm when checked it, I think in most (if not all) cases it is more of an aesthetic and/or marketing thing.

Yes, phone RAM is designed to be low powered, but smartphones at least (and I doubt any other phones either) wouldn't use flash or CMOS for RAM, they are just far too slow for the job.

Re:What really is happening?

[tlhIngan]

For a few bucks more, they can add a separate standby power circuit, optimized for low power and high efficiency.

A few bucks is expensive. Sorry, even a few cents (the true cost) is expensive for a loss leader. Both the PS4 and Xbone have done what, over 10M units each? A $1 increase in BOM means $10M more spent making the things that sell for a loss.

Sorry, these things are built to a price. Admittedly, The Xbone is probably costing Microsoft less money than the PS4 is costing Sony, though price cuts probably made the losses larger.

If you examine the components, you'll find if there's a nickel to be shaved, it's been shaved at least at the time it was initially designed. Both are probably entered their second revision with more cost saving measures after seeing the general results of the first revision

Hell, even the packaging is shaved - cardboard gets thinner, things are stuffed closer than ever, and boxes even more user unfriendly.

Waste is heat!

[MindStalker]

What all these articles about appliance waste ignore is the fact that if you use electric heat, your Xbox waste heat is just as efficient as any other electric heater (ignoring heat pumps). If its cold outside, running your xbox 24/7 as long as the heat is in a necessary area isn't being wasted.

Re:Waste is heat!

[rtb61]

Yep, media pans a game console, ohhh, look at the power it consumes when you a playing with a pretend mega yacht but when it comes to the sheer insane waste of an actual mega yacht not just lost resources, a corrupted economy necessary to pay for it but the sheer volume of pollution generated in say one minute consuming the energy of a game in stand by mode for a year and this the quisling shit heads celebrate. Ever hear of main stream media picking on private jets, now how much energy do they waste not only during run time but during operation in year, what something like 10,000 game consoles and TVs to watch the output, again the whine about the energy use of us nobodies but when a somebody consumes at rates 10,000 times the average they through parties and celebrate. Want to see real waste, that is us, letting the 1% exist.

Re:Waste is heat!

[toejam13]

That's fine when you live in an Arctic wasteland, but a good portion of the world population lives in an area where the climate requires active cooling during the summer months. So that waste heat must either be removed using fans or air conditioning, which costs money.

When I lived in a cool city, my Core i7 930 and my wife's Phenom X4 955 were fine. But when I moved to a city where summer temps can exceed 40C, I replaced them with low power (S series) Haswell systems. My July electric bill went down 10% from the previous year. After selling the old equipment, the upgrades will pay for themselves in under 2 years.

Re:Waste is heat!

[JanneM]

It's very inefficient to turn electricity into heat directly. If you wanted heating you'd be better off using a heat pump or other indirect means.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea but it's only cold a few hours a day. Over the whole year, this effect is cancelled out. Don't forget about summer. It costs electricity to run the AC and get that heat out during the summer.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

I meant that it's only cold a few months a year. Here in the South, AC months are way more numerous than heat months.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that's bad, my place has an electric furnace. It consumes 1500-2000kWh per month over winter. Electricity is cheap enough not to warrant replacing it with a heatpump which is a thousand times more complicated...

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric heaters are 100% efficient. All consumed electricity is released as heat.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get why passive, convection based cooling isn't used more in areas that get that hot regularly. Some of these designs can be very effective. All you need is a tunnel below the house to cool the air and a shaft in which the heating air draws up the cool air from below.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

if there's an inefficiency, where do the losses go too?

There are be better ways to heat a house, but turning electricity into heat is about the only energy conversion process that is 100% efficient. Inefficiency would mean some of the electric energy gets turned into something else than heat like sound, vibration or light.

Re:Waste is heat!

[DamonHD]

And electric resistance heating is usually *terrible* compared to any number of available alternatives.

It represents a *huge* waste of exergy, when a heat pump (as you allude to) can produce several units of heat for one unit of electricity.

So, in summer it's all bad and in winter it;'s at least 75% bad. And that's ignoring (eg) CO2 and other emissions from the generation mix.

Can we stop with this "waste is good" meme?

Rgds

Damon

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, but that same energy can *pump* a lot more heat. Not create, but move.

Re:Waste is heat!

[JanneM]

Electric heaters are 100% efficient.

Heat pumps give you around 300-500% of the input electrical energy.

Re:Waste is heat!

[MrL0G1C]

A heat pump will heat the house the same amount but it will use only 1/3rd of the energy. Like a fridge/freezer in reverse.

How a heat pump works

Re:Waste is heat!

[ChrisMaple]

Want to see real waste, that is us, letting the 1% exist.

It sounds as if you're proposing murder.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

corrupted economy necessary to pay for it

What's corrupt about rewarding people for success? If somebody starts a company that employs tens of thousands of people and generates billions in economic activity then I see nothing wrong with rewarding them with a maga yacht.

I think it's far better than rewarding people who don't work and contribute nothing to society.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you're going to do it, do it right. I'd suggest resurrecting the guillotine. It is very energy efficient and the bloated plutocrats' headless bodies will biodegrade eventually. Their heads on spikes will serve as a warning...

Re:Waste is heat!

[Half-pint HAL]

The people who "generate the most wealth" are often responsible for massive amounts of unemployment. If we look at the Walton family empire (Walmart Stores Inc), we see a string of relatively labour-light retail outlets that push smaller companies out of business, resulting in a net loss of jobs. Amazon has taken this trend to ridiculous levels, exports profits to tax havens whenever and wherever possible, and then whenever criticised for sharp practices stands up and demands that we "celebrate" the billions in wealth and the thousands of jobs they "create".

As for "rewarding people who don't work and contribute nothing to society", you have clearly never had to live on benefits. They hardly constitute a "reward" for anything.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Anonymous Coward]

Heat pumps are more than 100% efficient at their jobs. ;)

And no, that is not breaking any thermodynamic laws. To transport heat from source to target requires work, and that work is done by electricity. But the amount of heat moved can be 3-5x as much as energy used to move it.

A heat pump is just an air conditioner turned backwards.

Re:Waste is heat!

[toddestan]

It's because it's assumed that you're just going to run the AC when it's hot out. Even doing simple things like positioning windows with respect to the prevailing winds to get a breeze going through the house isn't done either.

Re:Waste is heat!

[toejam13]

Those systems require a significant amount of labor and materials for the excavation and ducting. They also have a limited cooling and heating capacity due to their passive nature. It is usually advantageous to install an active system, such as a heat pump with a geothermal loop.

Re:Waste is heat!

[TechyImmigrant]

And electric resistance heating is usually *terrible* compared to any number of available alternatives.

It represents a *huge* waste of exergy, when a heat pump (as you allude to) can produce several units of heat for one unit of electricity.

So, in summer it's all bad and in winter it;'s at least 75% bad. And that's ignoring (eg) CO2 and other emissions from the generation mix.

Can we stop with this "waste is good" meme?

Rgds

Damon

An electric heater heated by electricity from nuclear or hydroelectric generators is in no way worse than the alternatives from a carbon and/or sustainability point of view.

Re:Waste is heat!

[Jarik C-Bol]

Its considered inefficient for a collection of reasons. Lets say, your using an electric stove. This means you are using some sort of resistor to get hot from electricity, which was transmitted to you at X% loss over the power lines, after being generated at (probably) a Coal fired power plant, which means the coal was burned to make steam, where Y% of the stored energy in coal was lost up the smokestack or as cooling of the steam, which spun a turbine at some Z% loss because of friction and so forth, meaning that, from the originating fuel source, (coal in this example) you have a loss of X+Y+Z before the power even starts to warm up your pot of water.
Or, they are merely comparing costs. Lets compare heating your house with an all electric furnace system, vs a natural gas furnace. In many areas, if you set your thermostat to 70F all winter, and have an electric furnace, you spend say, 1000$ a month powering the furnace. Your neighbor, who has the same tract house as you, but replaced his furnace with a gas model, sets his thermostat to 70F as well, and spends 600$ a month on gas for his furnace. Clearly, his system is more efficient, as he spent less money on the same amount of heat.

Re:Waste is heat!

[DamonHD]

Yes it is, because you are wasting lots of extra exergy, ie you could be getting the heat you need with far less electricity, leaving the rest for someone else or allowing less upstream resource (nuclear fuel, water, transmission infrastructure) to be consumed for the same outcome.

Rgds

Damon

Vampire energy

[Anonymous Coward]

All of my electronics are connected to something with a physically-isolating power switch. If it's off, it's off.

waste?

[turkeydance]

less than Starbucks on Standby.

Oh Nooooooo

[p0p0]

Not a whole $12.
Wait.
"ANNUALLY" YOU SAY?

What is this treachery!? Laws must be past. Children need to be protected. This electric menace will rape your wife* and spend your childrens** college fund on beer and pot.

It's game over guys. We need to populate Mars and the get the hell out of here.
Bring the consoles though. Barren wastelands can be pretty boring.

*Husband/wife/extraterrestrial lover
**Children and/or favourite pet

Re:Oh Nooooooo

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are missing the point. $12 per year is nothing, even for the poorest of us, but they add up.

That being said there's nothing new here, it's called vampire draw and people have been bitching for the past 20 years. At some point a law will be passed to limit that load to a couple watt per device (and frankly there's no reason why a $500 machine do not use high quality enough PSU to allow that...).

Re:Oh Nooooooo

[zennyboy]

*passed

Re:Oh Nooooooo

[itzly]

Not a whole $12.
Wait.
"ANNUALLY" YOU SAY?

Per device.

Re:Oh Nooooooo

[drayath]

As an individual you may not care much, but at a wider scale can be a noticable impact on power usage.

If every household in the US (~120m) draws an extra 10w average power, total requirement is arround 1Gw or 1 extra mid/large size coal/nuclear plant (E.g. Three mile island).

If you start adding all the devices you have on standby (inclucing some of the nasy cable boxes that drew upto 50w standby) it starts adding up. This is esentially where the EU regulations for standby power came from in conjunction that for most devices is it costs almost nothing per device to have it use minimal standby power just a bit or care and effort in the design phase of a hardware project.

* Ignore for simplicity that if running heating power is not really wastes, but if running household aircon essentially you double the power usage.

Re:Oh Nooooooo

[Ash-Fox]

The EU really needs to dump the whole wind, solar panel fantasy and just use generation 4 reactors, we'd have more than enough cheap energy then.

Ars Technica ran some tests?

[darthsilun]

You mean they plugged it into a Kill-a-watt? I'm sure nobody every did that before.

Interesting point from the article

[Golden_Rider]

Interestingly, that power draw jumps to about 22 or 23 Watts for a few seconds every time the Kinect hears you say the word "Xbox," even if you don't follow it with "On."

So if you have a Xbox One in your living room, even TALKING about it will increase the power consumption of the console. Wonder what the annual cost is of children complaining "mommy I want to play Xbox now!" "why can't I play with the Xbox?" "Daddy, can I play with the Xbox?" "Waaaah Xbox! I do not want to go to bed!"

Power supply costs

[ArchieBunker]

No question they could build something that uses a minuscule amount of standby power but consoles themselves are a loss leader. That wasted standby power is probably consumed by the power supply itself.

Re:Power supply costs

[jones_supa]

That wasted standby power is probably consumed by the power supply itself.

No modern power supply is so inefficient that it would leak 10W when not loaded.

If you can't afford...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't afford $15 a year in extra hidden electricity cost then you have no business buying a game console to begin with.

Re:If you can't afford...

[ChrisMaple]

It's very annoying to buy a radio for $20 that uses $5 in electricity a year.

Wall clocks are an interesting example. One that runs on AC could be using $3 a year, but a battery powered wall clock can run 2 years on a single AA cell.

Use remote outlets if concerned

[RyoShin]

Standby mode can be convenient because (I think) all of the consoles will download updates/newly purchased games while in standby (maybe a slightly elevated level).

But, if you are truly concerned with power usage from consoles (and other devices) on standby, here's my advice: Get an outlet adapter that has a remote. These can be had for super cheap shortly after Christmas, as they're mainly used for switching external or Christmas tree lights on/off at will. I have one between the outlet and my entertainment center's surge protector, so my TV, media center, and consoles are all 100% off while I'm not using it. I don't know how much power the switch draws, but I reckon it's far less than even one of the consoles on standby.

Re:Use remote outlets if concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

The remote switches are usually in the 0.1W to 3W range.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[rmdingler]

There was a movement at a college not long ago, a green movement to be exact (have to be specific with the /. demographic), and the average electrical savings for various infinitesimal lifestyle changes was quite remarkable.

Leaving the phone charger plugged in, for example, uses an average of .26 watts versus 2.24 when your link to the civilized world is charging... and, don't get me started on the cost of leaving a single DVR cable box plugged in year round. According top the 1st random study google provided, $43 and change.

Moral: Don't be a selfish dick... plug your shit in when you're ready to use it.

Not calculated correctly

[Jodka]

Their calculations are ludicrously incorrect.

All of that energy is dissipated as heat. Which means in the winter months when you are paying to heat your house the cost of sleep mode is the difference in price between heating your home with electricity which the console uses and heating your home by whatever other means you have, wood/gas/coal, whatever. In the summer months if you are running your air conditioner then the price is the sum of the console electricity and the added amount which running your air conditioner to pump out the heat from the console.

So if you live in the arctic circle and heat your home with electricity then the price the price is $0.00, not $10 - $15 as they claim.

Re:Not calculated correctly

[Anonymous Coward]

10w up against 10kw heating? hahaha you joke?

Re:Not calculated correctly

[Anonymous Coward]

In Seattle, I heat my place over the winter with heat from servers and game consoles. My apartment was over 90 degrees F today because it was sunny and due to the power wasted from computers and my three gaming consoles. My XBox piece of garbage in my bedroom is too hot to the touch even when it is not in use. Tech stuff wastes enough power to easily heat a small apartment. Your 10 kWatt joke is ridiculous. It doesn't take nearly that much power to heat most homes these days. Because of the Republican's oppression of families, most of us have tiny homes now. Also, the Republicans love waste heat so they force consoles on us that spew out so much heat that our homes are too hot even in the winter. That is the way of their kind.

Re:Not calculated correctly

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans do love to waste power. They want more pollution from coal powered power plants. They fight hard for that. Since their kind currently rules Microsoft, the XBone wastes enough power to heat my studio apartment. I haven't turned on my electric heat since then.

Speaking of electric heat, I live in Seattle, and I haven't seen a place that doesn't have baseboard electric heat in nearly twenty years. The Republicans that rule here love that. They're forcing us to have inefficient heat.

Re:Not calculated correctly

[ChrisMaple]

The mayor of Seattle is a Democrat. The governor of Washington State is a Democrat. You, on the other hand, are an idiot.

Re:Not calculated correctly

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for slapping that down. I've seen that kind of thing here a lot recently. It appears to be a trending Slashdot troll meme, asserting that political jurisdictions which are in fact substantially controlled by liberal Democrats are instead Republican.

Pales in comparison

[thisisauniqueid]

The amount of energy used by game consoles in sleep mode across the world pales in comparison to how much energy is wasted running VMs and JIT compilers on Android phones around the world. And that pales in comparison to the number of Petawatt hours (Exawatt hours?) of electricity is wasted per year running Javascript in browsers across all devices. Seriously people, higher-level languages that aren't easy to compile (or don't compile into efficient code) are ridiculously wasteful.

Re:Pales in comparison

[mcswell]

Speaking of wasteful, do you know how many electrons had to go out of their way for you to write that post? And then how many were used to display your post on all the slash-dotters of the world! For crying out loud, you should conserve. Maybe if you left out the vowels, you could use fwr chrctrs, and the Arctic Ocean ice wouldn't melt so fast!

This is yet another Republican scam

[Anonymous Coward]

They want us to waste power. That is why the Republican rulers of Microsoft are doing this. If Microsoft wanted to save power, they'd fix the sleep problems with Windows. My Dell laptop uses over 20 Watts when in sleep. 20 Watts is not sleep!

Much to my Wife's annoyance..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have the stupid cable box on one outlet so it remains powered all the time (1. it takes forever to "boot" and 2. cant miss those scheduled recordings), and everything else - TV, bluray, xboxes, speakers+woofer, 5 port switch, - basically anything that has no use being on or in "standby" if the TV isnt all on a power strip that has a switch, I flick the switch off every night and when we go out. As for the Cable box, it goes to into its own "standby" mode after 2 hours of no remote control activity.

The cost sounds pretty trivial in the grand scheme

[Anonymous Coward]

An extra few Watts doesn't matter much, especially if it's not much more expensive to heat your home with electricity via the 110 VAC outlet than by other means, (such as a dedicated 220V HVAC line priced differently from your regular household current,) or gas, etc. At least not for the part of the year where you have to run the heater anyway, unless your console loses heat to the outdoors faster than other household appliances, inexplicably.

During warm months, of course, it's a different story, but the devices could also be unplugged during the week anyway, further reducing power consumption.

A deck of cards and a chess board both use the same amount of power when in use as when not, provided you're not using extra light just for them anyway.

Grow a victory garden, go to jail

[tepples]

Grow your own food. The food savings really adds up

Go directly to jail.

Re:Grow a victory garden, go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Detroit. There is a reason why that area of the country is as fscked up as it is. 99.9% of the US, it would not just be legal, but encouraged, since lawns are thirsty, and water is at a premium almost anywhere else. Ironically that area will eventually get better, since it has water, a rare commodity at times.

In reality, most people can toss their lawns and grow gardens. Additional food doesn't hurt, and getting herbs/spices from a garden is a lot better than getting adulterated shit imported off the boat at the bottom dollar.

Even chickens are OK in almost all urban areas, and that is a decent source of food with a few egg-layers.

Re:Grow a victory garden, go to jail

[ChrisMaple]

Gardening takes effort, time, and usually some money. If you enjoy it, swell; but if it's just another task you're probably earning less than when you're at your regular job. The home gardener does have available superior, fresher, and unusual plants.

Re:Grow a victory garden, go to jail

[Anonymous Coward]

Gardening takes very little time and money actually. I grow many of my own veggies and herbs. I originally started by planting store bought veggies that had gone rotten. Now I just take ten minutes from my day to water them and that's it.

Buy three computers for three apps

[tepples]

JavaScript lets you run web applications on any platform that supports JavaScript. If developers are forced to make the applications native instead, they are likely to make the applications exclusive to a particular computing platform, which is not necessarily the platform that you happen to run. Does JavaScript use more energy than it costs to manufacture and run three different computers, each for an exclusive app?

Besides, a lot of these "managed" environments provide type safety guarantees. Preventing your data from being lost or disclosed due to a defect in a program can be worth more than the marginal cost of a managed environment.

Re: Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Anonymous Coward]

"There was a movement at a college not long ago, a green movement"

Would have been better if you hadn't said the source of the movement. College environmentalists are full of shit, exaggerating claims almost as bad as college feminists.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[mcswell]

Ok, 0.26 watts. Let's pretend you never have to charge your phone (or you got a new charger and forgot to unplug the new one). There are about 8766 hours/ year. (This takes into account that one out of four years is a leap year.) So that charger is using about 2200 watt hours/ year, or about 2k. The average price for electricity in the US is 12 cents/ kw-hour (http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-price-of-electricity-in-your-state). So we're talking 25 cents per year to keep this charger plugged in.

That same NPR article says the average American household uses about 900 kw-h/month, or 900,000 watt-hours. A quarter of a watt = 187 watt-hours/ month, or about 0.02% of the average monthly use. Putting this differently, you'd need 50 plugged-in chargers in your home to amount to even 1% of your electricity use.

Insane standby power usage

[Anonymous Coward]

10 watts continuous 24x7 is 240Wh/day roughly the same as Microwave for the few minutes it typically runs each day.

10 watts is the same energy my >5 year old laptop uses fully powered with display on including all conversion losses from power brick.

Anything consuming more than a watt while it is "off" doing nothing is inexcusable.

Instead of limiting to Game Consoles

[nehumanuscrede]

You really should get a whole house monitor and get ready for an eye opener on how much power draw all those little " trivial " devices can have. Believe me, they do add up quickly. Also great for showing your significant other why you don't set the thermostat to 75+ in the Winter. My heater pulls 11Kw when running :|

The one I use is called TED ( The Energy Detective ). It's not the current generation model, but it gets the job done. The newer one is more accurate and has a few bells and whistles I don't have. Go read about it here I'm not sure if they make them for overseas customers ( it's US based ) or if you all have similar products available to you.

Once the thing is up and running, the first thought you have is what the hell is drawing all this power ? You then wander around the house turning various things on and off to see what the power draw actually is. My entire entertainment center is now on a power strip that I can kill with a single switch. ( Except for the damn cable box, rebooting those means a 10-15 minute wait while it goes through it's boot process :| )

In the end, I was able to get the power draw down to ~250-280 watts when we're not at home. Some things I simply cannot shut off. ( Bird cage lights, aquarium lights and pumps, alarm, etc. ) The fridge is the only thing that really cycles on / off as we have the hot water heater on a timer of its own.

Very useful little gadget imo.

EU regs state standby power must use 0.5W

[rklrkl]

This was probably a US-based test - I'd like to see an EU-based test as well. EU regs insist that standby uses 0.5 watts, so all these consoles would be breaking EU law if they used the standby power in the article.

Re:EU regs state standby power must use 0.5W

[Firethorn]

Do the EU regulations specify gaming consoles? Or are they like the USA - TVs, DVD players, and VCRs are specified, but DVRs and consoles aren't (yet).

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[DamonHD]

It's still not a good reason to waste something that is trivially easy to avoid wasting.

So, 0.26W would be somewhat over 0.1% of my house's mean grid consumption (1700kWh gross ignoring my solar PV). I have a family of four.

I still make an effort to charge devices off grid because it helps me think about my energy use for the bigger items too.

tl;dr: an efficient charger not doing anything isn't a killer, but 900kWh/month is a travesty.

Rgds

Damon

Re:EU regs state standby power must use 0.5W

[DamonHD]

1) I thought that the EU limit was now 0.1W.

2) I think that if the manufacturers don't call the mode 'standby' then they may be able to draw what power they like: cue unholy mix of engineers and marketing bods gaming the regs with euphemisms...

Rgds

Damon

Re:EU regs state standby power must use 0.5W

[DamonHD]

IIRC units are shipped in the EU with the 'instant-on' mode disabled by default, which would meet regs.

So it's superficially a software issue pandering to a chunk of their consumers being by default happy to waste lots of energy all the time (or never realising what's going on) rather than press a button. And we wonder why some places have an obesity and a power-consumption problem!

Rgds

Damon

Then you must really like

[justthinkit]

Then you must really like Windows 8. Boots twice as fast as Windows 7.x and earlier. I left W8 on my laptop for exactly this reason. My desktops run 7 because I rarely reboot them.

Re:Then you must really like

[Anonymous Coward]

.. And systemd !! Finally a chance for an on-topic systemd comment :)

Overly anal about power consumption ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a lot of push to point out wastes in energy anymore. I get a tidy little letter every month from my electric supplier comparing my energy usage to my neighbors. Funny, they never bother to think how much energy is used to send out that letter in the first place? My view is, if you don't mind paying for the power. Then why should anyone care? I'm sure we could spend all day pointing out a few savings points. Such as leaving charging bricks plugged in charging nothing, or how we should be sit in a dim living room at night, or turn off all our electronics by switching off the power strips. Many times the parasitic draw is there for a reason.
To maintain memory, run updates while we sleep or to just provide a instant on experience. Much of these devices still receive a Energy Star rating and frankly its appalling to even think we now have a hint of the energy police trying to persuade people to do things they apparently do not want to do. I envision these types of people obsessing at times over little things like this because they have been overcome by a need to save energy more and more. I find that a more practical side is to buy energy efficient devices and decide for myself if spending a little more in energy is worth it for the convenience. Many times, it is.

Re:Overly anal about power consumption ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good points, but...

Cost is not the only consideration
That power is provided ( mostly ) by burning irreplaceable hydrocarbons.
( yeah, it may only be a fraction of a watt for your home, but you have to multiply it out )

That power represents toxins dumped into our atmosphere.
( why are we that stupid?... we should be plastering homes in proper areas with solar cells and building the safest possible nuclear plants )
Producing the extra power requires land for the power plant, construction of power plants, tying up money and other resources so we can avoid unplugging/plugging something in.

Time for a standardized DC power outlet in homes!

[drolli]

Not sure if that should be +12V, +18V, or +48V, but it's time to have an integrate power management for all your home, avoiding power supplys on standby.

Re:Time for a standardized DC power outlet in home

[flightmaker]

The reason for electricity mains operating at a dangerously high voltage is that it reduces the current flowing through the wiring which therefore reduces voltage drops and wasted energy due to heat dissipation in the wiring.

IMHO the best way to maximise power efficiency is to use a decent quality switching power supply, either a wall wart or built in, which is correctly matched to the requirements of the equipment. I think manufacturers are getting better at this, for example my Virgin Media "Superhub" which is supplied with what appears to be a decent quality switching supply so both the hub and the wall wart are only slightly warm to the touch, certainly not hot.

I recall purchasing, something like 10 years ago, a small 5 port Ethernet switch which was supplied with the usual cheap wall wart with a simple transformer and rectifier inside. Both the switch and the wall wart ran uncomfortably hot with, I assume, a linear voltage regulator inside the switch which would have slowly roasted itself to death sometime after the warranty period expired. Not satisfied, I tried powering the switch with a laboratory supply which I adjusted to the minimum voltage required for the switch to operate reliably. Then I purchased from CPC a decent quality switch mode wall wart of the same voltage, which I think cost me several quid more than the switch did, and the switch has been running with no problems, just a little warm, ever since. Having used a plug in power meter on both wall warts I reckoned that the switch mode unit paid for itself in two years and the switch has lasted several times longer than I would have expected it to with he cheap over voltage supply. WIN-WIN!

WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

"These aren't trivial amounts, but they're a lot less than simply leaving the console running and shutting off the TV when you aren't using it:"

Who does that? They're a lot less than "simply" turning on an oven ring 24 hours a day too, so what? Who would leave their console on and just turn the TV off?

Re:WTF?

[Half-pint HAL]

Who would leave their console on and just turn the TV off?

Quite a lot of people. And they even think they're switching off.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[MrL0G1C]

It's still not a good reason to waste something that is trivially easy to avoid wasting.

Plugging and unplugging a device 730 times for $0.25, really isn't worth it, the wear and tear could end up costing you more.

Re:Time for a standardized DC power outlet in home

[WaffleMonster]

Not sure if that should be +12V, +18V, or +48V, but it's time to have an integrate power management for all your home, avoiding power supplys on standby.

Great idea for those who own or have stock in copper mines. Counterproductive and pointless otherwise.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Half-pint HAL]

But the continual heating of the transformer coil also shortens the lifespan of the device.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[MrL0G1C]

0.25 watt is not going to heat anything much.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Anonymous Coward]

0.26 watts.

But, multiply that times the average number of these in a household.
Probably greater than 1.
Then multiply by the number of homes.

How many megawatts used so you ( times the above ) don't have to push a small object into the receptacle and remove it when done.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Wear and tear?

The receptacle is built to handle it.
You probably wont own the phone ( and therefore, the charger ) long enough for this to be a serious factor.

Produce in your garden?

[fyngyrz]

Surprisingly, growing your own food DOES save money.

It's not surprising -- it just isn't worth it for most people. To do it well, you variously need land; upkeep time; knowledge (pests you don't need, creatures you do, plant nutrition, how to harvest without doing damage, control of wastage, fertilizer issues, varietal information, home-cooking skills, canning skills); seed sources; patience; storage, fencing to control animal forage, sometimes a permit...

Or you can just go to the supermarket, buy a bag of salad and a can of beans, come home and cook dinner. Or hit a restaurant.

It's pretty easy to see why most people choose to exchange the labor they do via the obvious proxy (money.). It really depends where you want to put your effort. The money you save -- whatever that is in a particular case -- has to be of at least the same value as your time, otherwise, you're working against yourself.

We have a tower garden here. It was a gift, so the initial cost (to us) was nothing. Even so, the costs for the nutrients and starters and the small amount of electricity the nutrient pump takes adds up to be non-trivial, and the amount of produce isn't fabulous overall, all things considered. The quality of what it produces is, though. Buying it... I wouldn't even think of it. It's expensive. It's also kind of pretty when it's all growing like a little vertical jungle, but that's pretty minor in the larger picture.

Re:Produce in your garden?

[Smauler]

It's not surprising -- it just isn't worth it for most people. To do it well, you variously need land; upkeep time; knowledge (pests you don't need, creatures you do, plant nutrition, how to harvest without doing damage, control of wastage, fertilizer issues, varietal information, home-cooking skills, canning skills); seed sources; patience; storage, fencing to control animal forage, sometimes a permit...

Yeah, not really. The knowledge is simple.

What you have to prepared for is losses. If you plant everything expecting perfect vegetables in a few months without doing anything else, you're bound to be disappointed. If you plant everything perfectly, and manicure them them perfectly, and expect perfect vegetables, you're also bound to be disappointed.

Home grown stuff has losses, always. Slugs are my nemesis with growing beans, but I grow enough of them (not much, only 10 plants or so) to make the losses less hard to bear.

Re:Produce in your garden?

[RandomAdam]

Really you make it too complicated; get seeds - plant seeds (tells you on the pack when to plant) - harvest produce that makes it thorough - don't buy that type of produce while you are able to harvest it.

We are growing a bunch of stuff; we are currently harvesting tomatoes; courgettes; beans and cucumbers. And have been buying very little of other veg from the supermarket for the last few months. We buy a little fish and meat once a week. Food costs are low this time of year and will probably go up a lot during winter. Why does it need to be an all or nothing kinda deal?

Re:Produce in your garden?

[fyngyrz]

We've been carefully growing for two full seasons, with some plants getting multiple cycles. No losses at all, other than one hailstorm, which we now prophylactically deal with by having the project under a bit of roof where it can still get the sun it needs, but hail can't hit it straight on. Not a perfect solution, but it's something. And it has worked.

I am convinced that the details matter.

Um. My moderns sure have not laster...

[fyngyrz]

The myth that appliances, tools, or cars lasted longer in the past is mostly false nostalgia.

That's not been my experience. I've been through quite a few "modern" refrigerators in my life (I'm 58.) My most recent purchase, a standup freezer, only lasted about a month past the 1-year warranty, and the compressor went nipples north. Cost a fair bit to have that compressor replaced -- even though it's a sealed, lightweight POS. My frig is about three years old, and we're already thinking of replacing it, as the amenities have failed -- icemaker, waterspout, filter system. Modern consumer level refrigerators and freezers just have not done well for me. Flimsy plastic shelves and fittings, ice makers that quit working in no time, filter systems that fail, the very cheapest possible compressors... meh.

There have been many days when I wish I'd thought to collect my mother's refrigerator / freezer. It's still at the old house, cranking along. It's been there since before I was born -- well over 60 years. Never broke down. Never needed repair. Never needed coolant / oil. Dead quiet. Looks pretty dated, all rounded edges and the like (it'd look right at home in a 1940's dwelling) but damn, for the money I've spent, I could have easily lived with it. At this point, it'd sure be a bitch to drag it from Pennsylvania to Montana, though. :)

Wasted Energy?

[fyngyrz]

Wasted energy is still wasted energy no matter how you produce or buy it. Getting the energy from solar is no excuse for sleeping devices to hog that much amps.

That's ridiculous. If you are tapping a constant, otherwise non-utilized stream of energy -- sunlight certainly qualifies -- if you're collecting more energy than you're using, and not running out during low-generation periods (clouds), there are no serious utilization issues unless your system is put together poorly or outright wrong.

You want to put all of your effort into reducing those things that cost you money and / or the environment its stability. Extra hungry wall warts running off solar power... they have no such significance at all.

You cannot over-utilize an infinite, zero-collection-effort resource.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[shitzu]

It is MUCH easier to power them off than to build a solar+battery+inverter+separate cirquit to power them.

If you DO build a solar power system anyway, you are much better off connecting it to your mains and again NOT building a separate cirquit just for wall warts - this idea is totally ridiculous.

I am not bashing solar energy here - the post that i was answering to, suggested a solar powered sockets in my house for just wall warts. To which you can not plug a vacuum. So you need dual electricity cirquits and sockets etc which will definitely be more expensive than anything you gain.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[shitzu]

And one more thing. It suggested using solar to charge batteries to power inverters to connect AC/DC wallwarts to. If you were to build a separate solar powered cirquit just for charging low power DC devices, it would be totally moronic to convert it from DC to AC only to convert it to DC again. Not to mention costly.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[fyngyrz]

It is MUCH easier to power them off than to build a solar+battery+inverter+separate cirquit[sic] to power them.

Oh, no doubt. But that wasn't what the GP was saying. Also, even though it's easier, it uses up a costly resource when it's on. The solar powered widgets do not. So you save some; the solar system saves all. Food for thought. Gotta figure the ROI. It's not that hard, either. Plus there's the dependability issue. Power fails, your devices keep running... that's nothing to sneer at.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[fyngyrz]

Well, not really. The issue is that there are lots and lots of AC devices out there, so what you're doing is converting to a form that is in most common use. If you have surplus power that is free (solar as under discussion), there's no problem, resource-wise, in doing it just that way. Which makes it not very moronic at all. Kind of convenient, actually.

Considerations for a free, non-polluting resource have to be approached with an open mind. The range of consequences is different. They can be quite favorable.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[shitzu]

The stupidity was proposing to solve a 4 dollar a month waste by throwing 1000+ dollars worth of equipment on it. If you are going to invest 1000+ on solar there are much better ways to do it.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[fyngyrz]

Math:

Ameliorating $4/month waste:

$1000 / 4 = 250 months until positive ROI. Your $1000 estimate is way high, though -- what he proposed is about $300 at most, at the scale he indicated. Probably not even that. It mostly depends on the wiring. Long is costly. Short and efficient, you're way down in costs. The rest is relatively constant. Solar panels, charge regulator, inverter. I show the closer numbers along with yours in square brackets: [$300 / 4 = 75 months until +ROI]

That's 20 years. [6 years]

After that, it's a constant ~$48 / year win.

Over the working and retired lifetime, figuring age 30 is when this is done in deference to slashdot's basic demographic as I perceive it, 40 years remain, so 20 [6] of that is payment, which means the ROI is 20 x $48 = $960 [34 x $48 = $1632]

There's also the social benefit of not drawing that power. It all adds up.

There's also the benefit of not losing functionality when power goes out.

And it's fun and personally rewarding.

And it's affordable, much more so that typically larger solar projects.

So, no, no stupidity. You're not thinking clearly, and to top that off, your data is bad.

Re: Wasted Energy?

[shitzu]

The 1000$ estimate is taken mainly from his proposal:

This doesn't have to be expensive. A common setup winds up being two 6VDC golf cart batteries in series (12 volts total), 2-3 PV panels, a decent charge controller [2], and an inverter. This won't run your air conditioner unit, but it will be big enough to handle a number of low amperage devices, and one can build a decent setup for well under $1000.

This number did not include wiring to point of use, fuses, sockets, etc. All of which would be AC in the proposed solution (read: the installer should understand electricity to be safe).

For the umpteenth time - I am not bashing solar as such. I have NOT said you should not use solar panels. I have NOT said that you can not save money by solar. You are arguing against something i have not said, repeatedly.

What I am saying, is that making a duplicate wiring is stupid. If you are doing solar and are using an inverter, why not feed it into the existing AC system? This will cost less than duplicate wires/fuses/sockets. You will have all the benefits described and you will use all of the produced energy (more savings) for less money. You can plug vacuum cleaner into any socket without bloring the fuse (or your inverter).

On the other hand - if you wanted to use solar just to power phone chargers, it would be much, much cheaper to ditch the DC/AC/DC converting process and charge your phones from the 12V batteries via voltage regulator to 5V without an inverter ol wall/warts.

I would worry. I do. Saves me money overall.

[fyngyrz]

The gains from savings can help defray the cost of the transport.

Savings you can implement without inconvenience are always worth doing as long as they have a payback you can measure within a practical time frame.

No. Not ten.

[fyngyrz]

$10 a month is $120 in a year, $1200 in ten years, $4800 over a working lifetime (40 years or so.) The question isn't what can you buy with $10. The question is, what could you buy with $4800? That, and how much will it cost to save that $4800, because that has to be taken right off the savings.

Math. Do you have it?

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Jarik C-Bol]

Huh. This makes me wonder. Do those newfangled Wall sockets that have a couple USB ports for charging draw power constantly? I mean, they basically moved the wall wart inside the wall on those, so they probably do.

Power efficiency not a priority.

[denzacar]

They are not designed with power efficiency in mind. They are designed to be functional, fashionable and cheap to produce.
So, though the same setup could be designed with more power-efficient components or solutions...
Why bother about a Watt or two or twenty lost on standby on a product that uses hundreds or thousands of Watts when working, right?

http://standby.lbl.gov/summary...

I think that my favorite on that list is the gas range that uses on average 1.13 Watts per hour on standby.
GAS range. As in... it doesn't run on electricity.

That's about 6-15 kilowatts wasted every year, per household.
Just so one could light the highly flammable gas with a press of a button instead of with a match or one of those piezoelectric gas lighters.

Trivial? I'll show you trivial!

[mbeckman]

Look how many TONS OF OXYGEN are consumed on human exercise. Exercise that gets you nowhere, generates not one miliwatt of consumable power, and throws off MEGAWATTS of heat that undoubtedly contributes to global warming. We need regulation and we need it now! Close all gyms, tax eliptical machines and treadmills. Do it for the children!

capitalism for the win

[Anonymous Coward]

The free market is the epitome of efficiency. Let's talk about the thermal loads on US stick frame buildings. If we simply used 2x6 stick frame construction spaced at 20", the added costs in lumber and insulation would allow us to downsize HVAC systems saving initial costs. Extending this idea, we can build buildings today that use 40% less energy than code, FOR LESS INITIAL COST. You can find examples of this everywhere. Thank the free market and idiots who fight intelligent regulation. And people who want to screw you to make their own lives easier or richer. Its absurd.

Re:Power supply costs, BMs and shi5

[Agent0013]

The receptacle might be able to handle it, but my back and knees sure won't handle all that bending over to reach the plug. I guess we need every outlet to be switched at arm height so we can actually turn our stuff off.

Is that math right?

[kmoser]

The Xbox One draws 12.9W, costing users $13-$14 in extra electricity charges annually...."Leaving your PS4 sitting on the menu like this all year would waste over $142 in electricity costs."

What?

Re:Is that math right?

[kmoser]

Freakin' Slashdot doesn't let me edit my post. What I meant was:

"The PS4 draws about 10 Watts, $10-11 in extra electricity charges annually. ..."Leaving your PS4 sitting on the menu like this all year would waste over $142 in electricity costs."

What?