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from the resist-the-urge-to-get-amped-up dept.
According to the National Resource Defense Council, Americans waste up to $19 billion annually in electricity costs due to "vampire appliances," always-on digital devices in the home that suck power even when they are turned off.
But University of Utah electrical and computer engineering professor Massood Tabib-Azar and his team of engineers have come up with a way to produce microscopic electronic switches for appliances and devices that can grow and dissolve wires inside the circuitry that instantly connect and disconnect electrical flow. With this technology, consumer products such as smartphones and computer laptops could run at least twice as long on a single battery charge, and newer all-digital appliances such as televisions and video game consoles could be much more power efficient.
...
"Whenever they are off, they are not completely off, and whenever they are on, they may not be completely on," says Tabib-Azar, who also is a professor with the Utah Science Technology and Research (USTAR) initiative. "That uses battery life. It heats up the device, and it's not doing anything for you. It's completely wasted power."Tabib-Azar and his team have devised a new kind of switch for electronic circuits that uses solid electrolytes such as copper sulfide to literally grow a wire between two electrodes when an electrical current passes through them, turning the switch on. When you reverse the polarity of the electrical current, then the metallic wire between the electrodes breaks down -- leaving a gap between them -- and the switch is turned off. A third electrode is used to control this process of growing and breaking down the wire.
He did not get the memo--reducing vampire current is not what the Internet of Things is all about.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday October 28 2016, @12:19PM
I think those set top boxes/satellite/cable TV stuff use a lot more than 1W.
I know they used to because I own a kill-a-watt meter and all power off does on a 00s era SD cable box was output a perfect black screen NTSC signal to greenwash the customer into thinking "off" did anything. Not even a flicker on the kll-a-watt, 30 watts continuous all day.
Of course due to the pace of technological change something like a mythtv frontend or a cable settop box have gone from "wattage is no object" gamer PC with multiple fans in 00 to a little thing that draws 15 watts using VDPAU in '10 and in 15 you use an essentially zero power raspberry pi.
Its also worth pointing out that where I live the ratio of heating to cooling degree days is in excess of 20 to 1 so as a practical matter 60 watts of electricity isn't "wasted" it merely means a bit less natgas burned. And like many people (and seemingly all local retail businesses) I subscribe to 100% renewable energy so for every KWh I use, the electric co buys a KWh from a local windmill or solar plant, so it might be expensive but the more electricity I "waste" the lower my carbon footprint becomes. Admittedly probably 90% of the population lives south of me / warmer than me but you have to go surprisingly far south before annual heating and cooling degree days are equal.
I guess my point is often none of the watts are wasted and often there is no carbon footprint at all and for strong economic and technological change pressures the wattage wasted STRONGLY tends toward zero.
My 5 year old roku draws essentially zero and I don't technologically envision ever going back to the days of the 30 watt settop box again.
Maybe the first star trek holodesk will draw 1500 watts. In fact I almost guarantee it. And probably 20 years later it'll be higher res and a hundred times the storage and follow the usual trajectory to "a watt or less" and the working parts the size of a pack of cards. Its just not something to worry about.