Energy Vampires

[Explorer]

What Are Energy "Vampires?"

• Vampires are standby power devices that draw excessive energy even when not in use.
  
• Vampires typically consume anywhere from 4-7 watts per hour.
  
• Vampires can be found in almost every household appliance including televisions, telephones, fax machines, washers, and dryers. Vampires make sure that the appliance is ?instantly? functioning when you want to use it; they are also used to maintain memory functions in these devices. Some Vampires, such as cell phone chargers, draw energy when plugged in even if they are not connected to the device they normally charge.
  
• Approximately 26 power plants are needed just to power these energy vampires.

What are "Vampire Slayers?"

• "Vampire Slayers" are energy-efficient standby power devices that use one watt or less of energy per hour.
  
• If more devices used vampire slayers, we could save billions of kilowatt-hours per year without sacrificing performance.
  
• If the nation as a whole moved to one-watt standby power devices, we might need 20 fewer power plants to power these devices than we do currently.
  
• Vampire slayers often cost as little as 50 cents more than the inefficient energy vampires, and can pay for themselves through reduced energy bills.
  
• In the aggregate, households across the nation would save from $1 to 2 billion on their energy bills if they adopted appliances that utilize vampire slayers.

 

[LunarMist]

What about all the people who leave PCs running 24/7 with nobody home? And how many power plants are needed just for the newer Pentium 4 flamethrowers? There should be some little Pentium M desktops that are cool and quiet.

 

[Onomatopoeic]

What about all the people who leave PCs running 24/7 with nobody home? And how many power plants are needed just for the newer Pentium 4 flamethrowers?

And what about those nVidia leaf blower cards?

As far as 24x7 home computerz go, I'm under the impression that a growing sector of people have finally realised that this sort of activity is nothing more than a financial drain. Leaving their cable modem or DSL gateways on is all that's really needed, not everything connected to it.

 

[LunarMist]

And what about those nVidia leaf blower cards?

I don't know about those video things with fans. I still have G450.

 

[Mercutio]

Guilty as charged. I leave all my PCs on all the time. And I probably have more personal computers than any three other people here. My work habits involve moving through my house, doing stuff on one PC or other, then switching to another.

They go in power saving modes when they're idle, but with all the ripping, burning, downloading and encoding I do, they're idle substantially less than one might think.

In December 2003, Time magazine specifically mentioned the town where I live (Hobart, Indiana) as having among the highest costs per kW/hr in the USA. It's not like I'm not paying for my habits.

The minute I can't afford to do it, my habits change. It's that simple.

 

[e_dawg]

What are "Vampire Slayers?"

• "Vampire Slayers" are energy-efficient standby power devices that use one watt or less of energy per hour.

Hmm... I thought Buffy would have figured somewhere in the description.

 

[Jan Kivar]

What are "Vampire Slayers?"

• "Vampire Slayers" are energy-efficient standby power devices that use one watt or less of energy per hour.

Hmm... I thought Buffy would have figured somewhere in the description.

That's The Vampire Slayer...

Jan

 

[mubs]

Good article here; California proposing legislation.

 

[CougTek]

As far as 24x7 home computerz go, I'm under the impression that a growing sector of people have finally realised that this sort of activity is nothing more than a financial drain.

I came to realize that Gary was right. My reason for leaving my computers on 24x7 was FAH, but I now believe that the global environmental cost of running the folding@home project overweights its positive impact. There are more than 200,000 active processors worlwide contributing to the project. Let's say that each of them takes on average 100W (because the rest of the system has to be powered on too and that the CPU is used at 100%), that sums up to an astonishing amount of energy.

I deleted the client on my main system and I will do the same on my secondary boxe in about an hour when it will complete and send its last unit. I've been doing @home projects for five years now. I did my part. Now I'm out of it.

Thank you Gary.

 

[mubs]

FAH is fine for people that would leave their systems on 24/7 in any case. I have always been conscious of the needless power drain of leaving things on. When we're away on vacation, with the PC, TV, and everything else off except the refrigerator, the electricity bill falls to half. Not 10%. Not 25%. That's the current consumed by the refrigerator + all the devices on standby. And that's unconscionable.

If anybody read the article I linked to, they estimate that in the U.S., wasted energy is equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations. That's a lot.

Back to FAH: headless, diskless compute stations would be best for applications like FAH; minimal wastage and minimal heat production.

 

[jtr1962]

My reason for leaving my PC on 24/7 is that I seldom don't use it in any given 3 or 4 hour stretch, so turning it off every time I leave it would mean about 20 power cycles a day. This wouldn't concern me if not for the hard drives. I'm uncomfortable cycling hard drives that often. Therefore, the machine is usually on 24/7. I do turn it off if I'm sure I'll be away from it for more than about 8 hours. I always turn the monitor off immediately when I leave the machine.

Devices which suck power even when off are a huge problem. Bit by bit it is being addressed though. I personally think there will be greater savings realized by forcing people to replace their incandescents with either CFLs or in a few years LED.

 

[Will Rickards]

Are power strips with an on/off switch pulling any current when off?

 

[LunarMist]

My reason for leaving my PC on 24/7 is that I seldom don't use it in any given 3 or 4 hour stretch...

How do you get any sleep?

 

[jtr1962]

My reason for leaving my PC on 24/7 is that I seldom don't use it in any given 3 or 4 hour stretch...

How do you get any sleep?

Mostly catnaps where I sleep for a few hours, if that. So long as I go into REM sleep for a few minutes in some manner, I'm OK. My problem is that I just get so caught up in whatever I'm doing that I don't want to sleep. What usually happens is I'll keep working until I literally just drop wherever I happen to be. Falling asleep over my keyboard isn't that unusual. Other times I'll conk out over my workbench. A few times I fell asleep on the garage floor or the driveway. If I'm lucky I'll wake up to use the bathroom, still be groggy enough to want to sleep some more, and actually use my bed. More often than not I'll just pick up where I left off, working until I pass out again.

I could never just set aside a certain time for sleep, and then reliably sleep every day. More often than not I'll toss and turn in bed. After 9/11 I've tended to have vivid nightmares most of the time so I try to avoid sleep as much as possible. Always sleep with the lights on. It helps with the nightmares to some extent.

 

[LiamC]

When I read the title, I thought of this:

http://www.mp3.com/features/stories/3646.html

DRM protection software acts like a software vampire on your battery life.

Saw the link on The Inq.

 

[Santilli]

I'm seriously thinking of setting up all the power stuff on power switches, and, when I leave, just hitting the power switch, for each area, at the plug.

I already have the problem that when everything is up, and we kick on the new Panasonic microwave, it blows the circuit.

I have the switches, and the time. I think it might even be a good idea to kill
the hub, and modem, when I'm gone. Only problem is my gf doesn't exactly know how to turn stuff on and off. She can't figure out the power strip I have set up for the fish tank lights...

s

 

[Buck]

A microwave and two Xeon's on the same circuit are bad.

 

[Will Rickards]

When I was in new zealand, all the outlets had a switch next to them to turn the power off. Seemed like a neat idea. Not sure if this was just something specific to the places I was at, the hotel and the home of a developer, or to all of new zealand.

 

[mubs]

A microwave and two Xeon's on the same circuit are bad.

Doesn't a dual-xeon require the power company to trunk a special 2-guage cable from the generating plant to the point of use? Oh, I forgot, plus a 4-guage for the cooling equipment.

 

[Buck]

A microwave and two Xeon's on the same circuit are bad.

Doesn't a dual-xeon require the power company to trunk a special 2-guage cable from the generating plant to the point of use? Oh, I forgot, plus a 4-guage for the cooling equipment.

Hence GS' power woes. It is so nice when the power in the neighborhood goes out. Finally, it gets quiet.

 

[Mercutio]

If you have enough UPSes, the power never goes out.

 

[Santilli]

Well, likewise. Every computer is hooked up to a UPS, to stop the frying of my home computers, unlike the one I had at work.

It is funny the amount of draw we put on the circuits around here. Pretty clear it wasn't designed for today, but for the 50's when it was built.

gs

 

[Buck]

Well, likewise. Every computer is hooked up to a UPS, to stop the frying of my home computers, unlike the one I had at work.

It is funny the amount of draw we put on the circuits around here. Pretty clear it wasn't designed for today, but for the 50's when it was built.

gs

Ironically, the 50's were the advent of the electrical age -- everything modern was to run on electricity: cloths dryers, ovens, stove-tops, heaters, etc. I'm glad they don't.