The great standby energy disaster!

[peteshimmon]

There has been news articles about energy
wasted leaving televisions on standby instead
of switched off. This has made me dig out an
old booklet that came with a set I had 25 years
ago. It stated that when on standby the main
energy consuming part of the set was off. I
took this to mean that the set was using
something like 10% of its normal wattage. Now
I realise it is not saying that and nowhere in
this or another instruction book is the
difference in consumption stated! Now news
items are suggesting that standby still uses
over 50% of the power when on. So if hundreds of
millions of sets have been used worldwide in
this mode for great lengths of time thats
much energy used for no utility! I thought
Engineers and Designers were responcible
people, how come they did this? It does not
take me long to focus on the answer, the
advertising industry! A set switched off with
the plug out is not what they desire. But just
a button push from on and where young children
can do it is better! Perhaps its too late to
state that society should have prevented the
financial/advertising complex from gaining
undue influence in the manufacturing world!

[Swift]

I don't know how much of this to blame on the advertising industry and how much on ourselves. I suspect people wanted instant-on TVs (I am old enough to remember when TVs had to warm-up). The easiest way to engineer this is probably the way they did it, without much consideration given to power use. How many consumers would trade spending $50 less a year on their electric bill, versus waiting a minute for the TV to come on. I suspect most will pay the $50.

[Glom]

Don't exaggerate! TVs don't pump out nearly the same amount of heat as when on. Thermodynamics still applies even if the chattering class media aren't aware of it.

[Roy Batty]

Don't exaggerate! TVs don't pump out nearly the same amount of heat as when on. Thermodynamics still applies even if the chattering class media aren't aware of it.
I second that. A CRT takes a lot of energy to warm up (& I mean warm up:)).
On standby, especially with todays appliances, things take a small fraction of the energy.

Also, as an aside, I doubt most people realise that with their portable music players etc that power consumption is almost proportional to the volume played at, something to bear in mind even with rechargables.

Edited to add a comma for comprehension.

[korjik]

on the other hand 10 milliamps per circut can add up.

That estimate is probably a but high, but it still is a rather large amount of lost energy. Not a disaster tho.

[Swift]

Don't exaggerate! TVs don't pump out nearly the same amount of heat as when on. Thermodynamics still applies even if the chattering class media aren't aware of it.
If that comment was to me, I wasn't exaggerating, I was pulling a number out of the air, and was not relevant to the point I was making, which is the average consumer wants the convenience, whether the energy cost per year is $0.10 or $100. I appologize if that number upset people. I tried to find the actual number on the web, but couldn't find it.

Another example is driving, even with gas prices at record highs in the US, I don't particularly notice the average driver slowing down a little to save money.

[HenrikOlsen]

Numbers (http://standby.lbl.gov/Data/SummaryChart.html), found in approximately 10 seconds by googling for "standby power".

[Roy Batty]

Yep. But they are 1999, 7 year old figures. Things change fast:)

[publius]

The whole point about the stand-by power consumption is not that it is anything great per household, but that millions of households with such devices adds up to a pretty good chunk of power being wasted nationwide.

And not just wasted, but taxing the grid. Costs of electric transmission increase with load, that is the "incremental cost" of a transmitting an additional kW of power increase with the total load. So at any given time, you can have an appreciable chunk of the load on some major transmission line due to the standy power of a million or so users.

Just 1W of wasted power per household is a whole MW for a million users. And just figuring 10 - 100W total wasted is 10 - 100MW for a million customers.

-Richard

[Glom]

If that comment was to me,

It wasn't. It was directed at the OP.

If you want energy wastage, how about the billions of dollars worth of energy locked up in plutonium recovered from dismantled nuclear weapons that we are constantly told we shouldn't use in reactors. No that's an energy disaster!

[HenrikOlsen]

Oh well, somewhat newer numbers (http://www.energyrating.gov.au/standby-profiles2.html).

[Roy Batty]

I think we should be putting our bodies kW's of heat when we are too hot back into the power grid! :D
Ok seriously, domestic electrical apparatus is getting more & more 'green' in terms of what it uses both on & standby. I do actually turn everything totally off if I know I'm going to be away for several hours or more, otherwise I'll leave the TV, VCR, PC on standby. Think of it this way, less of a power surge if everybody turned everything off/on? :)

[ASEI]

No kidding. If people had standby taken away from them, they may just decide to leave everything on all the time rather than having to perpetually reboot their equipment (which is also a bit harder on the equipment) and save/reload or lose everything they were working on.

[Glom]

I think we should be putting our bodies kW's of heat when we are too hot back into the power grid! :D

What is this? The Matrix?

Ok seriously, domestic electrical apparatus is getting more & more 'green' in terms of of what it uses both on & standby. I do actually turn everything totally off if I know I'm going to be away for several hours or more, otherwise I'll leave the TV, VCR, PC on standby. Think of it this way, less of a power surge if everybody turned everything off/on? :)

If you turn the TV etc completely off and let it turn cold, you need to transfer more energy to heat it up again. So the savings of turning it off and offset by the extra consumption of powering it up again. Then add to the fact that the repeated cycling from cold to hot will be detrimental to the longevity of the components, getting religious about turning things off at the source gets closer and closer to chattering class waffle.

[Roy Batty]

What is this? The Matrix?
Darn, you got me there, a paragon of battery logic :) yes it was a joke!


Right, so I think we are in agreement here...

(not quite sure I understand your 'chattering class' terminology though, unless you mean Sun/Mirror readers? :D;))

Edit: I can see a possible source of confusion. I meant to say 'less of a power surge THAN if everybody turned everything off/on'. Should of of been obvious what I meant in context though? ho hum, never mind :)

[publius]

Ah, I see we've got some "leave it on-ers" here trying to justify it. :lol: When you subject these arguments to actual physics and actual economics too, you find out they rarely hold up.

Besides electric power devices, truckers and other diesel engine operators used to let their engines just idle, and if asked they would argue that stopping and starting a diesel is much worse than a gasoline engine, the brief period of oil starvation and cold running causing much more wear than hours of warm operation. And they're right to some extent. And then you add turning off a hot turbocharger after a loaded run and letting the oil inside fry, you've got more arguments

However, when you "run the numbers" of the cost of fuel vs the extra *running* life gained, it is no contest. The only time not to cut one off is just for a short period of a few minutes if you're going to have to start it back up, and let any turbo cool for a minute or two at idle.

Now, back to electric powered stuff. The old leave it on because cycling reduces the life has been used a lot in regards to lighting, both incandescent, fluorescent and others.

I can't remember off the top of my head about flourescents, but the life of an incandescent bulb is between 500 - 1000 hours, depending on wattage (and that figure does include reasonable cycling estimates, so the actual continuous life would be a little longer).

Let's take 1000 hours. That's about 42 days of continous operation, a month and a week roughly.

So, if we left a light on continously, we'd have the cost of the energy, plus we'd have to replace that bulb about 10 times per year.

Now, let's say we use actually use that bulb for 8 hours per day, which is a lot, and cycling it every day reduces the life by a whopping 25%, to 750 hours. The bulb will last about 94 days, or a tad over 3 months. We'll use only 1/3 of the energy, and will only have to buy 4 bulbs per year, rather than 10. Now, imagine that for a something used only 2 hours per day and the life is reduced by something less than 25%.

The way it works out is this "leave it on" argument is demolished save for the ridiculous cases of cycling something every 5 minutes or something nearly continuously. A couple of 5 minute cycles per day aren't going to make much of a dent in it.

So turn the lights off when you leave the room, unless you're going in and out every 5 minutes many times per day.

And if we want to run the numbers on the cost of heating up a cold TV vs the cost of leaving it on, and even try to figure a life-reduction figure in that, we'll find the argument is absolutely blown away.

-Richard

[Roy Batty]

And if we want to run the numbers on the cost of heating up a cold TV vs the cost of leaving it on, and even try to figure a life-reduction figure in that, we'll find the argument is absolutely blown away.

-Richard
I'll just take issue with this for now since (assuming a CRT) this involves a fair amount of energy. What makes you think that standby for a normal TV nowadays means the same as leaving it on? That's what we are talking about.

As for for lighting (lamps not bulbs;)) pah, well you know, things have/are constantly changing. Having worked for GE Lighting for several years in the past I know, but in general (pun intended) I agree, much better to turn off now than not :)

[Van Rijn]

I'll just take issue with this for now since (assuming a CRT) this involves a fair amount of energy. What makes you think that standby for a normal TV nowadays means the same as leaving it on? That's what we are talking about.


One possible bit of confusion here - years ago I had an "instant on" TV. This goes back to around '80, it was a small color set with old-style electromechanical VHF and UHF tuners. As long as it was plugged in, it kept the CRT warmed. It did start right up, but it took a good chunk of electricity even when the power button was in the "off" position. It also shortened the life of the tube.

I don't remember "instant on" ever getting that popular. The modern stuff keeps some electronics alive, especially so that the device can respond to a remote control, but I'm not aware of any TV that keeps the tube warmed (and the tube is going away).

On the other hand, Plasma sets take a *lot* of power when on, and the "big TV" trend has increased the typical energy used.

[publius]

Roy,

Well, I wasn't really thinking that standby mode used the same power as being fully on, but lets compare it.

How much energy does it take to "warm up" an average TV CRT? I don't know.(BTW, if standby is actually keeping the cathode warm, then I think that is a waste shore 'nuff) Then, let's compare how long it would take a TV on standby consumption to equal that energy. That will gives a basis to start playing with on and off times.

By way of explanation, this is one of my hot buttons. And this is not directed at anyone in this thread:

We've got a problem here, and that's our electric energy consumption is increasing, yet our production and transmission capacity is not being increased to meet that demand. Look at CA now.

Now, we've people who scream bloody murder when their power bill goes up, and even louder when it goes off, yet they scream just as loud in NIMBY fury when someone suggests building a power plant, or running a new transmission line, or major substation within a 100 mile radius of where they live. And Lord help you if suggest that power plant be nuclear. But, oh, how they want their power.

Now, these same people who stand in the way of upgrading generation and transmission, are the same ones who are buying all this crap with the standby mode and filling up their homes with it, and millions of them together add 10s of MW burden to generation and transmission. And all for this standy crap. Now, think of when the CA grid is at near capacity with all the A/C running, and imagine subtracting those 10s of MW or more of crap.

My solution would be to simply cut the power off to the NIMBYers who stand in the way. And I love to see how long they would last without power. It would be a hoot to watch.

In about a week, they'd have reverted back to the jungle, running around in loincloths with their faces painted, sacrifing virgins (if they could find any) to the Great Grid God to appease his anger at them.

-Richard

[Roy Batty]

I don't know the details I admit, but judging by my TV, standby does not keep the CT warm, just means the remote electronics etc work. Picture still comes on about 10-15 seconds later, after that the set gets warm :)

Like I said, if I'm out for more than say, half a day or more, I power down the whole flat (& I mean physically unplug most stuff as well). Also I have absolutely no problems with living a few miles within a power station (preferably nuclear!). Not that's very likely admittedly on the outskirts of London;)

[Captain Kidd]

Here's the California ISO status page (http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html). We've been watching it ourselves to see what sort of pickle they're in. The news was reporting that they were frantically trying to get a unit back online for today's peak that had tripped over the weekend (fossil I'm asssuming as they'd have said if it was a nuke plant).

The Eastern grid isn't much better, jokes are that the guards have shoot-on-sight orders for anybody even looking like they're thinking about approaching trip sensitive equipment. TVA set a new one-day demand record (http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_89481.asp) and had a 4-day 30,000+ MW run.

Of course that's not completely a good thing money-wise as the expensive combustion turbines were running. Browns Ferry Unit 1 is to start up soon, so that'll help with next year's peak.

Increasing demands, aging plants, aging transmission lines, and NIMBY screams about any suggestion of adding new generation capacity. Almost makes one stay up at night wondering when the house of cards is going to collaspe. (Not that I am, but I know some who do even though they claim they don't. ;) )

[publius]

Cap'n,

Part of me would love to see the house of cards come down, but only on those who actually deserve it, which would be hard to do. Again, I'd just love to watch what happened. It would get dangerous though after about a week, so best to be armed and fortified. :)

And, then it's a regulated utility, and we've got pandering politicians controlling rates, at least for residential users.

What I'd love to do is introduce residential customers (well, the Yuppie NIMBY types) to the concept of demand billing. And peak adjusted demand billing at that! :lol:

And we'd explain to them that those demand costs would go down if we can upgrade generation and transmission. NIMBY? Well, okay, put you're gonna pay through the nose.

-Richard

[publius]

Cap'n,

And talking about demand, would you believe if I told you that around here there's quite a few "McMansions" going up with 3-phase services? Standard 208Y.

When it gets so big that a standard NEC load calculation (which overestimates, erring on the side of caution) that you come up with 400A or even 600A for a darned house with 120/240 3-wire, well, you start thinking 3-phase. And with a big enough cluster of these little McMansions, the utility is more than happy to do it.

However, some of these McMansion users did indeed learn about demand billing. And from what I've heard, they've had to get serious with some who've racked up $2K in unpaid bills in rather short order. Some of them have had to choose between their Yuppie-mobiles and their power, I hear.

-Richard

[Damburger]

Now, we've people who scream bloody murder when their power bill goes up, and even louder when it goes off, yet they scream just as loud in NIMBY fury when someone suggests building a power plant, or running a new transmission line, or major substation within a 100 mile radius of where they live. And Lord help you if suggest that power plant be nuclear. But, oh, how they want their power.

Now, these same people who stand in the way of upgrading generation and transmission, are the same ones who are buying all this crap with the standby mode and filling up their homes with it, and millions of them together add 10s of MW burden to generation and transmission. And all for this standy crap. Now, think of when the CA grid is at near capacity with all the A/C running, and imagine subtracting those 10s of MW or more of crap.

My solution would be to simply cut the power off to the NIMBYers who stand in the way. And I love to see how long they would last without power. It would be a hoot to watch.

In about a week, they'd have reverted back to the jungle, running around in loincloths with their faces painted, sacrifing virgins (if they could find any) to the Great Grid God to appease his anger at them.

-Richard

Excellent rant. This is a wider problem than you've described though, as I've just been explaining on another forum. People demand the benefits of technology without having the slightest understanding of that technology, or any issues surrounding that technology.

Just as people want Jiggawatts of electricity for pennies, without being able to see cooling towers from their back window - they expect to be able to use computers without having the slightest knoweldge of how they work. And when the user-machine relationship breaks down, they blame the technology and not themselves. Its always "my computer is broken" or "the internet doesn't work" and never "I'm a knuckle dragging evolutionary dead end who can't operate a modem or a word processor".

To those who don't understand, science and technology are simply magic, like Clarke said. Anything that uses electricity is suffciently advanced for that, to about 90% of the population. Being magic, they expect it to be able to do anything. The only reason that the magic can't give them what they want, when they want it, is the Wizards.

Theres a woman in a BP ad currently showing in the UK with this sort of attitude. She says "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we make a car that doesn't create mess (sic)". The Apollo program allowed something to occur which was outside her understanding, therefore it makes anything outside her understanding possible.

[yuzuha]

In the old days of tubes/valves, instant on sets left the heater circuits going to keep all those filaments glowing a cheery red... That was a significant amount of energy and kept set tops hot enough to bake on. These days, standby mode amounts to little more than keeping an LED lit. Too little and decades too late.

[Damburger]

In the old days of tubes/valves, instant on sets left the heater circuits going to keep all those filaments glowing a cheery red... That was a significant amount of energy and kept set tops hot enough to bake on. These days, standby mode amounts to little more than keeping an LED lit. Too little and decades too late.

The power consumption figures I've seen aren't consistent with keeping a tiny LED lit. At the very least, there is an infrared sensor and a microprossecor listening for the instruction from the remote to power up.

[NEOWatcher]

The power consumption figures I've seen aren't consistent with keeping a tiny LED lit. At the very least, there is an infrared sensor and a microprossecor listening for the instruction from the remote to power up.
I understand a few watts/milliwatts add up, but lets work on the big energy wasters. What about that fridge in standby...Just to have something cold right away.:p

(Half joking. What portion of total power is caused by standby?)

[Damburger]

I understand a few watts/milliwatts add up, but lets work on the big energy wasters. What about that fridge in standby...Just to have something cold right away.:p


Tell me about it! How much energy does that light use when the fridge is closed?? And nobody is there to need a light!


(Half joking. What portion of total power is caused by standby?)

I'm going on the stats posted in this thread.

[publius]

I understand a few watts/milliwatts add up, but lets work on the big energy wasters. What about that fridge in standby...Just to have something cold right away.:p

(Half joking. What portion of total power is caused by standby?)

Neo,

Taking a ratio of standy/superfluous power to total is not the whole picture, because the loss fraction of a power system increases with load. It's basically a consequence of the square in I^2R, plus generation factors as well. At high demand, the older less efficient plants have to be started up.

Power is dirt cheap at low system load, but gets very expensive near full load.

Take CA. Population is about 30 million. Figure that is 10 million "households". Now, a conservative figure would be about 100W of "crap" load per household. That's 1GW of crap on the system. Right now with the heat wave and the A/C going full blast, they're pushing the limit at roughly 50GW.

That 1GW, or even conservatively saying a few 100MW is very expensive and a burden on the system when it's at full load.


-Richard

[Donnie B.]

As mentioned above, old "instant-on" TVs kept the filament of the CRT hot, which indeed was a significant power drain.

This was ended by regulation in the 1970s, after the first energy crisis. You can't sell a new "instant-on" CRT TV in the US. LCD TVs may be nearly instant-on, but that's not comparable.

Today, power demand by a TV or other device is not zero, but is quite small when "off". Much more significant is the power wasted when a TV is left on but no one is watching it.

It might be useful to have a mode where the CRT (or backlight of an LCD TV) is off but the tuner and sound are on. A really smart TV would be able to sense the presence of a watcher and downshift to a lower-power mode automatically.

[peteshimmon]

I was fixated on televisions and how I had been
duped by an instruction book years ago. But the
links were very interesting and makes me
consider the whole range of gadgets. Like my
electric screwdriver I used on some bookcases
recently. Certainly saved my aging wrists some
stress. But its been in a cupboard since. It
comes with bracket to fix on the wall and keep
charged. So how many do this in a basement and
use it a few times a year? And all the time a
watt or two of heat comes from the transformer
with a fully charged item. Perhaps some urgent
requests to power down these are coming to
reduce the chance of power cuts. But I gather
many pride themselves on ignoring such
socialist requests:) Lets have a proper auto
off switch on gadgets where a solenoid releases
the switch.

[Donnie B.]

Transfomers are very efficient. I would be surprised if a charger for a power tool dissipated anywhere near a watt once the tool was fully charged.

The situation may actually be worse for switch-mode power supplies. Those tend to have much lower efficiency at low load than at the rated load, and may not be suitable for applications like trickle chargers and such.

That leads us to the problem of power factor. Older electrical equipment (such as incandescent lights and devices with linear power supplies) draws current in a well-defined linear phase relationship with the AC line voltage. The current demand rises and falls smoothly during each cycle of AC. Most power distribution systems are designed to expect that type of load.

Switching power supplies, such as those in PCs and many other modern electronic systems, behave very differently. They draw brief surges of current at the peaks of the line voltage. Power metering does not take this difference into account. Customers who use a lot of such loads may be using significantly more power than they're being charged for.

European regulations require modified switching supplies that draw current in a fashion that simulates a linear load (a technique known as power factor correction; it can add significant cost to a product). I haven't heard that US regulatory agencies are planning to follow suit.

[publius]

Donnie,

A well designed power transformer is a very efficient device at its design frequency and voltage. A poorly designed transformer, where the margins of voltage and size are pushed to save weight and cost can get very inefficient if just starts to tip into saturation. The exciting current waveform will become noticably triangular (sharper, higher peaks) and I've see this on a quite a few el-cheapo devices with transformer front ends.

Now, metering. All meters, including the mechanical ones actually attempt to do a full vi*dt integration. Power factor and harmonic factor are two different things. Regular power factor is the phase angle between the V and I sine waves. Any meter handles that properly. Rectifier front ends do pull sharp current pulses at the peaks, and this very inefficient on the AC side. You can see this in terms of the harmonics. If the voltage remains sinusoidal, the only contribution to the power is the 60Hz fundamental of the current waveform. All the others integrate to zero, and do nothing but cause I^2R losses.

But a meter, by its very design, even the old mechanical ones (and really they have their advantages IMO, but everyone is moving to electronic metering) is looking for true power. Harmonics will introduce more errors depending on the design, but the basic design is attempting a proper
V(t)I(t)dt integration.

Harmonics are bad for a lot of reasons. Those highly efficient transformers loose efficiency with the higher frequency harmonics, and synchronous machines do not like them, plus the basic waste. For that reason, I wish manufacturers would filter the inputs of their stuff to reduce harmonics.

Computer power supply manufacturers haven't, although a few make them. However, the electronic lamp ballast people have done this for years, and have agreed to keep total harmonics to less than 10% of the fundamental, ie THD < 10%. THD of 30% is sort of critical level, as this is the point that neutral current of a 3-phase wye system with those non-linear loads phase to ground can equal phase current, rather than cancelling. The THD of a non-filtered computer power supply can easily exceed 30%.

-Richard

[publius]

There is a lot of confusion about harmonics and metering. One is that cheaper AC multimeters were the "averaging" type that assumed they had a sine wave, took a half-cycle average and calculated the RMS based on that average. That will fail for non-sinusoidal waveforms and the error increases with THD. If you're measuring current, you can get a low estimate of your actuall I^2R and thermal load. That's why "true RMS" meters, that do a proper RMS integration are required, now.

And that is where the idea that power meters are inaccurate comes from. But power meters are different, indeed, that's the bread and butter of power companies and they aren't going to use any devices with a significant potential for error in the expected range of operation. Well, errors in the customer's favor. :) Errors in their favor are not so worrisome to them.

Some old 4-wire, "high leg" delta meters used a "two and a half" stator design (cheaper than a full 3 stator) that would read high if the customer used the high-leg to neutral voltage. That would not normally be done, but if it was, the meter would read high for that portion of the load.

I forget the name of it, but power metering has a basic theorem, named after some guy that begins with an 'N', I think. Anyway it formalized the basic principle that if you have a power source with N wires, you need to measure N-1 voltages and N-1 currents to measure power.

Now, in some cases, as with the two and a half stator design, symmetry allows you to measure less than that, but in the case of the high leg to ground current, that symmetry would be broken.

ETA: No, not an 'N', but a 'B'. It's called Blondel's Theorem.

-Richard

[Gillianren]

Just as people want Jiggawatts of electricity for pennies, without being able to see cooling towers from their back window - they expect to be able to use computers without having the slightest knoweldge of how they work. And when the user-machine relationship breaks down, they blame the technology and not themselves. Its always "my computer is broken" or "the internet doesn't work" and never "I'm a knuckle dragging evolutionary dead end who can't operate a modem or a word processor".

You know, I don't really understand how my computer works. I can operate a modem as long as it works (mine regularly doesn't; even Comcast admits that), and I'm probably better at word processing than a lot of people around here (for a start, I can work spell check!), but that's it. I've never had a class that taught me how the bits work, and I've never had much inclination to learn.

That does not make me a "knuckle dragging evolutionary dead end." Technology is specialized, and not everyone can learn everything even when it isn't. I am not a math/science person, and I am perfectly comfortable with saying, "My computer isn't working. Fix it." The computer's the problem far, far more often than I am.

[nokton]

There has been news articles about energy
wasted leaving televisions on standby instead
of switched off. This has made me dig out an
old booklet that came with a set I had 25 years
ago. It stated that when on standby the main
energy consuming part of the set was off. I
took this to mean that the set was using
something like 10% of its normal wattage. Now
I realise it is not saying that and nowhere in
this or another instruction book is the
difference in consumption stated! Now news
items are suggesting that standby still uses
over 50% of the power when on. So if hundreds of
millions of sets have been used worldwide in
this mode for great lengths of time thats
much energy used for no utility! I thought
Engineers and Designers were responcible
people, how come they did this? It does not
take me long to focus on the answer, the
advertising industry! A set switched off with
the plug out is not what they desire. But just
a button push from on and where young children
can do it is better! Perhaps its too late to
state that society should have prevented the
financial/advertising complex from gaining
undue influence in the manufacturing world!
pete, think on this my friend, and I do understand your above.
Every time you switch off your TV or Hi Fi, you shorten its life, more,
your picture or sound quality will not be as good as if you left it on, or
in standby mode, why? Electronic components degrade faster with current
off current on. So pete, you buy a new telly, you never turn it off, but standby, it lasts you 10 years. You buy a new telly, switch it off every night,
it lasts you 6 years. You buy a new telly, OMG, how much energy was consumed, in creating your new telly, pete, the bottom line is this. Your
TV, your Hi Fi, will last you years, if you never pull the plug.
Nokton

[NEOWatcher]

Neo,

Taking a ratio of standy/superfluous power...

I was thinking more of how much people waste normally. I agree with what your saying, but that number is already equaled by someone leaving a light or TV on when it doesn't have to be. All I'm saying is that the standby power is only a piece of the picture, and it would be interesting to see what pieces there are and how they compare.

[publius]

I was thinking more of how much people waste normally. I agree with what your saying, but that number is already equaled by someone leaving a light or TV on when it doesn't have to be. All I'm saying is that the standby power is only a piece of the picture, and it would be interesting to see what pieces there are and how they compare.

I agree with that too, and that's why I'd like to introduce residential customers (at least the worst offenders) to demand billing so the relative hogs bear more of the increased costs as system demand increases, just like commericial and industrial customers do.

I can rant about this too. It frosts me when I drive by some of these little McMansion subdivisions at night and see everything lit up like a Christmas tree. You'll see houses with every floodlight they have on. Then, they have all this stupid "architectural" lighting radiating away full blast all night as well, and probably the Nazi-like "homeowners association" type groups that impose their personal iron sense of aesthetics on everyone else probably *require it*. I can start counting bulbs and estimating size and come up with a couple to several kWs per house burning all night for nothing.

And, with all, you see power company supplied pole lights (more efficient by a long shot) shining on top of that. It makes me want to scream.

And the insides of those houses will be light up like Christmas trees as well, with gangs of their uncontrolled brat whelps running around who know how to turn the switch "ON", but apparently "OFF" is beyond their capabilities. And the same brats run in and out, leaving doors open with the A/C going full blast. And these are the same brats I'm sure who ruin a nice dinner at a restaurant by screaming and yelping the whole time. And the parents just sit there and smile.

And they squeal like a stuck pig at the thought of a transmission line, plant, or substation anywhere where they might accidently have to look at it.

Yep, I can just about blow my stack with all this waste.

-Richard

[Donnie B.]

Stereotyping, anyone? :think:

I agree that load-dependent demand billing should be implemented universally. I know that many utilities are moving in that direction. The appropriate technology for residential metering exists and is inexpensive enough to be used widely.

[peteshimmon]

Well thats a quick reponce Nocton from an
emergency meeting of advertising executives
I wonder:) Actually two tellys I had failed
after 6-7 years but I got new ones with the
savings in electricity costs. And I have been
developing a theory that manufacturers
perfected techniques to make sure they fail
after this time, say no stress relief in the
legs of hot running components so the solder
joints become dry after 5000 on off cycles.
There is an old legend from the fire service
that they had to deal with a fire in an old
ladies set once. She left it on for 5 years and
put a cover on every night like it was a budgie!
So there might be something in what you say:)
I think Gillian I will equate you with that
Donald Sutherland character, "Hey I only drive
them...I dont fix them". (add apostrophe
according to taste:)) When the crunch come there
will be many bad energy habits that will be
dealt with I am sure.

[publius]

Stereotyping, anyone? :think:

I agree that load-dependent demand billing should be implemented universally. I know that many utilities are moving in that direction. The appropriate technology for residential metering exists and is inexpensive enough to be used widely.

Stereotyping? Well, if the shoe fits.......and I see a lot of this particularly stinky shoe!

Oh yes -- locally they been switching to rather nice electronic meters for 3-wire residential. All new services get them, and they've been swapping out old ones every chance they get.

These have a little optical port on the front into which you can plug a laptop, and a few keystrokes later, demand metering is enabled, with the meter recording peak kW as well (well, actually peak is not an instaneous peak, as starting inrushes would skew it -- peak is generally computed as the maximum average over any 15 minute period). The advances in electronics make stuff like this cheap. And a few more keystrokes and you can look at peak kVar, peak KVA (although power factor is not generally a problem for residential, as the motor load is a small fraction generally), as well all in a cheap residential grade meter package, and even keep track of peak vs off peak times. I haven't seen any that look at the harmonic side of the picture, but that could be done easily if desired.

-Richard

[Lurker]

Actually the biggest issue with all that energy being turned into heat to support standby is the effect it is having on global warming!! :eek:

[yuzuha]

The power consumption figures I've seen aren't consistent with keeping a tiny LED lit. At the very least, there is an infrared sensor and a microprossecor listening for the instruction from the remote to power up.

Okay, so in the old days, standby power on a color tv was around 100 watts or so just to keep the 6.3 or 12 volt filaments warmed up. Taking a look at many of the big screen rear projection tvs around these days, the standby power seems to run between 0.1 and 5 watts with most coming in around a half a watt and there was a high one at 17 watts. Compare that to all the yo-yos with the 500 watt Hg arc lamps in their yards or all the spotlights on buildings or even the incandescant yard lights people run all the time (and ruin things for us sky buffs with all their light pollution).

[Damburger]

You know, I don't really understand how my computer works. I can operate a modem as long as it works (mine regularly doesn't; even Comcast admits that), and I'm probably better at word processing than a lot of people around here (for a start, I can work spell check!), but that's it. I've never had a class that taught me how the bits work, and I've never had much inclination to learn.

Comcast want your custom so aren't going to come out and say 'you screwed up, not the computer'. Its what every second line tech support guy wants to say but never can.

You don't need a class to tell you how to use a computer. Everything I learned is self taught.


That does not make me a "knuckle dragging evolutionary dead end." Technology is specialized, and not everyone can learn everything even when it isn't. I am not a math/science person, and I am perfectly comfortable with saying, "My computer isn't working. Fix it." The computer's the problem far, far more often than I am.

Maybe "evolutionary dead end" is harsh but I had just finished fixing a self-inflicted e-mail problem when I wrote that.

However, let me make this clear - unless your computer is actually on fire, you can be sure any problem is ultimatly caused by YOU. The computer just follows the instructions given by its software, which you have control over. Whenever someone breaks their computer they claim "I didn't do anything!" but it isn't true. Users like you simply don't know enough to realise the scope of their own ignorance, being wilfully stuck at the stage of unconcious incompetence.

[Gillianren]

Comcast informed me at the time we called them for service that every modem in my apartment complex was down. They've changed [insert technical bit], and we may need to upgrade modems.

Still, you know, I bet I can do a heck of a lot of things that you can't. Again, that's the nature of specialization.

[ASEI]

To those who don't understand, science and technology are simply magic, like Clarke said. Anything that uses electricity is suffciently advanced for that, to about 90% of the population. Being magic, they expect it to be able to do anything. The only reason that the magic can't give them what they want, when they want it, is the Wizards.

I don't think this entirely applies to anyone who doesn't understand how a particular piece of technology works. I don't understand how my computer works at the machine level. I still can't figure out exactly how the windows message loop works. But even though I don't personally know how to rebuild my desktop PC from rocks, oil and silicon, I understand that it works by some process which has some requirements for operation, and limits to what it can take/do.
So to someone who understands that what that advanced piece of technology does, it does for a reason, and not as an arbitrary manifestation of their desires, then it isn't magic to them, even if they can't figure out exactly how it does it or how the underlying mechanism is constructed.
An 18th century watchmaker probably wouldn't call out the lynch mob for the software engineers if his 21st century computer bluescreened. (The fact that the screen was blue at all would probably impress him). He could probably understand enough about the device to know it was a device and that something wasn't working properly.

However, let me make this clear - unless your computer is actually on fire, you can be sure any problem is ultimatly caused by YOU. The computer just follows the instructions given by its software, which you have control over. Funny thing that. My software engineer friend is constantly talking about how they need to give users less control over software. They don't need all these features, they shouldn't be able to make it do X in scenario Y. I think he's nuts. I think there should be a control panel for every single function. But that's just me, I guess.

As to this whole power consumption scenario, rather than pinching pennies and saving percentages here and there to squeak by on the last of the excess grid capacity, wouldn't it be so much less of a headache for everyone if a town just built enough powerplants to supply the demand? Power prices may go up some, but then people wouldn't have to worry about their stuff in standby mode, or rolling blackouts, ect.

Efficiency can only be drawn out so far. Furthermore, there is a strong diminishing return curve for convoluted complexity/inconvenience vs efficiency that makes it impractical to continue after some point. (Where that point is is up for debate at times, but eventually you'll hit a wall) We're not going to become more and more efficient until we don't consume any power at all! So it only makes sense to look into increasing actual supply at some point.

[NEOWatcher]

...I can rant about this too. It frosts me ...
Yep, I can just about blow my stack with all this waste.

Ouch, I hit a nerve. ;)
wouldn't it be so much less of a headache for everyone if a town just built enough powerplants to supply the demand? Power prices may go up some, but then people wouldn't have to worry about their stuff in standby mode, or rolling blackouts, ect.
...

True, but a peak is a peak. Around this part of the country, we are pretty well balanced. I can only think of a few instances where peak blackouts happened, and usually because of equipment failures, not generating capacity. Yes, we are in a cooler climate, but that just makes our peak vs normal capacity farther apart.
I will vote for increasing infrastructure to smooth out the rough edges, but there are the occasional peaks that can't be smoothed. Mainly this is the problem with fuel. We run at full capacity, and any little hiccup is disaster. As you said, there is a middle ground.
And the energy wasters? People will conserve it it costs them, although the people with money do throw a wrench in the ointment.

[94z07]

Practical things people can do: (This is by no means a complete list.)

Don’t buy a ‘fridge that is too large for your needs. If you have one that is too big, save pop bottles and fill them with water and place them inside to take up the unused space.

As current light bulbs fail, replace them with long life fluorescent ones. Unplug TV’s in guest rooms. As CRT’s fail, replace them with LCD’s.

If one is in need of a new car, consider an alternative fueled car or a more efficient one. Avoid long lines at drive-through windows. Consolidate errands and shopping into fewer trips.

Replace traditional thermostats with digital programmable ones.

[Gillianren]

I can't really do two of those, because I live in an apartment. However, I'm not sure how long it's been since we've actually turned on the heater. We just bundle up. (And, yes, it does in fact get cold enough to need a heater in WA. I wish it were right now.)