Standby TVs Waste Electricity, How About ACPI? 166
twitter asks: "There's power management and there's standby, do you know the difference? The BBC is running story on how much electricity is wasted by TV standby mode. Thanks to the very useful EnergyStar program, I'd be the one in seven who thought they were saving electricity, with the standby button. I've been very happy with APM and hibernation on laptops, and want to do something similar with the desktops I use. What's the state of APM / ACPI Wake-on-LAN for Linux these days?" Slashdot touched on this issue, earlier in the week, but that article was more on TVs, not on computer power saving technologies.
Convenience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Convenience (Score:2, Insightful)
Now lets say we look at other devices and repeat the exercise. Oh look, poisonous emissions are going down, respitory health proplems are down, medical bills are down, medical insurance (for those countries with retarted health care like ours) are down (nah, maybe not this one).
Re: Convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Re: Convenience (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an electrical engineer, and no, it can't. That's why there is a transformer. The real solution would be to get off your lazy ass and hit the power switch when you are done watching instead of turning the TV off with the remote. The other solution is to put in a very high-efficiency switching power supply, but those are very expensive.
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Re: Convenience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
As for the IR receiver, Sharp electronics h
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Even assuming a power draw of 0.5mA (unrealistically low, in my opinion), capacitors would not provide enough runtime with simple circuitry. Let's say you put in a 1F supercap, and let's suppose the standby circuitr
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
What I understand is that most American TVs don't have a hard power switch. I think the better solution is to have two separate transformers. A small one dimensioned for the standby circuitry only and a big one for the rest of the electronics, one that is switched off during standby. Losses in a transformer are for a large part independent of the load, so a 6
Re: Convenience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
While your idea has merit, the tech still does not do low power well enough for a cap to replace a battery.
-nB
Re: Convenience (Score:3, Funny)
Calif Universal Waste law goes in effect Feb 6 (Score:2)
You do have a good point.
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
For commodity items, there's a reasonably high correlation between cost and power usage. For items of a similar nature, we can extend that to general environmental impact. Creating those $10 transformers requires the use of energy, not to mention disposal costs. It may be that the energy required to create them, on average, is greater tha
Re: Convenience (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know how many TVs there are in the US, and I also suspect that shutting down the transformers in a large set will save more than 2W. I'm going to guess at 5W saved, over 500 million TVs. That's 44kWh per TV per year saved.
In every TV, that's 2x10^10kWh of energy saved across the whole of the US. Those
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.
50-100 years before serious energy problems? Are you basing that on anything but intuition? There are plenty of energy alternatives out there, it just hasn't made economic sense to develop on
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
It's a fallacy to point out the total energy used by such TVs. I only control my TV. I control those 4W. Those 4W make no difference.
The sheer arrogance of that statement astonishes me. Yes, on your own you won't make a difference, but w
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Look, my workstation avera
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Good. There aren't many workstations that average that amount.
If that is true, then:
- For every 50 TVs made, each "full on" for 8 hours a day and taking 200W a piece, you have to generate enough po
Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenience) (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, because those damn environmentalists wield so much power and have so much money, why they're practically running the US government!
That's nonsense. Slashdot ran an article on this just recently. Global wind power in class 3 areas alone could generate 72 terawatts which is 60 times global consumption [physorg.com]. Class 3 wind turbines are financially comparable to brown coal. North America has the greatest number of class 3 areas in the world.
But let's not stop at wind power. A home with solar panels for hot water (not the expensive, dirty and inefficient photovoltaic) saves 50% on heating costs. The panels pay for themselves in 5 years and have a 25 year lifetime. They are maintenance free (they are effectively just black plastic pipes behind glass sheets) and easy to repair when damaged (simple plumbing that a home handyman could do).
But let's not stop at solar and wind power. Changing your light bulbs from incandescent to energy efficient flouros will save 75% on lighting costs. Modern flouros are compact, come in a variety of shapes, only need to be changed once every 5-10 years, degrade slowly rather than blowing suddenly at inconvenient times, and have equivalent candela output to a 75W incandescent.
But let's not stop at solar power and wind power and energy efficiency. Your SUV gets 10MPG yet a comfortable Subaru Legacy has equivalent seating and storage but gets 33MPG. Your average driver will save between $750 and $1250 per year while simultaneously slashing their automobile oil consumption by two thirds. That's financially sensible and enviromentally friendlier.
The solutions are here right now. You need to stop waiting for the magic silver bullet like fusion, or blaming "environmentalists" for preventing fission, or wondering why you're spending $2000+ per year on fuel for your gargantuan SUV, and simply start using the technology that is here right now and is economical right now and is practical right now. You can make the difference right now.
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:5, Informative)
As for everything else...
I did change my light bulbs, the effect I have to say seems negligable... Either my power company doens't bother to look at my meter to figure out energy use, or my lighting costs are fairly low and therefor the change made to small a difference to notice...
I don't have solar panels used for hot water... My house is already built (& I didn't build it), so the cost to change things now is to much for my fairly average salary to cover... I could try to get a loan to pay for it, but that would nuke any savings I'd see for years... I also doubt anyone would give me a loan... Winter would also cause some issues for this... Heating bills are largest in the winter and solar isn't very effective in general when the solar panels are covered in snow...
As for wind.... That's not a change I can make... Even if I did live in a good area (& I think winter would kill any effective use where I live), I'm not likely to be able to put up a tower... First their is the money issue again... Then I think my city would probably frown on it to... When I looked into wireless internet options I found out my area is heavily restricted on building anything over 30" tall... Less would probably not be so good with the number of trees around here...
Nice ideas, but practicality is questionable...
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Everyone says solar, because it's trendy. Truth is, you'd almost certainly get much better use out of a ground-source heat-pump. Doesn't matter what the sun is doing, you can get your home heated or cooled, and all the hot water you need, by a single unit, probably only costing you
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Perhaps you missed the GEOTHERMAL qualifier? Instead of exchanging heat with the air it uses the ground which is at a fairly constant temperature (warmer than air in winter, cooler in summer).
Solves most of the problems of a heat pump but at significant cost.
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Not just any heatpump... a closed-loop ground-source heatpump. Or an open-loop well-water source heat-pump, if you already have a well.
It doesn't matter what the tempurature of the air is, the ground stays within a couple degrees, year-round. It may be -20F above ground, but it will still be around 65F once you go down about 30 feet.
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Btw it's nice that you only have to drive 10 miles a day... My commute is 25 miles each direction. That's figuring I don't need to stop anywhere else as well. I don't have much choice in that. I
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
Solar hot water is extremely cheap. You can build a system yourself with little more than some cheap irrigation tubing, and a pump.
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
I'd have to not already have mortgages on my house to be able to get one and I think I covered that under loans anyways... A mortgage is a form of loan after all (with house as collatoral). In my case the house in question was my grandmother's and has two mortgages on it, that unfortunately I get to pay off now that she's dead (she has been for nearly a decade now). Sure I got her house, but I also got her debt on said hous
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
He may, but even so I'm still not wrong as that is simply the british word for the same thing. I however am not british, so to me I have to translate...
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
The rest of your post is great, and spot-on, but I do have a question about the nuclear argument: environmentalists may not have the deepest pockets, but they have succeeded in stopping new nuclear power plant contruction dead in its tracks in the US. We haven't commissioned a new nuclear power plant (to my knowledge; I'd love to be wrong on this one, so let me know if I missed something) since the seventies, have we?
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
You can not control the wind. Without good storage you will have issues also they are noisy and no one knows what will happen to the climate if you extract that level of energy from wind. If nothing else you
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Stop Blaming Environmentalists (was: Convenienc (Score:2)
A terawatt is 1 billion watts, ...
Good-bye, credibility...."
If what you're trying to say is that 1 billion watts is a gigawatt and not a terawatt that's correct where 1 billion is equal to one thousand million, however, there are parts of the world where 1 billion is equal to 1 million million.
Re: Convenience (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a fallacy. There isn't just one of those TVs, there are hundreds of millions of them. They all use energy. Legislative mandates for more efficient electronics would go a long way. Right now, efficiency is simply not a criterion the manufacturer even attempts to optimize when developing a power supply; cost is a much, much bigger factor. This obviously needs to change.
Are you basing that on anything but intuition?
Don't be childish.
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
don't go spouting figures for saving power when most people don't buy a new tv every year they keep the same one for a long time
So THAT's why millions of TVs are purchased per year. I don't know anyone whose TV is older than 10 years. They generally break long before that.
including the environmental cost of the batteries used to power an alternative idea
Did I say anything about batteries? There are lots
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Perhaps you've never heard of the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org]? You should read about it.
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia, concerning herders sharing a piece of common pasture:
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
Or you could run the standby circuit using the battery, charger, etc that's already built in to your computer to run the CMOS clock...
Re: Convenience (Score:2)
For example, if the battery provides a short duration of RAM power, then a desktop computer could survive a power blink just like laptops can today. Have you ever been in an office when the power goes out and everyone except the laptop users cry out in anguish? Think of the battery as a mini, on-board UPS.
So instead of just saying that it takes 7 years to recoup the cost, the manufacturer can spin it as a market
Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:4, Informative)
While the vanilla version works basically, Suspend2 [suspend2.net] is a more complete implementation. I use it on my laptop regularly.
Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. When you boot again, only the kernel is booted, which takes about two seconds or so. Then instead of init (all those startup services), it picks up the RAM image from the disk (takes a few seconds on my 512MB machine).
Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:3, Informative)
Most laptop hard drives are hard pressed to give a 25MB/s sustained read rate. I am not sure exactly how the Linux implementation exists, but you have basically two choices:
Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:2)
This bit doesn't make any sense. First off, by default (and as the only option with the code in mainline), the swap is the suspend file. There isn't anything wasted or stored twice, because the only pages to be stored are the important ones; not unused pages, and not pages that are already backed by the disk (including swap). So it's mostly equivalent to option 2. Sur
Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Software suspend: ACPI/APM independent (Score:2)
Yes, it does. If you look at Suspend2's details, you'll find that it's very well thought of, just like the rest of Linux.
IMHO, you should try things like this just for the heck of it. It's the hacker/tinkerer spirit. If you use journaled filesystems, there's very little risk of data loss in case of cras
Actually (Score:1)
ACPI only uses your power until you are hacked [slashdot.org], then somebody else has the power.
WOL (Score:4, Informative)
Sending the 'magic packet' is not difficult, and there is a variety of tools that can do this, including a ready made perl script, on a gentoo system, type 'emerge wakeonlan'. I bet it is available with most other distributions as well.
Re:WOL (Score:2)
Re:WOL (Score:2)
When your firmware and hardware don't support this correctly then obviously it is not going to work, regardless of what OS you are trying to boot..
The question I replied to was asking specifically about using this with Linux, that more or less implies that the hardware being used itself is fully capable. My answer was to point out that Linux has nothing to do with the matter in virtua
Re:WOL (Score:2)
Re:WOL (Score:2)
Without power it is not going to work at all, seems rather obvious really. A powered off system with wake on lan enabled is going to come a lot closer to the 1 watt initiative of EPA then almost any TV on standby mode however. Indeed a
Re:WOL (Score:2)
On Intel boards with their advanced ACPI (yes, redundant... their terminology) controlers (BMCs), there's a 16Mhz ARM7 computer running even when your machine's power is off. It has a back-door connection to the intel ethernet chip, and can process ACPI packets to do just about anything you could do to your machine if you were standing in front of it, but over the network. It sits between the front panel buttons and the chipset, so it can 'push' any of tho
Re:WOL (Score:2)
That there needs to be some intelligence for actually responding to such a packet seems somewhat obvious to me. What kind of 'intelligence' this is I never mentioned, it is relevant to the main arti
Re:WOL (Score:2)
it however has nothing to do with the post I replied to which asked about using WOL with Linux.
Your post was at the top level, and not a reply to anything. Perhaps that is the source of the confusion.
Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?] (Score:3, Insightful)
With the appropriate privileges, Perl (or any other native application) can send any type of packets, layer 2 or above (possibly even layer 1). A programming language is NOT the place to impose security constraints. That's what the operating system
Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?] (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?] (Score:3, Informative)
self.ins = socket.socket(socket.AF_PACKET, socket.SOCK_RAW, socket.htons(ETH_P_ALL))
Whats that? You want to only get the traffic from a certain ethernet card, or want to transmit out a certain card? Easy. (In C, from my own code.)
struct sockaddr_ll device_sa;
int filedes;
filedes = socket
Re:Layer 2 Access Required [Security?!?] (Score:2)
Just don't run the perl-script as root and you are good to go. I just can't see why Perl would ever have to follow that Java security model. Operating systems come with privilege systems for a reason.
Heat (Score:1)
Re:Heat (Score:2)
I really don't think it is a huge deal, each TV might draw 5W on standby. It varies by TV, so check your manual. All my manuals for line-powered electronic products specify standby power and it's not much. There are plenty of good flourescent bulbs with higher frequency ballasts and a "warm" looking color output such that sw
Re:Heat (Score:2)
I have my computers on 24/7 for convenience, and I actually have to keep my window open just so my apartment doesn't get too hot.
Thus, by mere desire for convenience, I generate the heat I need to survive comfortably anyways, and I've never turned on the heater, which is electric, and would cost me more money to run regardless of if I were turning my computers off or not.
Compact Flourescent (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Compact Flourescent (Score:1)
His house is fitted throughout with 100W incandecent lightbulbs. I haven't checked, but I suspect he also leaves his TV and amp on standby.
Re:Compact Flourescent (Score:3, Informative)
I haven't checked, but I suspect he also leaves his TV and amp on standby.
I don't know what model TV you have, but if I unplug mine to get it out of standby, I lose all the programmed in channels and settings. Next time I plug it back in I have to reprogram it all. Same with my reciever.
No thanks, it's worth the $1 a month.
Re:Compact Flourescent (Score:2)
Re:Compact Flourescent (Score:2)
If someone's looking at ACPI or Standby appliances you can pretty much guarantee they've already got insulated dwellings, efficient vehicles and compact fluorescents bulbs.
Just try to avoid 'Elite' branded ones. I've had three die after six months use in different sockets.
ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Save power somwhere else...
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
At least using notebook systems can have other benefits, two of them are mobility and sound output.
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:3, Informative)
Same here. But they have both ACPI and CPU frequency scaling (aka centrino, powernow, longrun, longhaul) enabled.
The reasons are fairly simple.
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
MTBF is irrelevant if the MTBF is much higher than the expected lifetime of the server... All our server failures have either been after max. 1/2 year (production fault) or after the end of the expected lifetime (wich is 5 years for a PC server). I do however have running servers (IBM PCServer 325, Compaq ProLiant 2500 and some DEC) wich are over 10 years old... but they don't do servers that way any longer, do they ?
Temperature of a transistor decre
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
MTBF is MEAN TIME BEFORE FAILURE not Time before guaranteed failure. It is the Expected Value of your failure distribution. By increasing your MTBF, you are decreasing the probability of failure within your estimated installation lifetime. As a result over your projected installation lifetime the overall number of failures and overall maintenance expenditure decreases. When managing 100+ servers it is guaranteed to have some failures due to normal wear and tear even during the warranty period. Not trying to
Re:ACPI ? What ACPI ? (Score:2)
My servers do usually not live for more than 5 years so using higher precision will not change anything.
Obligatory... (Score:2)
You obviously don't run Linux [bash.org]...
Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed? (Score:2)
Of course, that would require hardware to be designed..
Re:Why are "standby" and "sleep" functions needed? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux's software suspend does just this, see my oth
ACPI state (Score:2)
It's S4 [wikipedia.org]
S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:5, Informative)
S1 (aka. sleep) works on most every system, since it's been around forever, but it'll only save you maybe 2% over the system being normally up and running (doing useful tasks).
S3 (aka. suspend) is the damn-good one. It only uses about 0.5 watts more power than your computer being completely off (I suppose it might be different with a more effecient power supply like a Seasonic). However, it's damn near impossible to get it to work. Windows XP, Linux, FreeBSD. Tried on dozens of completely different machines, and I've never seen it work, once. The drivers for pretty much ALL the hardware need to be written with APCI in-mind.
Hell, if I could just find a list of the motherboards, soundcards, and other components that have drivers on FreeBSD6 that will resume successfully from S3, I'd put together a couple systems with just those componets. Electricity in CA isn't cheap, and I'd be saving lots with instant-on from S3. No more boot-up waits, no more opening-up the same apps every time, etc. Just hit a button, and start working (as soon as the monitor can warm up).
S5 (aka. hibernate) writes out RAM to disk, and reads from disk upon restart. I'm not a particular fan of this method, as it would take quite a while to resume on a system with a large ammount of RAM. Still, it has the potential to be even lower power provided you're going to be away long enough.
So, in my experience, you're still screwed... Just shut-off the machine when you're done.
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Okay, fine. I should have specified "Desktop" or "Workstation" systems. It's much easier to make it work on a notebook, where everything is built-in.
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:3, Informative)
Not really. It works; the problem is usually working around little hardware gotchas. This is where having a team of tech engineers do that work for you comes in, which is why it generally works better with Windows than with Linux--with Windows, HP, Dell, and friends do all the work for you (and, notably, for Microsoft. Great scheme for Microsoft!). With Linux, since it's not supported on the hardware, you have to do it yourself.
It works anywhere between fine out of the b
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
No. with you.
Good help with hardware? Certainly. Wellll, no.
See, you have to be popular enough to get the good help with hardware; it has nothing to do with closed or open source. If a new OS came out tomorrow, they'd face the same problems Linux is facing--the fact that lots of bits of hardware are quirky (or even broken), so to supp
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
1) Timbuktu doesn't seem to work 100% right under XP SP2 on some configurations, and especially causes problems with S3 mode (like not being able to resume from S3 without a almost 4 minute delay)
2) Video drivers - I've seen them corrupt the screen horribly on restore or even worse force you to turn the machine off completely
3) Cheapie sound cards - same situation as video
Upgrading the driver or removing the problem program usually works like a charm.
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:3, Informative)
I use Linux's software suspend (which I've already mentioned too many times in this discussion :) It only takes a few seconds to restore 512MB of RAM. One reason it achieves this is that RAM contents are compres
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:3, Informative)
Longer answer: I have never got S3 to work on a box running some variety of VIA chipset mobo. I have got it to work beautifully in every setup I have used that had SIS/Intel/Nvidia/AMD chipset on various W2k/XP boxes at work and home.
Note that "beautifully" does not imply that getting initially working setup was painless operation. But with correct combination of (WHQ) drivers it has always been doable. On current version of home/work boxes it was pretty much
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Nearly every notebook supports S3 just fine, as do most co
Re:S1 sucks, S3 is great, if it works for you... (Score:2)
Law of Diminishing Returns (Score:2)
Kill-a-Watt (Score:3, Informative)
Some things I've tested recently:
My PC speakers use 40 watts, even when "turned off". Result: they're on a power strip with a switch.
My HP Laserjet 2100N uses 12-16 watts (depending on the fan), when in Power Saver. Result: it gets turned off when not in use.
My PIII-650 desktop server consumed about 50 watts when idle. Result: replaced it with a Toshiba Tecra PIII-650 (with a broken screen, cheap on eBay), which draws 14 watts when idle.
I also realized that my Powerbook power supply consumes less than 1 watt when plugged in but no laptop is connected, or about 2 watts when the laptop is plugged in and fully charged, so I'm not as concerned about unplugging it anymore.
My next checks: the TV's, older transformer-based clock radios, wall warts and the deep freeze. I will also take running "baseline" checks of my major appliances (fridge, furnace, washer), so I can recheck them once a year and identify when an appliance is running too hard (bad motor bearing, etc.)
Re:Kill-a-Watt (Score:2)
Re:RAID & Power Management (Score:2)