iPhone 5, Galaxy S3 Need Less Than $1 Electricity Per Year

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If you care at all about the environment, or saving money, then this will make you feel good. Energy efficiency has become a persistent concern/interest in tech development in recent years and it is showing real progress. Mostly, however, the problem still rests in figuring out a way to make bigger inroads in curbing the energy appetite of data centers. There has been some progress there too, such as switching to different power generation measures (solar panels, wind, geothermal) but I think there is a lot more that can and will be done in the near future.
 
$28 per year for a typical PC? wow, guess I'm A-Typical because my beast has a 1.2 kW PSU, and probably runs at around 250W idle and 900W when I'm playing an intensive game (such as Skyrim or Battlefield). I would assume I'm using, oh roughly 14 kWh per day (my computer is on 24/7) which comes to 14 x 365 = roughly 5 mWh. with power being at like $0.0955 per kW in PA average, let's say 0.1 to round it out. My computer costs me.........$500 per year to run.
 
"However, in aggregate, the power consumption of all smartphones is substantial. Opower said that the 170 million iPhones that are expected to be sold over the next year will consume as much power as all homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which has a population of 128,000 people."

Don't almost all things used by a lot of people look bad in aggregate?

The average American eats 112 bananas per year-- which produces about 6 pounds of banana peels as waste. That's not so much for a whole year.

In the aggregate though, Americans are combining for over two billion pounds of peels per year. With the weight of American's banana peels in building materials, you could build 35000 1000 square foot houses, in which the 128,000 residents of Cedar Rapids Iowa can live in... :)

 
$28 per year for a typical PC? wow, guess I'm A-Typical because my beast has a 1.2 kW PSU, and probably runs at around 250W idle and 900W when I'm playing an intensive game (such as Skyrim or Battlefield). I would assume I'm using, oh roughly 14 kWh per day (my computer is on 24/7) which comes to 14 x 365 = roughly 5 mWh. with power being at like $0.0955 per kW in PA average, let's say 0.1 to round it out. My computer costs me.........$500 per year to run.
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You'd be surprised. I'm willing to bet that peak load on your system is nearer 300W and idle is around 70W (depending on components used). And I'm sure that your system is running nearer the lower end most of the time.

I've measured a number of systems, low end systems run about 150W full load (around 40 idle) vs my setup with a Phenom 1090T and (previously Radeon 6870) Would peak at 290W under load testing. I'm sure the numbers are a bit different now but even Gaming Rigs use a lot less power than what you would think.

Electronics have made tremendous strides in efficiency over the last couple of decades.
 
It should also be noted that their methodology is faulty when comparing one phone to another. Although relative to other devices I'm sure the numbers aren't off by more than a magnitude or so.
 
If you care about the environment, don't buy new digital junk every year, even if you can afford it. I bought my last cellphone in 1989 and whenever I use it, girls are checking me out.
 
[citation][nom]JacekForgotHisPasswordAndDoesntWant[/nom]my beast has a 1.2 kW PSU, and probably runs at around 250W idle and 900W when I'm playing an intensive game[/citation]

I doubt you draw 250W on idle, even if you have 2 year old dual-card setup.

 
"guess I'm A-Typical"

Until reading this, you didn't think your PC and/or use was a-typical?

Anyways-- if it is idling at around 250W, then a day you leave it on and don't touch it is at 6 KWh. To get to 14 KWh we're talking 12h 18m of intensive gaming plus 11h 42m of idle. Is that really a typical day?

If that was the case, and you shut down the machine when you were done with each session, the near 12 hours of ~0 vs 250 Wh per day would mean an annual savings of $107 -- granted, you'd waste a minute every day waiting for it to boot back up [$107 / 365 minutes = $17.55 per hour of your time, tax free :)]
 
$28 per year for a typical PC? wow, guess I'm A-Typical because my beast has a 1.2 kW PSU, and probably runs at around 250W idle and 900W when I'm playing an intensive game (such as Skyrim or Battlefield). I would assume I'm using, oh roughly 14 kWh per day (my computer is on 24/7) which comes to 14 x 365 = roughly 5 mWh. with power being at like $0.0955 per kW in PA average, let's say 0.1 to round it out. My computer costs me.........$500 per year to run.
Click to expand...

Just so you know, that does make you atypical. Most people aren't intensive gamers so they don't have a PSU that big, and most people don't leave their computer running all the time. For the record, my PSU is a little bigger than yours, though thanks to less demanding components I'll be downgrading my PSU in terms of wattage and upgrade in terms of efficiency. And I do turn off my PC daily. In fact, my desktop's uptime is only about 6-12 hours on any given day. The rest of my time is spent on my laptop.

So, yeah, I'm a little atypical myself, so there is some question how much outliers skew these stats. A heavy duty user with a 2,3, or 4x CrossFire/SLI setup with multiple monitors, several drives in RAID, never turning off their computer, and don't even use an 80Plus certified power supply, will use a much, much higher amount of energy compared to a basic, common, user. On the other side, someone who buys all their parts to meet the lowest possible power requirements, with a 80Plus platinum PSU, and tries actively to use as little power as possible, can achieve far less power use than the average user.
 
Yeah-- you're pretty typical too. I have a 1200 mile [each way] commute to work-- I was shocked to find out the national average was much less than that.

 
[citation][nom]killerclick[/nom]If you care about the environment, don't buy new digital junk every year, even if you can afford it. I bought my last cellphone in 1989 and whenever I use it, girls are checking me out.[/citation]
Ok there /sarcasm.

AMPS has been decommissioned. so i don't know what you use that thing for.
 



You're both atypical yes but you are using A LOT less than what you think. No PC will use more than 1kW in the US, you would be tripping and replacing breakers all the time if it did. Your power use doesn't go up dramatically with a bigger PSU, you're only getting more inefficient.

For those that think they have a "huge" PC that uses "atypical" amounts of power, I challenge you to actually measure your machines usage. I find that this is very enlightening, particular those times when you think your using a lot of juice.
 
[citation][nom]JacekForgotHisPasswordAndDoesntWant[/nom]$28 per year for a typical PC? wow, guess I'm A-Typical because my beast has a 1.2 kW PSU, and probably runs at around 250W idle and 900W when I'm playing an intensive game (such as Skyrim or Battlefield). I would assume I'm using, oh roughly 14 kWh per day (my computer is on 24/7) which comes to 14 x 365 = roughly 5 mWh. with power being at like $0.0955 per kW in PA average, let's say 0.1 to round it out. My computer costs me.........$500 per year to run.[/citation]
Well done, why don't you burn down a rainforest, dump asbestos in the city's drinking water and kill all the pandas while you are at it
 
Well my rig is an i7 960 (OC'd to 3.84 ghz), 8 gigs of ram (OC'd to 1830 mhz), dual EVGA Geforce 660 cards in SLI, EVGA Geforce 460 (for PhysX), 2x 80 gig SSD drives, 2x 10k RPM 500 gig HD's, 1x external 2 TB drive, 1x external 1 TB drive. Case is the Silverstone RV-02 (90 degree rotated MoBo), 2x 230mm fans, 7x 120mm fans. Platinum+ PSU.
 
Cool on energy effieciency and what not, but think of this:

If you can afford to pay ~$500 for a phone (if you use a contract, you're still paying that much, just over a longer timeframe), what do you care about an extra dollar a year on you electric bill? What is 15 cents a month?

If you really care so much about the environment, how about buying a solar panel to charge it with?

EDIT: Dollar a year meaning it may cost $2 for your old or a different smartphone, as opposed to the $1 for iPhail5 and GS3
 
[citation][nom]rosen380[/nom]"However, in aggregate, the power consumption of all smartphones is substantial. Opower said that the 170 million iPhones that are expected to be sold over the next year will consume as much power as all homes in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which has a population of 128,000 people."Don't almost all things used by a lot of people look bad in aggregate? The average American eats 112 bananas per year-- which produces about 6 pounds of banana peels as waste. That's not so much for a whole year. In the aggregate though, Americans are combining for over two billion pounds of peels per year. With the weight of American's banana peels in building materials, you could build 35000 1000 square foot houses, in which the 128,000 residents of Cedar Rapids Iowa can live in...[/citation]

Now let's calculate the total effective radioactive dose from Potassium-40 in those bananas...
 
Same-- electricity is electricity-- it may be a bit more inefficient to do it through USB rather than right at the wall, but the numbers we're talking about are small enough, that I don't think that a couple extra percent change it much...
 
[citation][nom]JacekForgotHisPassword[/nom]Well my rig is an i7 960 (OC'd to 3.84 ghz), 8 gigs of ram (OC'd to 1830 mhz), dual EVGA Geforce 660 cards in SLI, EVGA Geforce 460 (for PhysX), 2x 80 gig SSD drives, 2x 10k RPM 500 gig HD's, 1x external 2 TB drive, 1x external 1 TB drive. Case is the Silverstone RV-02 (90 degree rotated MoBo), 2x 230mm fans, 7x 120mm fans. Platinum+ PSU.[/citation]

Ok, that could draw 250W at idle.

Congratulations, but you could probably get a faster system that draws half the power.


EDIT: Actually, no. Anandtech has a i7-3960X OC @ 4.3GHz with a single 660 drawing 106W at idle. Seeing how 660 idle draws around 20W and all your storage and fans draw maybe 20W total, you're probably drawing closer to 160W idle with that 460.
 
"Now let's calculate the total effective radioactive dose from Potassium-40 in those bananas..."

Good point-- if we built those houses out of the actual banana peels, there would be plenty of K-40 to make everyone sick, I think-- granted that assumes that the concentrations of potassium is similar or greater in the peal than in the edible part.
 
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