Woops, I did indeed mean "turn off" -- my mistake.
I've heard the same thing about cell phone chargers etc (and TVs,
computers, game console, etc--anything with "instant on" or that
doesn't power off completely in its off state) though I enjoy the
term "wall warts" :)
I'd also read that in Europe (or at least parts of Europe) there are
laws that all devices should have hard off switches (like on a
typical computer--you've got a "soft off" and a "hard off" rocker
switch on the back), but I'm not sure if this accurate.
Scott
On Nov 15, 2007, at 10:38 PM, j maccraw wrote:
I assume you mean "off when you leave a room"?
Energy usage to power on seems obviously small vs.
leaving the light on all the
time. On the other hand, the light bulb will fail
sooner if being power cycled
vs. running constantly. This stress could be solved if
intelligent switches like
newer Leviton X10 were used which "dim up" the lights
from off and "dim down" to
off either initiated by button press or presence
detection.
Latest thing I've heard was about the wasted energy
caused by "Wall warts'",
like used to charge cell phones, phantom loads idling
between uses. Since they
are inductance driven I am inclined to believe there
is some waste but solvable
if they added a way for the wart to be activated by
the device attaching or
simply added a switch! All I can say is I'd rather be
using a single switching
power supply feed a few devices than several
inductance driven warts but it's 1.
expensive, 2. not always practical.
With hard drives spinning up & down that often I'd be
seriously worried about
wear & tear on the spindle motor and the PSU the load
of a few drives spinning
up at the same time. Do any drive manufacturers use
slowed (not stopped)
rotation at idle to save energy with gradual ramp up
to avoid stressful "0-60 at
full throttle" cold starts similar to how variable
speed cooling fans work?
Scott Sipe wrote:
I saw an episode of mythbusters where they tested
this, and they came to
the conclusion that it's definitely better to turn
lightbulbs on when
you leave the room.
For the average lightbulbs they tested, slightly
more energy was
consumed turning the bulb on--but it equalized out
in like <3 seconds.
Scott
On Nov 15, 2007, at 5:24 PM, Gary VanderMolen wrote:
As a EE major, I doubt that is the case. However,
for an incandescent
bulb the tremendous change in filament temperature
between off and on
would cause earlier failure of the filament when
cycled more often.
Gary VanderMolen [MS-MVP WLM]
--------------------------------------------------
I've always been told that a light takes less
power to keep it on all
of the time than it does to turn it on & off. It
supposedly takes
alot more electricity to start up a light than
just to leave it on.
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