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New Energy Efficiency Standards Take Effect This Week In the US (nrdc.org)
AmiMoJo writes: Eagerly awaited national energy efficiency standards for the little black boxes on the cords that connect many of our electronics--such as smartphones, computer laptops and electric toothbrushes--to wall outlets take effect this week. Known as external power supplies, or the less elegant term 'wall warts,' these power adapters may be small, but they consume a lot of energy. With 5 to 10 external power supplies in the average U.S. household, the new efficiency standards are projected to save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs and reduce the carbon pollution that fuels dangerous climate change. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) projects that the new standards for external power supplies alone will cut nearly 47 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over 30 years, equivalent to the annual electricity use of 6.5 million homes.
So, you're basically saying that we should dedicate a human to manually do a job that a chip could do trivially. Great.
I, for one, would like my electronics to do their charging quickly, efficiently, and without my having to babysit them.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
...save consumers $300 million a year in electricity costs...
So $1/year/person. In other words, no savings to speak of.
"His name was James Damore."
So a savings of $300 million a year, divided among ~325 million people comes out to a little less than $1 per year. That's inconsequential.
But what about the costs of the initiative? How much more do the devices cost consumers? I suspect that there's really no savings and that the higher cost of the devices offset any potential savings.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Saves $300 million a year.
So... about a dollar each.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Manufacturers just pack whatever is the cheapest and most convenient for them. The consumer has no choice. The free market has failed to solve this problem.
More government intervention, because consumers ARE STUPID. Plug all your stupid wall warts into a power strip, when you get done charging, turn off the power strip. Idiots...now another stupid regulation.
So I should waste my time monitoring devices that were designed poorly in the first place? THAT is stupid. If we need a regulation to get companies to design products that aren't needlessly wasteful then so be it. Fixing market failures is actually a good use of government.
LOL, oh yeah ... who built them? What's that you say, Capitalists who didn't give a damn about anything but their bottom line?
Companies make 'em and sell 'em, chances are the average consumer isn't even aware of the issue ... and your "market" doesn't give a damn, because it's built on the idea of short term benefit.
Sorry, but I refuse to believe corporations would do this without some external impetus. Assuming rational consumers making good choices based on perfect information? Yeah, the unicorns really work there.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"Stop government regulation! It's so much easier to design without worrying about electrocuting people, or outgassing volatile compounds, or irradiating people!" . . . . No thanks. Safety regulations and "truth in labeling" are some of the few places where government actually belongs. And since wasting energy is directly connected to a smokestack in most parts of the country, saving energy promotes safety.
Don't worry - prices will raise $2 each and the carbon output caused by the economic activity increase required to cover the additional cost will overshadow the savings from the mandate.
Everything is easy if we only look at first-order effects!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This is an example of the very common "Principal-Agent Problem" which exists in some form in many, many commercial products and services. Manufacturers and service providers make decisions in effect for consumer that benefit their bottom line, but pass on all sorts of costs to consumers as a result.
In this case cheap energy-wasteful wall-warts that reduce the manufacturer cost but adds to everyone's electricity bill. Market competition does not address this issue since purveyors of electronics are not using "wall-wart power efficiency" in their sales campaigns, or even reveal how much power they waste if the consumer wants to find out (you have to buy it and see).
Only regulation by an organization that acts in the interests of the consumer can address this.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
hrm ... normally a Wikipedia fan in the economics section, but this is a little too simplistic.
Market failures are typcially held to be scenarios where the market cannot achieve a solution - not ones where Pareto efficiency hasn't [yet] been achieved.
Interestingly enough, many regulators cite market failure where regulations prevent market solutions from being offered. e.g. Nuclear energy insurance. Beware of their circular reasoning.
Personally when I buy computer PSU's I look for 85+ Bronze or whatever rating term they're using. I'm not sure who adminsters the seal, but something like UL for efficiency ratings on wall warts is entirely feasible. I'd certainly look at an efficiency claim on my next razor before purchasing - I spent an extra $30 on the last one to get the Li+ model for similar reasons.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So $1/year/person. In other words, no savings to speak of.
You can always count on the amateur capitalist to neglect to fully prorate the costs of a thing before proclaiming its worth. Of course, if it were a proposed $1/year/person tax they'd be howling as if you'd stolen their first-born.
(source)(pdf). Sure, the wall wart is small potatoes. Lots of these items are small bits individually, and they all have to pass a cost/benefit test (the cost of the incremental improvement must be less than the financial savings). When you add up all the bits and bobs, the cumulative impact is significant. It's not like DOE started with wall warts. It focused initially on the biggest opportunities, and works its way down the list. It's only because /.ers have lots more wall warts than the common man that it's even newsworthy for us.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Well, if this is $300 net, I'll take it. That's how economics works, doesn't it? You stop investing when the marginal return for a dollar spent is a dollar.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Say you run a 5V circuit to the other end of your house with 20m of cable. To run small device with a 10W load, even with fat 12AWG copper wiring you get almost a 10% loss due to voltage drop. It would be cheaper to use even a bad wall wart than to suffer those kinds of losses and pay for all that copper.
Back in the day hospitals were full of lawnmower injuries until consumers got annoyed enough to tell governments to force lawnmower manufacturers to change their designs. Government regulation is often a "choice of consumers" as well. In a competitive market sometimes all manufacturers of a product sometimes make something the customer does not want because that's what everyone else is making. Without minimum standards you end up with 1980s Chinese quality and safety features.