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posted by CoolHand on Friday May 08 2015, @04:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the giant-sucking-sound dept.

We've previously covered how standby mode in game consoles suck. Well, it seems like many devices across the US are sucking a whole lot of power--$19 Billion/yr worth. That is just the US estimation, it is not extrapolated out across the globe.

Approximately $19 billion worth of electricity, equal to the output of 50 large power plants, is devoured annually by U.S. household electronics, appliances, and other equipment when consumers are not actively using them, according to a ground breaking study released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The report, "Home Idle Load: Devices Wasting Huge Amounts of Electricity When Not in Active Use," found most of the devices either plugged in or hard-wired into America's homes consume electricity around-the-clock, even when the owners are not using them or think they are turned off. The annual cost for this vampire energy drain, which provides little benefit to consumers, ranges from $165 per U.S. household on average to as high as $440 under some utilities' top-tier rates.

"One reason for such high idle energy levels is that many previously purely mechanical devices have gone digital: Appliances like washers, dryers, and fridges now have displays, electronic controls, and increasingly even Internet connectivity, for example," says Pierre Delforge, the report's author and NRDC's director of high-tech sector energy efficiency. "In many cases, they are using far more electricity than necessary."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday May 08 2015, @05:53PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @05:53PM (#180397) Journal

    Someone labeled you "-0: Disagree", and it made me curious.

    Is there any scientific evidence about the effect on lifespan of (complex computerized) electronics for various power usage strategies?

    If we had that kind of scientific data we could make some tacit inferences. Does being constantly on do more wear and tear than booting? What about accounting for the fans being off while dust accumulates? How much usage would suggest one strategy versus another?

    There's a lot of questions that need answering before I can buy into your position or its inverse.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday May 08 2015, @06:53PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @06:53PM (#180421) Journal

    To follow up, I can find no rigorous academic articles on the problem.

    I can find news articles, that directly contradict eachother.
    This one that says it rebooting causes wear and tear [chron.com].
    And
    this one that alleges those damages are negligible [scientificamerican.com].

    Toms hardware has a post about it [tomshardware.com](and they're pretty good at getting hard numbers), but it's behind a corporate censorwall from where I'm at, so I have no idea what it says.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @07:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @07:04PM (#180427)

    This is something that comes up when designing datacenters and other large-compute initiatives. Everybody seems to use their own internal documents on electricity cost and hardware failures for their empirical evidence.

    The short version is this: once upon a time yes, it was better to keep things running. Bearings wear a little faster. Chip creep was a serious problem. It still is a minor one for PC gamers or those that do not have adequate climate control. For commercial datacenters the cost of hardware failures is trivial compared to other costs so it is becoming rarer and rarer to be discussed at all.

    As for your statement:

    There's a lot of questions that need answering before I can buy into your position or its inverse.

    Who cares who you are? That is high arrogance. You are just like the rest of us, a nobody on the internet. What you believe or don't is irrelevant. No one owes you an explanation you find satisfactory.

    • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday May 08 2015, @07:10PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @07:10PM (#180431) Journal

      Oh boo hoo. An internet stranger phrased something from their own point of view. How self centered!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @09:18PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @09:18PM (#180482)

        Childish would be the appropriate designation.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @09:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @09:31PM (#180491)

      I concur with the others that the reply asking "Who cares who you are?" was uncalled for.

      I even agreed with questions asked, as I too would want to know data before buying into a position.

      Your reply, if taken into the context you have shaped your reply to be in, is irrelevant and is likely from some nobody on the internet. I likely would have taken your reply seriously had you not included that comment. High arrogance, indeed. Post again when you're able to find a way to climb down from the horse you were rolled in on. The adults are in the next room.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @11:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @11:20PM (#180549)

      Who cares about your opinion on this either. At least the person you are responding to doesn't pretend to know everything and raises relevant questions that need answering before drawing conclusions. What have you contributed. You haven't given us any sourced answers or data to go by, just the unsourced opinion of some anonymous internet user. I found his post useful. If you're so sure you have the answers and perhaps he just didn't come across them then feel free to provide us a reference. Help us out instead of criticizing someone for simply pointing out that we can't draw any conclusions without relevant data first and he doesn't have said data to draw any conclusions.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:22AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:22AM (#180573)

        Pssh. We all know it is you. You trying to game the system to save face is not the slightest bit hidden.