California to put all your power-hungry PCs on a low carb(on) diet California could soon become the first US state to pass laws limiting the power consumption of computers sold within its borders. The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the California Energy Commission (CEC) wants to, by the end of the year, require PCs and monitors sold in Cali to use way less energy. The report cites a …
So we'll get really dim monitors, or be stuck with Celeron-quality processors, or what? Or must the computer turn itself off after 3 minutes of inactivity? Technology MAY be up to providing computers that work right and meet these power requirements of theirs, but I'm not betting on it.
We have some "energy saving" printers, too. They turn themselves off (and cool down) after a few minutes of not being used. So if you want to print something, you send your job to the printer, go over to it, and wait. And wait. And wait a bit more while it warms back up. So the state (yes, it's a government office) saves $00.0000000001 worth of electricity and wastes $2.00 worth of someone's time forcing them to wank around waiting for a printout. Typical government "efficiency."
As a resident of the Golden State, this doesn't bother me much. I skimmed the staff report (link below). It makes high-efficiency LEDs mandatory (3-5 watt savings while "on"), which are already becoming the norm for Energy Star 6.1. It also makes "80 Plus" or better PSUs a standard. The rest is mostly in flight already as manufacturers move toward SSDs and more efficient GPUs. The proposal doesn't appear to apply to printers.
I'm sure there's some exuberance behind the anticipated savings figures, but 2.5 terawatt hours and 783,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas saved per year got my attention. There's a lot of tech at my house. I just hope overclocking doesn't become a misdemeanor.
http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/14-AAER-02/TN210913_20160330T161602_Final_Draft_Staff_Report_for_Computers_Computer_Monitors_and_Si.pdf
So, so more wide-spectrum LED monitors, just the super-efficient blue-white crap ones? You'd think any kind of LEDs would be good enough.
Will high-end GPUs be verboten as well? GamerGate blitzkrieg in 3... 2... 1...
These bureaucrats are barking up the wrong tree. Cloud computing is the 900 pound energy hog.
"...barking up the wrong tree. Cloud computing is the 900 pound energy hog."
It's traditional in the environmental field to start at the tiny and inconsequential end of the total problem space.
If ecoMentals were in charge of fighting forest fires, then we'd all be asked to go outside and spit.
"We must all do our part. Every tiny little thing helps," said every ecoMental ever.
Where's Oliver Cromwell when we need him?
These bureaucrats are barking up the wrong tree. Cloud computing is the 900 pound energy hog.
Just consider for a moment, which cloudy, tech companies are based in California... and which ones of those do some serious lobbying. A possible connection?
Cloud computing is the 900 pound energy hog
Now I have a problem with cloud being the saviour of humanity it's always claimed to be - but if anything it should be reducing power requirements of computation. Because it's all in one place doesn't mean it's using more power for work done which is what energy standards should actually be based on. Mind you that would probably result in us using ARM for everything so lets pretend I didn't say anything.
"So we'll get really dim monitors, or be stuck with Celeron-quality processors, or what? Or must the computer turn itself off after 3 minutes of inactivity?"
We could all just buy VW PCs. They will go into a low power mode when being tested and otherwise run at full speed.
'So if you want to print something, you send your job to the printer, go over to it, and wait. And wait. And wait a bit more while it warms back up.'
Ours do that, I print stuff, get on with something else and then go over to the printer once it's finished. Feel free to use that tip.
Ah, but that becomes infeasible when you have a "Print & Hold" where you send the job and provide a PIN, then it won't start printing until you enter the PIN at the printer so that "sensitive documents" don't get left sitting on the printer while you are getting on with something else.
Also known as enforced wanking about.
From the look of it, they're talking out their collective arse. Following the link in the San Diego paper's article they are claiming that a desktop with monitor burns the equivalent of 280 kWh/year "when idle". To me that seems like a steamy pile of buffalo chips as it means it's pulling 32 Watts 24/7/52 "when idle". According to a U Penn study that might seem reasonable only if the computer never sleeps and I'll point out the study is on machines that are all at least four years old.
Personally, I use a 25W amd 5350 desktop cpu. Not so I could be 'green', but so I could save on my electric bill (vs 125W cpu). Good low wattage cpu's are few and far between. Running Ubuntu, I am well served by this processor. When it comes time to replace this setup, I hope there are good choices available.
Gov't overreach...bad. Mo' better low wattage processors...good.
An analysis of who uses power-hungry pc's, and why, is a topic for a whole other thread and I don't want to complicate things by having two topics in one thread.
Sadly, you've missed the forest for the CPU tree. :)
Firstly, the wattage ratings are intended as indications of the *maximum* power used under constant full load, just as the CPU internal clock is a ceiling, not a constant. Modern CPUs, dynamically adjust their clock speed, internal voltage, etc to provide just enough performance to accomplish the requested tasks, wasting little energy on full voltage or clock when the load is low. Thus, your 2GHz low-performance CPU is severely limited in its maximum performance vs. a standard 3.5GHz Intel CPU like the i5-6500 (65W maximum TDP), but likely uses not much less power when both are at idle.
Secondly, the relevant power use is the system's power use, not just the CPU. Depending on the chipset, motherboard design, memory type, power supply, and other components, as likely as not your AMD system uses more power on a system basis when idle than does an equivalent system built around the i5-6500.
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> An analysis of who uses power-hungry pc's, and why,
I have an i7-6700, 65w TDP. Thing is, if you use the internal graphics the entire machine pulls about 40w, up to about 60w with the GTX-750, at idle (which it is for most of it's life). My intention is to keep it for several years, rather than replacing an entry-level low-power job in a year or so because it's not quick enough,
The other thing is that it may use more power when working hard, but it will be working hard for less time than a less powerful low-power CPU, so it evens out and may even come out ahead.
Thanks. If you're happy with your system and it conforms to your needs, then more power to you. (pun intended). According to System Monitor my tasks rarely if ever, reach 50% utilization, including HD video. If it does max out, its only for short periods of time. I've had this system a few years now and will be happy to keep using it until it quits, unless something better strikes my fancy. Appreciate your input.
... is not up to supplying reliable base load electricity.
California has put all their energy eggs in that one basket and now they are finding that it does not work they were told it would. Much of it has been shown as fraud perpetrated against the government and tax payers.
Somewhere along the line the will have to give up the green dream as a dream and get back to reality and build real power stations.
It depends on what you define as "base load". For domestic and office use solar power is very effective because of the abundant, reliable, sunshine we get through most of the state. Modern plant design emphasizes efficiency and energy capture -- there's really no such thing as 'waste energy' any more.
The problem is getting the utilities on board, they don't have a very good business model for renewable energy -- its still very difficult to sell them back surplus power.
As for building more power stations we have already made huge strides in improving the efficiency of appliances -- we may have more users but everyone is using a lot less power. I don't know whether this computer initiative will have any effect since modern systems are already very efficient but that's bureaucracy for you -- they never work themselves out of a job.
Having grown up in California, I distinctly remember walking to school before sunrise and later on, returning from work at 5PM after sunset. Methinks solar production for either domestic or office use would suffer greatly at such times. Perhaps you have a brilliant scheme to store solar power from the summer for winter use -- a sort of anti-seasonal modern equivalent of the old icehouse? Or perhaps your plan is to seasonally populate ANZ with Canadian and American snowbirds?
Odd that you are pundit-ing on energy generation, yet you don't know about the concept of baseload. As it impacts solar energy generation roughly 12 hrs a day, even in sunny California :)
Far as the article goes, cautious support, assuming a coherent directive has been put together. Energy saving often hits a short term vs long term conflict. Getting $18
back on a laptops energy consumption seems optimistic though.
It creates a heat island effect in large, hot cities.
That's something about energy saving in many hot locations: save a Wh of energy used to power your device and you also save a bit of AC as well.
Main problem with this directive is that it's only come now that tablets and smartphones are overtaking PCs.
If the manufacturer's cost increases by $18 then the cost to the user will be somewhat more. I couldn't see, at first glance, how "costs ... will be more than recouped". My guess at typical power savings for a PC was 20W for 10 hours a day, or roughly 1 kWh per week. With 50 kWh costing maybe $5 or so the payback time looks likely to be 3 to 4 years or longer..
It would be interesting to know how the CEC did their sums.
"It would be interesting to know how the CEC did their sums."
Generally this involves some combination of black magic and nether regions. They invariably overstate savings and green house gases emitted.
If their numbers were real we would either have a diamond crust on the earth from all the carbon that has spewed, settled and then been compressed into crystal or we would have negative carbon emissions from all of their "savings".
Vacuum cleaners were nerfed here in the EU.. expect the same to happen in the US.
I have a bronze PSU, and I willl NEVER recoup the cost.. from a decent PSU to a "green PSU" the difference is about 2-5% efficiency.
If your rig draws 75W, and you use it 40 hours a day, 5 days a week for eleven months a year for five years, that us 165KWh. If we save 5%, that is 8.25KWh, or about 1.32$.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to recoup the cost.
It is way better to use low power CPUs than high efficiency PSUs.
Yeah, that's the real solution. Just turn stuff off when you don't use it. Even go so far as to disconnect it from wall power so it doesn't draw power while "idle". Surge strips are great for that. I had to do that with an ION HTPC in the bedroom because it still made noise when it was off. Bothered the spouse.
De-powering everything else that's supposed to be off but really isn't would probably save more than this nonsense.
Take $18. Double it to $36. Add another 50% to $54.
Now you have your conservative mark-up and cost of money.
10h x 20W x 5d/wk x (365.25d/yr/7d/wk) / 1000
~= 52.17 kWh/yr
Cost of electricity in California is high.
Let's say PC kept for 4 years on average (allowing for some failure).
$54/4yr = $13.5/yr.
Breakeven ~= $0.258/kWh.
But note that that's pretty conservative on the cost of money.
And I'm ignoring the additional benefit of reduced cost of air-conditioning and pollution costs etc.
So, not insane. Allowing workers to use those new efficient computers at home would be even more helpful.
Already are here in Europe, land of the unfettered, maniacal bureaucrat pencil-pushers.
Anything that can be regulated, will be. All else, will be eliminated.
Lawnmowers, garden equipment, tractors, small motors, etc., etc. Plasma TVs, small appliances, large applicances (a load of washing now takes THREE TO FOUR HOURS!). Light bulbs of any sort and kind.
At least the LED ones are coming down in price and have decent color reproduction, moreover they're no longer bugly...
All this reminds me of companies which cost-cut themselves out of business. Rather than solving issues on the top line (e.g. Why doesn't anyone want to buy our kit? How can we improve it and sell more?), they cut, and cut, and cut until nothing's left (Hey Nit Witless, I'm looking at you - and Marissa). They're cutting off their noses to spite their faces, yet they continue in their own illoigcal path.
California, what happened?
Mandating 80Plus PSUs gets you most of the way there without impacting the functionality of the system one bit. Going from plane "80Plus" to "80Plus Gold" gets you between 7% and 10%. Figure a high-end uses an average of 500W, so that will save 50W, or more than 1KWh per day.
And actually, in California, it's likely to be more, because that excess 50W came from heat created by the PSU, so chances are that there's an HVAC that would no longer have to deal with it...
Our houses often are lit by massive lighting fixtures or a dozen or more spotlights, often chewing up 4-500 watts of power per room. when using incandescent bulbs. A friend was in this situation, he had 450watts worth of bulbs in a chandelier; by replacing them with LEDs he not only cut the energy use by the lighting fixture by a factor of 10 but all that surplus energy wasn't being sucked out of his house by the A/C. (Figure he saved 400 watts on light power plus an extra 100 to pump that energy out of the house -- in other words, his net use of power after switching to leds was -50 watts if he was running the A/C.)
A more realistic value of power use for a high-end system with some power-intensive gaming use would be 250W. Multiply by 7% to get 17.5W, or about 0.25kWh savings during a 14-hour workday. Using a typical US electricity price of $0.13/kWh, the savings amounts to a bit over 3 cents/day USD, or almost 12 USD for a year in which the computer is in use 365 days a year, 14 hours/day.
Even in such an unrealistic high duty-load case, the savings are a bit sad, aren't they?
"A more realistic value of power use for a high-end system with some power-intensive gaming use would be 250W. "
That's a bit light. According to Anandtech's review, for an Intel i7-4960 + X99 motherboard + SSD + GTX 1070, the total system draw is over 300W. Throw in an R9 390 instead, and you're around 430W.
Saving the cost of several power stations is very laudable, but this may be a case of uninformed bureaucracy at its best. Let's face it. The IT industry is changing fast. We are just getting announcements of terabyte SSDs with 4 W operating power and 0.4 W on standby. HMC brings 30 to 40 percent saving in CPU/memory power and 3D X-point will bring more. Hyper-converged systems mean no need for storage boxes.
More important, desktops and workstations are going away. They no longer fill the use cases when compared to tablets. Even CAD and advanced video-editing has moved to the cloud, and just uses tablets to display results. There are power savings galore in the future of computers! We don't need an out-of-date and out-of-touch standard to get there. (I bet prices in California go up a lot!).
Anyway, the technical options are much better than the standard. We can get power supply chips that are better than 99 percent efficient...mandate those! We have storage compression that cuts capacity use by 80 percent. Mandate that!
For more than a decade I've said that all code monkeys should spend at least one day a week away from their high power workstation / monster computers, and try using their own awful and inefficient software on a slow PC, dial-up connection, and an old CRT monitor. It'd give them an appreciation for what some poor folks have to put up with.
So this may be a Very Good Thing.
Linux would appear to provide an equivalent user experience in a great many cases with considerably reduced requirements for both memory and CPU capacity when compared with Windows. It would be interesting to know how the power savings would work out for the use of lower-spec PCs with equivalent perceived speed of operation.
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