Does conservation really matter?

[dslunsford1]

So I've always heard that one of the major wasters of energy are appliances, radios, DC converters, and phone chargers that are plugged in while not in use.  However, I stumbled across this website while perusing one of my favorite stites (cockeyed.com) that appears to show that these items are not that significant after all.  Check it out at http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

I suppose my question is this... if he's wrong in his experiment, how can you prove him right?  Would it be better to utilize a more sensitive power meter (perhaps a WattsUp meter)?  The bottom line is that if unplugging all my stuff only saves 1 Watt (0.7 kWh per month = 12 cents), that's not worth going through the hassle.  Especially when you compare it to using a 1500W electric heater!

Any comments or tips?

Moved to a more appropriate section.

[jimjjnn]

A lot of folks here are offline and the wallwarts and such keep their inverters turned on. Wasting power that is important to them

[s4w2099]

I guess that its not worth it for individuals. This is more like a mutual effort to reduce the CO2 emissions. Lets say that every family has 5 chargers which it more than often happens the total power wasted is about 5 Watts. Then in the town that I live there are 200k habitants. So (5W * 200,000)/1000  = 1000Kw. Thats a lot of power. Do the math then:

1000Kw * 24 hours a day * 30 days a month = 720,000Kwh per month. I think that that  would produce quite some CO2 and collectively its a lot of money to the power generators. If your electric rate is 0.07 USD per Kwh that will be around 50,000 dollars for the generator company only for powering unused cell phone chargers.

[ghurd]

His numbers for cell phones and laptop (switching regulators) look OK to me.

The report said 'the most common', not the most wasteful.

The results would be different with instant-on TVs, stuff with remote controls, etc.  Some coffee makers use 60W just being plugged in, but I don't recall which brand that was.

Much of the concept is the Quantity of these items.

Quick thinking count for my family of 3 household's phantom loads...  

Start with 3 cordless phones, 3 TVs, 4 VCRs, 3 DVD players, a video game, remote control stereo, CD player with self powered speakers, AA charger, 2 printers, laptop, PC with remote, wireless router, cable modem, UPS, answering machine, cell phones, fax machine,  paper shredder, ipod charger, door bell, garage door opener, dust buster, cordless tools, furnace, 2 motion lights, microwave...

I just cringed.  We do manage do unplug some of it when not in use.

There are 61,000,000 people in England, 300,000,000 in the US, etc.

G-

[Flux]

These things vary a lot, some consume little power on standby, others are far worse.

The simplest indication is to put your hand on the thing, if it is stone cold then it is using virtually nothing. If it is warm then the consumption is not negligible. I don't have phone chargers to compare, but various power supplies I have, run from just warm to about 50deg C. The hot ones are likely wasting over 5W.

If you are on grid power, it is so cheap that you will probably see little difference if you turn them all off unless you are more energy conscious than most. Your 100W will make little difference to you if you leave 500W of lights on all day, but a few million people wasting 100W will have a large impact.

If you produce your power from renewable sources then you will soon find out that these things really do count.

Although domestic users only pay for kW, these things often take a lot of lagging power factor current and they have far worse implications for the provider than the user.

Flux

[wpowokal]

Here is a link to a Home power artical on this subject,

http://www.homepower.com/files/phantom.pdf

As a kid our Jewish neighbor told me Allan look after your penies and the pounds will look after themselves, yes we had pounds then.

allam down under

[electrondady1]

i have become aware of these air freshener sent devises advertised on tv.

alot of them seem to plug into outlets . do they continue to draw power after the smell is used up?

[AbyssUnderground]

Yes because the scent is produced by lightly warming the gel/liquid to make it evaporate into the air. The heating element is still on even after the scent is gone.

[DanG]

Another example of mis-information on the web. The xfmrs take some small current to build up the magnetic field then reach saturation so very little current flows - however the examples shown in the link are not attached to any devices so of course he can pile on xfmrs and get low readings. Add any closed circuit to low side of that wall-wart and the losses climb pretty fast compared to the low losses they claim...

[TomW]

Ok, I guess I should dump my opinion here.

Anything plugged in to the wall with a transformer draws power at some level whether it is in use or not.

From the feel of that article the person has never used a watt of RE or he - she - it would understand how much easier it is to conserve a watt than to make one.

You can buy any results for any "study" you want. Like oil company toadies [shrub] paying lip service to conservation and renewables then in the next breathe tell you hydrogen is the future. Where do they think the source feedstocks will come from? Oil, of course. It is not a change in attitude it is a change in tactics.

As long as Joe Sixpack hears on CNN that all is well, it will never change.

I still personally think we just need to use it all up or face a supply shortage to stimulate renewable research and implementation. Sad part is we are burning a resource that has vast uses beyond fuel for the silliest reasons. When your auto fuel has to compete with chemicals, drugs and cheap plastic crap from walmart and a gallon of fuel starts to cost real money because the oil they use to make them is in competition with fuel hopefully we will see a major increase in costs that probably will be the only factor that will drive conservation and use of alternate fuels.

I know most of you won't agree with this but historically we tend to waste resources until the costs make it prohibitive.

Just one mans opinion and likely too painful for most to even consider.

Funny, tho, none of them seem to be put off by killing for it.

I won't even go into the moral issues of war for oil because you can probably figure it out on your own.

I also wonder when a brand new user posts this kind of link whether they are pimping or genuinely wondering on the legitimacy of the article. The Internet tends to breed the phenomenon of pimping BS because any hits count when you are selling an idea. Not saying this is what is happening here just that it feels that way.

Carry on.

Cheers.

TomW

[stop4stuff]

'Does conservation really matter?'

Depends who you're conserving for.

In the UK we've had a load of stuff thrown at us via the tv. One news report mentioned that unplugging all phantom loads would save the average UK household around £40 per year in electricity bills (bs imo... = 45 Watts per hour, every hour 365 days a year)

& TomW...

'I still personally think we just need to use it all up...'

i totally agreed with you, the sooner it's all gone the better.... humainty will really have to get it's s**t together then

Do we really want to conserve the oil co.s shareholders' future incomes?

or

Should we burn their money whilst we still can

paul

[windstuffnow]

  Personally, I would like to leave the world just a little better than I was given.  Maybe leaving just a small imprint that I was here and did something that helped. Unfortunately, my little bit doesn't make a hill of beans unless there are others that will follow along.  

  I agree with TomW on the point of using all the oil up, although, I think we should simply move away from it before its gone.   I for one was hoping for high gas prices.   When the prices shot up to 3.50 a gallon people were climbing out of the woodwork with ideas... now that its back down again everyone's become complacent.   If its comfortable inside then we take things for granted, on the other hand when it gets cold outside we tend to turn the heat up.  As long as everyone is comfortable spending money to waste resources, nothing will change.  

  Wall warts and such are a good start but only a tiny part of the problem.   We need to treat our resources like gold... once their gone, the gold won't help !!!

  .

[Gordy]

Another phantom load???

Recently my power Co sent out a tech to check the calibration of my meter, and install                  a remote meter reader unit. Long story short, He told me I had another phantom load hanging on the wall. It was a 100' extension cord, coiled up and hanging on a hook, and plugged into the outlet with nothing plugged into the other end of the cord. He claimed that the hot wire was creating a magnetic field, which induced a current in the neutral wire, making the meter spin.

Could one of you guy's with the proper meters or test equipment check this out, for the B.S. factor???

Gordy

[Flux]

You will be hard pushed to find meters to check this out. Current will be limited to that caused by the capacitance between wires.

This is total BS.

Flux

[richhagen]

This year I have started to try and keep better track of what energy I use, buy and make.  Probably not overly practical, but when comparing Joules to Joules, I use far more energy in climate control than anything else.  In my case it is probably more extreme than most, but I would bet that most homes in temperate climates use 75% of the energy that they consume in that way.  If you burn wood, it may not be as much of a concern, but I have to buy natural gas for heat, so it is something I have to consider.

For example, for a one year period, I used 38,130,411 Joules daily for electricity for lighting, appliances moving air around and such, whereas for heating, hot water, and cooking energy, I used 460,767,286 Joules per day.  The only saving grace is that the latter uses Natural Gas as opposed to electricity and that costs only 23.2% as much per additional Joule as the electricity.  These measurements exclude a small solar light that was always on in my laundry room and a couple of other tiny projects, but were prior to my new addition of a 48V system which I hope to expand.  

My average daily production from the 48V system since 23 November has been only 44.8KWH or 1,662,087 Joules per day on average.  Since I have yet to rig the relay to switch my lighting circuit over to the inverter, I have only been measuring the power dumped once the batteries are charged.  The power dumped is equivelant to only 4.36% of my electricity consumption and only .33% of my overall energy consumption.  Without conservation, if I am to replace a significant percentage of my current residential usage with my own generated power, I think I may need a bigger roof.  Fortunately, I have a few more panels yet to mount, and this period of time covers the worst part of the year, so the solar panels may yet have a brighter future.  

Anyway, I'm getting a bit off of my point, which is that even with the fact that natural gas is much cheaper for a given amount of energy than electricity, because I used so much of it, that is probably where I can get the biggest bang for the buck in terms of conservation.  On the other hand, since I pay much more per unit of energy for electricity than gas, that is what I should try to use any generated power to replace.  I think I will log off for now and go turn the thermostat down a couple of degrees.  Rich  

[finnsawyer]

For what it's worth, I recently read an article by someone who claims to be in the know that coal is the cheapest source of electricity with nuclear being slightly more expensive and natural gas costing the most per KWH.

[TomW]

GeoM;

Was that including future cleanup costs, etc?

Thats the part we pass on to the future and the costs are likely to be high. Any comparison should include that back end cost. No idea what that would be for various schemes but nuclear probably be the hardest to clean up after. Very hard to predict any of those costs, IMHO

Cheers.

TomW

[jimjjnn]

Anybody happen to see what Al Gore pays on one of his homes for utilities? $30,000 on just one of 5 homes. His private jet also uses a lot of resources too.

Hypocritical? Not real sure.

[TomW]

of course he is a hypocrite, being both rich and a politician.

Nuff sed.

Cheers.

TomW

[jimjjnn]

TomW, Thank you. My thoughts , also.

[wooferhound]

That would mean that All of the wires in your house would be a phantom load too

[RP]

This has a really high BS factor.  

At 60hz there is virtually zero current flowing into the cord.  What infintesimal current there is is due to capacitive coupling from the hot wire to the neutral and since that circuit is effectively counter wound (clockwise going out and counterclockwise coming back) there's no magnet field generated either.

If any significant power could be lost (which would mean transmitted) this way, we would all be powering our houses from crystal radios tuned to 60hz picking up the leakage.

I'd say your tech guy wasn't paying much attention during the AC circuits seminar.

[TomW]

Russ;

I'd say your tech guy wasn't paying much attention during the AC circuits seminar.

I have "roger" that. Lots of silly old bogus "facts" out there.

Cheers.

TomW

[craig110]

Ah, I enjoy musings like this thread.

I guess that its not worth it for individuals. This is more like a mutual effort to reduce the CO2 emissions. Lets say that every family has 5 chargers which it more than often happens the total power wasted is about 5 Watts. Then in the town that I live there are 200k habitants. So (5W * 200,000)/1000 = 1000Kw. Thats a lot of power. Do the math then:

1000Kw * 24 hours a day * 30 days a month = 720,000Kwh per month. I think that that would produce quite some CO2 and collectively its a lot of money to the power generators. If your electric rate is 0.07 USD per Kwh that will be around 50,000 dollars for the generator company only for powering unused cell phone chargers.

A common problem with large numbers is that while they look large to us, they can still be small in comparison to what it is being compared against.  For example, there are 300,000,000 people in the US.  If each one gives me a penny, I have $3 million dollars.  Have they given me a lot of money?  From my individual perspective, yes, but from the collective perspective, no, since everyone still only gave up a penny.

Bringing this back to the subject at hand, it is easy to look at 1000Kw as a lot of power.  However, look at it this way: The town with 200K individuals probably has around 50K dwellings.  Lets say that half of those dwellings are separate homes which average around 25KwH per day usage and the other half consume 15KwH each day.  (Not sure about that latter number, but a bit over half the rate of a separate home feels about right.)  On a monthly basis, those dwellings consume:

((25,000 * 25KwH) + (25,000 * 15KwH)) * 30

or approximately 30,000,000KwH per month.  Yes, 720,000KwH per month is a lot of power for those of us who struggle to generate watts, but it is still only 2% of the town's dwellings' electricity consumption.  If I was conducting a PR campaign to get people to reduce their power, I wouldn't start out going after a 2% item with as much hassles as unplugging and plugging back in all those devices when swapping a couple 60w bulbs for 12w CFDs would save as much.

[dslunsford1]

Craig, that's exactly what I'm getting at... I completely understand that every little bit counts, and I know that if I was producing my own power you can bet I'd unplug everything not in use.  The issue comes with public awareness... Articles like the one I referenced seem to indicate that phone chargers are the primary abusers!  So now you've got a bunch of citizens who WANT to reduce their impact, and so they're unplugging phone chargers right and left... while still using 75W incandecents and 100W floodlights all around their house.  

The key is education... people need to know what simple things they can do (change lightbulbs) to make a huge difference.  

[dslunsford1]

DanG... that's exactly the point.  I had always heard that claim that unused transformers waste a lot of energy, but my position is this: where does the energy go?  Since the electric energy doesn't produce any additional potential energy, obviously no kinetic energy, and VERY minimal thermal energy, there's no way that a significant amount of energy is being discharged.  The loop, while technically not closed, still lets such a minute amount of current through that unplugging it is incomparable to simply replacing light bulbs.

[dslunsford1]

I'm not too big a fan of Al, but I will say that he's brought the "climate crisis" and energy waste situation to the forefront of the media, so good on him for that.  In regards to his energy usage, a large portion of that is due to the fact that he pays an addn'l $4 per 150kWh so that his energy supports wind and solar plants and R&D.  Also, it is a 20 bedroom mansion, and he's currently working to reduce the energy usage.  Almost all of his neighbors use more.  

Bottom line is that even though I'm not a fan, I think we should cut him some slack.  He's out there making some difference and causing people to think about this stuff, and we honestly can't expect the former Vice President to read by LED-lite at night or watch every Joule he uses.  And I think it's a little comical to criticize him for using a private jet to cart himself and his staff around the nation for their daily meetings... no one complains when Puff Daddy or Brad Pitt do it, so give a break to the guy who served as our nation's #2 man for so long.

[finnsawyer]

I found out from experience that if an extension cord is connected to a ground fault circuit breaker and gets wet with nothing plugged into it or touching it the breaker can trip.  Of course, that doesn't mean that the cord is drawing much power, but more likely that the breaker is very sensitive.  Once when pouring concrete in the rain I reached over to unplug the mixer.  When I did it tripped the gfc.  I felt a slight shock, which isn't supposed to happen.