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Whatever you call it, the humble AC adapter, external power supply, plug pack, plug-in adapter, domestic mains adapter, line power adapter, wall wart, or power brick is due for significant changes next month.
The U.S. Level VI energy-efficiency regulation, aimed at energy savings in external power supplies, goes into force on February 10, 2016, and will impact all OEMs selling into the U.S. market. The European Union (EU) also is expected to harmonize with the new efficiency standard.
This article includes a quote (& pun) from one power supply vendor,
"It's a two-pronged approach," said Johnson. "The regulation addresses active mode when the adapter is powered up and supplying power to the end product. Under the regulation, efficiency is increased by roughly five percent."
But the big change is at no load when the adapter is plugged into the wall – like a cell phone charger – and nothing is connected to it, Johnson added. "Power consumption at Level IV was .5 watt and at Level VI it's decreasing to .1 watt, which when you talk about the millions of adapters in the market it's significant in power savings."
Another article can be found at http://www.metlabs.com/blog/energy-star-2/external-power-supplies-must-meet-level-vi-energy-efficiency-requirements-for-u-s-doe-by-february-2016/
US Department of Energy has an information page with several linked documents
https://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/appliance_standards/rulemaking.aspx/ruleid/28
"Rulemaking for Battery Chargers and External Power Supplies Energy Conservation Standard"
(Score: 3, Touché) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday January 02 2016, @11:36AM
"Power consumption at Level IV was .5 watt and at Level VI it's decreasing to .1 watt, which when you talk about the millions of adapters in the market it's significant in power savings."
Over here we have this funny little thing on our electrical outlets called a "switch." Turn that off when you're not using it, and power consumption drops to 0 watts!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Saturday January 02 2016, @01:35PM
And unless you use power strips that have individual switches for each outlet on the strip, you're stuck unplugging the chargers and plugging them back in every time you want to use the charger.
Personally, I think that's really too much work for such a small amount of savings. Electricity around here is cheap and most of those adapters use so little electricity when turned off that it doesn't even register on the meter when I was checking.
This is a change that will have impact because of the number of adapters that are effected, you're not likely to get enough people remembering to unplug their electronics from the wall frequently enough to make it a worthwhile strategy.
OTOH, I bought a power strip a couple years ago that automatically cuts power to the other items plugged in. I use it on the entertainment center as there's no need for my Roku and Bluray player to be powered on when the TV isn't.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 02 2016, @05:22PM
Agreed, nobody is going to switch off all the wall warts in a typical house or office. Not happening.
On the other hand they should, in this day and age, be able to use far less than a tenth of a watt to determine if there is anything drawing current from them. Seems excessive give today's electronics.
Where there's one wall wart, there is usually 5 more within a couple of meters. Some long forgotten. The only thing that keeps them at bay seems to be the shortage of outlets. Additional power strips just make matters worse.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @06:24PM
So if you can set your airconditioner temperatures higher and heater lower you'd save a lot more than replacing a bunch of 0.5W wall warts with 0.1W ones. If your home is big enough to have very many wall warts you probably have more heaters and lamps etc. Lighting for a brightly lit room probably would be about 30-40W.
A fair number of us use PCs. Google Chrome/Firefox on an intensive webpage that uses 100% of on one of my desktop's cores could use about the same amount of power as nearly sixty 0.5W wall warts (based on what my UPS says- from idle at 112W it goes to 140W when running octane on Chrome). So in some cases using an ad blocker and/or noscript might save you a fair bit of energy. Most laptops are more efficient than my desktop. But some of us have desktops for games. Which brings me to the next point- I find running an old game with vsync off vs vsync on uses 60 Watts more - the graphics card etc doesn't use as much power if the game is locked at 60fps compared to 200 fps or higher...
So it's nice if you switch wall warts off if you're not using them but don't get too worked up about it.
If you want to be really environmentally friendly what's more important is not having children unless you're reasonably sure that you'd do a good job raising great kids. If you're not sure, go ask others who know you and your would be breeding partner well, whether you would make great parents. There are already billions of us on this planet. Time to focus on quality not quantity. Just look at the news. Terrible children who become terrible adults can be really bad for the environment in so many ways... Maybe a few of you might produce wonderful children who would save mankind... But the rest of you? Please take an honest look at yourself.
I have done so, and by not having children I'm saving the environment far more than most breeders would. Even if I drove an SUV till I die my environmental impact would be lower than if I had children and my children had children etc, and they don't want to live without modern amenities. Last but not least, I won't be producing any more assholes like me to plague the rest of the world.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 02 2016, @11:36AM
1,000,000,000 (a billion adapters)
500,000,000w (500Mw)
1 medium-small coal plant
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @12:41PM
I think a billion is low. I've got about 15 of them myself.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday January 02 2016, @01:18PM
I chose a number that correlates well with a single coal plant, not the projected amount of adapters in every household. There's also TV boxes, routers, switches, computers and computer monitors, powered usb hubs, electric razors, fans and ACs idling-by all consuming similar 1/2 a watt give or take...
Besides, it doesn't matter. Grids are designed to contend with harmonics as AC and factory's motors jump start, resulting in them producing large excesses of power and are build very bulky infrastructure(literally; bigger everything). As a result, reducing average consumption without touching peak consumption will only increase the power utility bill per kilowatt since the bill really reflects the peak costs (as they determinate the cost of infrastructure) rather than the running costs of operating power grids. That's to say, I doubt even 1 coal plant will get shutdown over this.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @04:33PM
That is some circular logic.
Coal plants are being shut down all the time [eia.gov] and replaced with natgas. Since natgas has much better ability to vary output, reducing baseline consumption is a big win.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 02 2016, @06:33PM
Not really. While it's true the turndown ratios of gas are 10-12 times better then coal (which really has none), the emissions are horrible under 50% and crappy under 75%. That is, you're saving some gas, but releasing unburnt methane to the atmosphere that's 25times worse than co2 while modulating. I'm not sure just how well the regulations have caught up with this, but I know many gas plants can't even go below 50% already since it triggers the emissions controls. So, obviously they go below 50% all the time and pay off the inspectors to look the other way.
Anyhow, it's true that reducing baseline is a win. But it's not a big one. A big win will be getting nuclear plant built. And preferably built in in 2005 rather than 2025...
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @01:02PM
wow, i didn't know that.
i always thought that A/C-2-DC wallwarts don't use any electricity if no device is connected on the DC side!
so wouldn't it have been better to put the converter straight into the device itself ... then it would become
obvious that it doesn't draw any electricity if not connected to the wall-socket?
kindda like unscrewing a light-bulb if you want to turn it off ^_^
or .. damn ... just a little on-off button/switch on the wallwart (with a 'lil lamp that sayz it's on)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @01:09PM
> so wouldn't it have been better to put the converter straight into the device itself
And double the weight of your phone. And increase the chance of the device failing.
> or .. damn ... just a little on-off button/switch on the wallwart (with a 'lil lamp that sayz it's on)?
Lots of wallwarts are squirreled away out of sight out of mind or at least a PITA to get access to. Automating them to do the right thing fixes the problem in all cases because people are lazy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @02:41PM
There's two types of wall-warts.
The first one uses a big 60Hz transformer to reduce voltage, then whatever rectifier and possibly voltage regulator seem appropriate to the application. These have rather high power consumption when unloaded, and relatively poor efficiency when loaded, too. Of course, they're practically unheard of the past decade or more.
The second type is a switch-mode power supply, which are not only smaller, cheaper, and more efficient at the same design load, but also can easily have very low power consumption when unloaded. Even designs where unloaded power consumption isn't a design criteria are typically still much better than any transformer-type wall-wart.
Your belief of zero no-load consumption can be a practically correct approximation, but it is an approximation, and its usefulness depends not only on actual no-load power consumption, but also on duty cycle. Consider a SMPS with no-load consumption equal to 5% of rated load. For a device that functions 8 hours a day, and is left plugged in the other 16 hours, neglecting the unloaded consumption only gives about a 10% error, but for a device used 30 minutes a week, the unloaded consumption is an order of magnitude higher than the in-use consumption. (Even if we go to 1%, as for a 10W power supply complying with the new 0.1W standard, no-load for 167.5 hours is over 3x in-use for 0.5 hours.)
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday January 02 2016, @05:07PM
The first one uses a big 60Hz transformer to reduce voltage, then whatever rectifier and possibly voltage regulator seem appropriate to the application. These have rather high power consumption when unloaded, and relatively poor efficiency when loaded, too. Of course, they're practically unheard of the past decade or more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switched-mode_power_supply [wikipedia.org]
It seems that transformers remain. A SMPS does not remove the need for a transformer. On the contrary, transformer is a requirement to have an isolated circuit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @07:40PM
Of course. That's why I said the non-switch-mode type has "a big 60Hz transformer", as opposed to the little >kHz transformer in a SMPS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @04:58PM
Simple way to tell if a wall wart is drawing/wasting more than a watt or two of power (with no load connected) -- see if it's warm. The older transformer types were always warm if left on (load or no load). Also, transformer types are heavier -- the transformer is iron with copper windings.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Saturday January 02 2016, @06:41PM
Many electronics manufacturers just buy the wall warts and have no in-house people who even know how to get something UL listed.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Saturday January 02 2016, @09:04PM
Whoa -- where have you been for the past 20 years.
You need to unplug those or put them on a power strip or something. Those things generate heat, and depending on conditions, even make noises as they sizzle internally... you don't seem the type to have a killawatt reader.
I can assure you that there is a good reason why wallwarts are called vampires.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cellocgw on Saturday January 02 2016, @04:54PM
Study after study has shown that keeping all the lights on in businesses and parking lots does nothing to reduce crime rates (motion-activated lights do better). What I'd like to see is the relative number of kWh blown off by those all-night illuminators compared with all the wallwarts, and instant-on TVs (and remote wake-on-LAN PCs for that matter). I would be rather astonished if private consumers' waste usage were anywhere near the major cause of excess electricity use.
Being a skeptic and not an evangelist, I'm more than happy to see stats which show me to be wrong. Just haven't seen them yet.
Physicist, cellist, former OTTer (1190) resume: https://app.box.com/witthoftresume
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @05:38PM
> ... I would be rather astonished if private consumers' waste usage were anywhere near the major cause of excess electricity use.
Regulation (and regulators) often go for the easy marks (regardless of the amount of technology and cost required), not the targets that make the most sense in terms of the total system... [Aside: this may explain why auto emissions are so heavily controlled (popular opinion on Detroit is negative), while giant coal power plants (and diesel engine trucks) are only recently being required to clean up?]
I'm waiting for someone to claim that the magic "invisible hand" should take care of this problem of wasted electricity (from idle ac adapters), and that no gov't regulation is required...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 02 2016, @06:18PM
I'm waiting for someone to claim that the magic "invisible hand" should take care of this problem of wasted electricity
OK Ill bite. Why wouldnt it? How do you prevent cheating like in the case of VW trying to meet gov regulations?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 02 2016, @10:06PM
I'm waiting for someone to claim that the magic "invisible hand" should take care of this problem of wasted electricity
What makes you think the "invisible hand" hasn't? It's worth noting here that we aren't speaking of an important problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05 2016, @01:34PM
Yeah I've told people that keeping alleyways/warehouses/etc pitch dark is safer instead of lighting them up- most common criminals don't have night vision goggles nor are they skilled at echolocation or navigating in the dark. If there's light in the alleyway/warehouse/etc that's normally pitch dark there's a good chance someone is there... So have your security cameras on IR but also alert the guards if visible light is spotted. And if you want more security - install smoke machines to release smoke when the alarm goes off.
One normal fluorescent tube lamp is 36W and that's about seventy 0.5W wall warts. Then there's air-conditioning and heating... And as I've said elsewhere here ( https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=11445&cid=284122#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] ) even our desktop computers use more than most wall warts. The difference between running a 3D game with vsync on and vsync off can be 120 wall warts. Not noticing a CPU intensive tab can be 30 to 60 wall warts.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday January 02 2016, @06:47PM
My power supplies already save power consumption by burning themselves out promptly.
"It's a two-pronged approach," said Johnson.
First bad pun of the year. Thanks, Johnson.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2016, @12:23AM
From the article:
I really wish that reporters could talk about energy technology without screwing up their units. "32 billion kilowatts" is not a measure of energy, but power (energy usage over time). Let's assume they're talking about power. "32 billion kilowatts", or 32 terawatts, is more than the average global power consumption. So a reduction by such an extraordinary amount is simply impossible.
Perhaps the article instead meant a reduction of 32 billon kilowatt-hours (a measure of energy), i.e., 32 terawatt-hours, as a total energy savings over the past decade. Now this number is actually kind of pathetic. Annual energy consumption in the United States alone is about 1000 times that much. This paltry amount over the course of an entire decade isn't even a drop in the bucket.