I've always thought Japan got it right with their aluminum 1 Yen coin. Japan's 1 Yen coin (current face value of 0.85 US cents) has a much lower metal cost than our copper or copper clad zinc penny.
Copper is currently $2/lb vs $0.66/lb for aluminum. Aluminum has a density of 1/3.32 that of copper so at today's metal prices an aluminum penny would cost 1/10th that of a solid copper penny and a few years ago it cost 1/40 that of a solid copper penny. Considering today's copper clad zinc penny aluminum density is roughly 1/3 that of zinc which at the moment has roughly the same cost/lb as aluminum so an aluminum penny would cost about 1/3 that of today's copper/zinc penny.
Besides the much lower metal cost the light mass means that the 1 Yen coin floats on water.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Idaho power opted for something far simpler several years ago. An exterior radio controlled override that cuts off the compressor motor (most of the load) for a maximum of 15 minutes while leaving your interior blower motor running. You don't notice a thing. If you happen to have two AC units they are alternated. This allows for much simpler peak load control of the power grid and doesn't torch off the customers.
I have 300A 240V service to my house. I can run the breaker at the design limit and pull 15kW-hr from it in 12.5 minutes and only spend $1.00 (I live in an obscenely cheap power state) I think the battery would be very hot.
I'm extremely skeptical of the new super-capacitor claims as it implies a 6 Farad capacitor rated at 3KV that weighs less than 100lbs and can supply 15kW continuously for one hour all the way down to 0V. To perform the same feat I'd need something like 2,200 Maxwell BCAP3000 super-capacitors in two 1,100 series capacitor banks (Maxwell spreadsheet says I need 18,904 of them).
I could build a NiMH battery with similar energy storage characteristics using 1042 12A-hr 1.2V NiMH D-cell batteries costing about $9378 weighing 345lbs (no wiring).
It would be cheaper and less hassle to build a huge battery from 39 Sears #02830126000 car batteries weighing a total of 1170lbs for only $1560. My 1-ton truck doesn't mind the weight much and it costs 1/6 of an NiMH system and 1/3 less than the vapor-ware super battery.
The patent you linked to is a "continuation in part" of patent 6427068 which is a divisional patent of 5937341. This original patent was filed Sept. 13 1996 and granted Aug. 10 1999. The original patent was also titled "Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning methods" which appears to show a very low cost method tuning/conversion/image rejection and digital signal recovery. The DSP techniques described (modified type III Hilbert transform pair) seem to be where the action is but most of what is described appears to be very similar to what I studied in my undergrad Communication Theory coursework 20 years ago on quadrature systems.
If they can prove that Blue Tooth infringes on the claims of the 1999 patent and that their patent is valid then they are "in the money".
Their patent is probably good as Broadcom has already licensed the patent to avoid damages. Nokia, Samsung and Matsushita probably have big targets on their backs now as their bluetooth vendor refused to license.
Your measurements for "Off", and "Sleep" are almost purely reactive current flow and contribute almost no "Real" power.
For example: two 0.33uF capacitors in parallel across the line and neutral connections (typical ballpark values for the conducted emissions filter but may be as small as 0.22uF or as high as a 1uF or 2uF) will draw 120V*2*pi*60*0.33^-06*2 amps or 0.03A. This yields a reactive power of 3.5VARs (volts-amps-reactive), your power meter only registers "Real" power so you aren't billed for this reactive power.
The "Real" power when off is from a small bleed resistor in the filter and the power consumed to keep any standby electronics alive. This resistor is used to safely discharge the conducted emissions filter capacitors so you don't get a shock if you touch the prongs on the power jack after pulling the plug from the wall socket. Typical values for this resistor range from 220k to 750k ohms. So for worst case the bleed resistor is using roughly 120V*120V/220kohms=65mW. As you can see the reactive power is >50X larger than the real power when the device is off.
Without measuring the powerfactor of the mac mini in sleep we don't know the exact "Real" power but we can assume that a significan portion of the reactive power in idle is that same as when off and then use the fact that VARs are the geometric sum of the real and reactive power and approximate the real power very closely as sqrt(120V*0.05A)^2-3.5^2)= 4.87W. This of course would correspond to a power factor (REAL/VARs) of 4.87W/6VA=0.81 which is a very good power factor for such a light load.
The average power cost in the US is now $0.1/kwhr so it would cost roughly 5W*24*365/1000=$4.38/year to just leave your mini powered on 24/7.
CRT TV's turn fast because the tube has a bias circuit to keep it warm. When turned "OFF" most TV's burn about 5W to keep the tube warm for fast start.
You definitely weren't around in the 60's and mid 70's when we watched the tube warm up and the displayed image grow from a small dot to the full size of the screen. Sometimes it would take 20 or more seconds before the picture stabilized. When you turned the TV off you got to watch the "boot" process in reverse as the display shrunk to a dot. It was a big deal when we got "instant-on" TV's.
Some shower valves won't fully drain so you have to blow them out with air or remove the bottom drain cap on the valve. You don't need to worry about this if the valve also goes to a tub (shower tub combo)
Sorry your wrong. But Google's prediction is realistic.
Actually Google is predicting that each PC would save roughly 45W in wasted power. 40e12(Watt-hours)/1e8(PCs)/(365*3*8hours)
I think the estimated savings per PC is high by a factor of 3X (I design laser printer power supplies for a living) but I think you should assume 24hrs use per day savings rather than 8hrs so their estimate of potential total savings is on target.
We've been doing similar things in laser printers and ink jet printers for years.
If you think about it, LCD monitors are another example of tremendous reductions in energy usage. My current LCD monitor runs 24/7 and requires less than 20W, my old CRT monitor also ran 24/7 and burned 100W. This one change saved me 700.8KW-hrs per year (80W*24hrs/day*365days/year/1000w/KW) which is about $42 at my nominal power rate of $0.06/KW-hr. The US national average rate is now $0.10.
Multiply similar savings by 100 million monitors with an 8 hour work day and you are talking about removing 2.67GW of average generating capacity from the power grid saving $2.33billion US dollars per year at the nominal US rate of $0.1/KW-hr.
12V happens to be a sweet spot in terms of cost of the converter components as well as overall efficiency. Wire guage, voltage drop and capacitor size is significantly smaller than 5V or 3.3V primary supply.
Think in terms of millions of units per month and compare the price of an NMOS FET and storage capacitor rated for 35V (safety margin in a 24V design) verses the cost of similar FETs and capacitors rated for 20V. In a synchronous buck design you can easily save $0.75 per converter section by using 12V rather than 24V and significantly increase conversion efficiency for free.
Assuming a constant switch frequency the switching losses increase with the square of applied voltage, "I squared R" conduction losses in conductors will decrease with the square of current but the voltage dependant switching losses will dominate once the input voltage gets too high. For a given cost the overall converter efficiency is usually highest if your input voltage is relatively close to the output voltage. 12V to 3.3V conversion is significantly more efficient and less costly than 24V to 3.3V conversion.
Here is a little on MOND. IANAP but the page author is and has tabulated predictions where dark matter theory doesn't hold but where MOND does and that MOND is not complete.
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond/mondvsDM.html
Nothing like increasing Optical storage capacity by 2.3 orders of magnitude over present 4.7Gig writables and 2 orders of magnitude increase over the proposed 10Gig writable.
Can't wait to transfer all of my DVDs and CDs to a single disk!
Dohhh!
Of course it's obsolete, just like that new keyboard you just bought!
Delete the space in "electri cal" from the pasted URL to visit web site.
Enjoy
What a perfect BURN.
Sparked a memory, the IBM PC (circa 1983) I used in high school had this neat "high tech" feature on many keys that were pressed longer than a second.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey so does this one!
This is way before your time but Edwin Howard Armstrong was an exceptionally high-profile inventor. http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/armstrng .htm
First he invented Super-Regenerative Receivers (they are now used in ALL garage door openers) and got screwed by ATT, then he went on to Super-heterodyne receivers used in all AM and FM radios, got screwed by RCA and then invented wideband FM and got screwed again by RCA and committed suicide.
His wife then sued and settled with RCA for a million+ dollars, went after other companies like Sylvania and CBS and won. Her last win was against Motorola, which she won.
Remember: "true innovation is always the work of individuals or small groups"
Slashdot Mirror
I've always thought Japan got it right with their aluminum 1 Yen coin. Japan's 1 Yen coin (current face value of 0.85 US cents) has a much lower metal cost than our copper or copper clad zinc penny. Copper is currently $2/lb vs $0.66/lb for aluminum. Aluminum has a density of 1/3.32 that of copper so at today's metal prices an aluminum penny would cost 1/10th that of a solid copper penny and a few years ago it cost 1/40 that of a solid copper penny. Considering today's copper clad zinc penny aluminum density is roughly 1/3 that of zinc which at the moment has roughly the same cost/lb as aluminum so an aluminum penny would cost about 1/3 that of today's copper/zinc penny. Besides the much lower metal cost the light mass means that the 1 Yen coin floats on water.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Idaho power opted for something far simpler several years ago. An exterior radio controlled override that cuts off the compressor motor (most of the load) for a maximum of 15 minutes while leaving your interior blower motor running. You don't notice a thing. If you happen to have two AC units they are alternated. This allows for much simpler peak load control of the power grid and doesn't torch off the customers.
We already import >1,500,000 barrels a day from Canada of which >220,000 barrel are extracted from tar sands.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.07/oil.html
I have 300A 240V service to my house. I can run the breaker at the design limit and pull 15kW-hr from it in 12.5 minutes and only spend $1.00 (I live in an obscenely cheap power state) I think the battery would be very hot.
I'm extremely skeptical of the new super-capacitor claims as it implies a 6 Farad capacitor rated at 3KV that weighs less than 100lbs and can supply 15kW continuously for one hour all the way down to 0V. To perform the same feat I'd need something like 2,200 Maxwell BCAP3000 super-capacitors in two 1,100 series capacitor banks (Maxwell spreadsheet says I need 18,904 of them).
I could build a NiMH battery with similar energy storage characteristics using 1042 12A-hr 1.2V NiMH D-cell batteries costing about $9378 weighing 345lbs (no wiring).
It would be cheaper and less hassle to build a huge battery from 39 Sears #02830126000 car batteries weighing a total of 1170lbs for only $1560. My 1-ton truck doesn't mind the weight much and it costs 1/6 of an NiMH system and 1/3 less than the vapor-ware super battery.
http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/ia.jsp?IA=CA2006/0005 48&LANGUAGE=EN
Fugly!
The patent you linked to is a "continuation in part" of patent 6427068 which is a divisional patent of 5937341. This original patent was filed Sept. 13 1996 and granted Aug. 10 1999. The original patent was also titled "Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning methods" which appears to show a very low cost method tuning/conversion/image rejection and digital signal recovery. The DSP techniques described (modified type III Hilbert transform pair) seem to be where the action is but most of what is described appears to be very similar to what I studied in my undergrad Communication Theory coursework 20 years ago on quadrature systems. If they can prove that Blue Tooth infringes on the claims of the 1999 patent and that their patent is valid then they are "in the money". Their patent is probably good as Broadcom has already licensed the patent to avoid damages. Nokia, Samsung and Matsushita probably have big targets on their backs now as their bluetooth vendor refused to license.
Your measurements for "Off", and "Sleep" are almost purely reactive current flow and contribute almost no "Real" power.
For example: two 0.33uF capacitors in parallel across the line and neutral connections (typical ballpark values for the conducted emissions filter but may be as small as 0.22uF or as high as a 1uF or 2uF) will draw 120V*2*pi*60*0.33^-06*2 amps or 0.03A. This yields a reactive power of 3.5VARs (volts-amps-reactive), your power meter only registers "Real" power so you aren't billed for this reactive power.
The "Real" power when off is from a small bleed resistor in the filter and the power consumed to keep any standby electronics alive. This resistor is used to safely discharge the conducted emissions filter capacitors so you don't get a shock if you touch the prongs on the power jack after pulling the plug from the wall socket. Typical values for this resistor range from 220k to 750k ohms. So for worst case the bleed resistor is using roughly 120V*120V/220kohms=65mW. As you can see the reactive power is >50X larger than the real power when the device is off.
Without measuring the powerfactor of the mac mini in sleep we don't know the exact "Real" power but we can assume that a significan portion of the reactive power in idle is that same as when off and then use the fact that VARs are the geometric sum of the real and reactive power and approximate the real power very closely as sqrt(120V*0.05A)^2-3.5^2)= 4.87W. This of course would correspond to a power factor (REAL/VARs) of 4.87W/6VA=0.81 which is a very good power factor for such a light load.
The average power cost in the US is now $0.1/kwhr so it would cost roughly 5W*24*365/1000=$4.38/year to just leave your mini powered on 24/7.
I wouldn't worry about this.......
CRT TV's turn fast because the tube has a bias circuit to keep it warm. When turned "OFF" most TV's burn about 5W to keep the tube warm for fast start. You definitely weren't around in the 60's and mid 70's when we watched the tube warm up and the displayed image grow from a small dot to the full size of the screen. Sometimes it would take 20 or more seconds before the picture stabilized. When you turned the TV off you got to watch the "boot" process in reverse as the display shrunk to a dot. It was a big deal when we got "instant-on" TV's.
Some shower valves won't fully drain so you have to blow them out with air or remove the bottom drain cap on the valve. You don't need to worry about this if the valve also goes to a tub (shower tub combo)
Sorry your wrong. But Google's prediction is realistic.
Actually Google is predicting that each PC would save roughly 45W in wasted power. 40e12(Watt-hours)/1e8(PCs)/(365*3*8hours)
I think the estimated savings per PC is high by a factor of 3X (I design laser printer power supplies for a living) but I think you should assume 24hrs use per day savings rather than 8hrs so their estimate of potential total savings is on target.
We've been doing similar things in laser printers and ink jet printers for years.
If you think about it, LCD monitors are another example of tremendous reductions in energy usage. My current LCD monitor runs 24/7 and requires less than 20W, my old CRT monitor also ran 24/7 and burned 100W. This one change saved me 700.8KW-hrs per year (80W*24hrs/day*365days/year/1000w/KW) which is about $42 at my nominal power rate of $0.06/KW-hr. The US national average rate is now $0.10.
Multiply similar savings by 100 million monitors with an 8 hour work day and you are talking about removing 2.67GW of average generating capacity from the power grid saving $2.33billion US dollars per year at the nominal US rate of $0.1/KW-hr.
12V happens to be a sweet spot in terms of cost of the converter components as well as overall efficiency. Wire guage, voltage drop and capacitor size is significantly smaller than 5V or 3.3V primary supply. Think in terms of millions of units per month and compare the price of an NMOS FET and storage capacitor rated for 35V (safety margin in a 24V design) verses the cost of similar FETs and capacitors rated for 20V. In a synchronous buck design you can easily save $0.75 per converter section by using 12V rather than 24V and significantly increase conversion efficiency for free. Assuming a constant switch frequency the switching losses increase with the square of applied voltage, "I squared R" conduction losses in conductors will decrease with the square of current but the voltage dependant switching losses will dominate once the input voltage gets too high. For a given cost the overall converter efficiency is usually highest if your input voltage is relatively close to the output voltage. 12V to 3.3V conversion is significantly more efficient and less costly than 24V to 3.3V conversion.
You sound like a farce to be reckened with...
Dang, I thought it was "B.F.S.M." http://www.venganza.org/>
ummm...soylent green? http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue55/classic.html
Here is a little on MOND. IANAP but the page author is and has tabulated predictions where dark matter theory doesn't hold but where MOND does and that MOND is not complete. http://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/mond/mondvsDM.html
Support bacteria! It's the only culture some people have!
Your sig is awfully similar to one I received years ago in an email from a fellow at Tek.
Tree that grow into houses. The first place I read something similar was in 1987 by L.E. Modesitt in the "Forever Hero". Interesting read. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312 868383/qid=1105415400/sr=8-19/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i4_xg l14/103-6082336-5456609?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Nothing like increasing Optical storage capacity by 2.3 orders of magnitude over present 4.7Gig writables and 2 orders of magnitude increase over the proposed 10Gig writable. Can't wait to transfer all of my DVDs and CDs to a single disk!
Screw the compu-fon-omatic. What you really need is a good pair of boots!
Dohhh! Of course it's obsolete, just like that new keyboard you just bought! Delete the space in "electri cal" from the pasted URL to visit web site. Enjoy
What a perfect BURN. Sparked a memory, the IBM PC (circa 1983) I used in high school had this neat "high tech" feature on many keys that were pressed longer than a second. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Hey so does this one!
This is way before your time but Edwin Howard Armstrong was an exceptionally high-profile inventor.g .htm
http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/armstrn
First he invented Super-Regenerative Receivers (they are now used in ALL garage door openers) and got screwed by ATT, then he went on to Super-heterodyne receivers used in all AM and FM radios, got screwed by RCA and then invented wideband FM and got screwed again by RCA and committed suicide.
His wife then sued and settled with RCA for a million+ dollars, went after other companies like Sylvania and CBS and won. Her last win was against Motorola, which she won.
Remember: "true innovation is always the work of individuals or small groups"
The answer is 42. Now what was the question?