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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: 3, Interesting) by Tork on Friday May 08 2015, @07:48PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 08 2015, @07:48PM (#180447)
    That's by design. There's still a reason they're chatty regardless of if the operator is utilizing it properly, something Energy Star cannot possibly regulate. For example: I could burn electricity with my Energy Star Certified CRT monitor with no computer attached, that doesn't make it ironic that it's wasting energy, rather that'd be a reflection on me. What that monitor I have does do is deactivate the CRT if there's nothing to show, it just blinks an LED instead. Yes, I'm burning LED power, but at least the monitor is taking extra steps to minimize the consumption impact of my moronic decision.

    Here's something I'm guilty of right now. The Playstation 4 takes a while to boot up. Because of that the system has a low-power standby mode, when you pick up the controller it only takes a few seconds to get to starting a game. My spare time is valuable so spending less time staring at the Sony logo is better for me. But here's the thing: I've been busy at work. I haven't picked up my PS4 controller in two months. For two months it's been sitting there in standby eating electricity. Is that Sony's fault? Welp, I'm the one paying the electric bill and I say "Nope, I'm the idiot." I see that yellow light. I know that thing wakes up every so often to download software updates. I know there's at least a certain amount of power it eats. I know that I don't have time to mess with it until this project is over. In fact, if I don't turn that off tonight when I get home there are no nice words to describe me. Sony's off the hook.

    If I cannot find a way to make myself a victim here then I cannot see the irony. Sorry.
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mojo chan on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:25AM

    by mojo chan (266) on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:25AM (#180717)

    My Windows 8 laptop can boot from cold to login screen in under 4 seconds. Sony should be able to do better with a fixed hardware platform and custom OS build.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @11:47AM (#180721)

      All those rootkits bog them down bro.

    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:53PM

      by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:53PM (#180782)
      Out of curiosity , does your laptop have an SSD?
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