EnergyStar plugpacks

For a significant part of the world for a significant part of the year the reduced losses will have to be made up for by heating systems.

As I indicated elsewhere in this thread, I think the problem of high standby power consumption by large and small appliances is serious. For example, my home consumes about 200 watts when everything is turned off, costing me about $315 per year. As for the need for regulations, manufacturers simply won't change without them, and I don't feel sorry for them because they don't suffer when all their competitors have to toe the same line.

As for the consumers who'll suffer from slightly higher prices, consider the $3,150 per 10 years that I'm spending now (actually no doubt much more given the way electricity prices continue to go up and up), how much of that will I get back as I put in place the new lower-standby-power electronics of the future?

"Jan Panteltje"

Sucking Win's c*ck is so revolting.

....... Phil

"default"

.... Phil

"Spehro Pefhany"

"Fred Bloggs"

..... Phil

"nospam"

Zealots are SO narrow focussed ..........

...... Phil

How did you discover he passed the design to Indonesia, and the stuff they built ran too hot?

Yes, this is a sensible approach to it. #1 isn't a significant drawback when you consider that your typical Mr. Coffee today probalby has a quarter-million transistors in its microcontroller alone, whereas #2 is a concern but realistically needs to only be "good enough" -- have a MTBF somewhat longer than the Mr. Coffee itself. #3-#5 are important and should follow various regulatory agency rules -- which may well need updating.

They're only supposed to be smart enough to get decent technical important to those well-versed in the field. Granted, that's not always the way it works...

No, I think the moral is that the manufacturers should go back and do it right. But, yes, if you want something you can buy and use right now, that should be a fine solution.

Rod's statements about linear transformers have been shown to be wrong, and I and others have theory and measurements to prove it. Why do you keep quoting his web page as if it represents some kind of proof?

(Note, I take no issue with Rod's rants about SMPS supplies, only with his hastily-drawn conclusion about linear-transformer supplies. I have gone further and read the 109-page RIS document, and see that it simply states the Energy-Star specifications that were adopted as a voluntary measure in January 2005. The mandatory nature of the RIS proposal raises my eyebrows; I'd want exceptions for low-sales-volume specialty items, etc., especially if no replacements are available.)

Yes, there will be an impact on what manufacturers make, but in fact they will simply be returning the smallest transformers in their line to an efficiency level similar to their large ones, in some cases, and just a little bit better in others.

The famous "transformer formula" Bmax = 10^8 Vp / w Ae N (B is in gauss and Ae in cm^2), tell us the maximum flux in a core can be reduced by increasing core area Ae, and by adding turns N. My measurements showed how doubling N decreased the peak primary magnetizing current over 10x, and reduced the transformer's standby power to 0.40 watts, meeting the new regulation. That was the equivalent of doubling the product Ae * N. Note, along with the lower core losses come lower magnetizing-current copper losses.

The transformer size will certainly have to increase to accommodate the increased copper and core. Transformer manufacturers can make their best choice of the numbers, and they can also increase their iron-lamination quality, as others have pointed out.

It's crazy that small transformers now run at efficiency levels of 6/7.3 = 82%, whereas big ones run at 97 to 98%. That's 18% loss vs 2 to 3%, or at least 6x worse. How can you claim that getting rid of 6x, doing exactly what they already know how to do, is not worth doing or is an unsurmountable problem?

I'm sure they thought we wouldn't care if the transformer design wasted 1.3 watts, vs 0.4 watts (my measurements), and knowing they'd save money and their competition would do the same, they went ahead with the poor design. But that 0.9 watts difference is costing me $14.20 / decade (at today's rates), so I'll tell you, the dollar savings or whatever they made doesn't look so sweet.

So damn yes, if it takes a government to fix that, great!

Dumb question, but did you unplug the fridge and the deep freeze for this test? I find it a little hard to believe that a Mr. Coffee display and a microwave display and the IR receiver in the TV could consume 200 watts!

Did you happen to track down any major culprits?

Thanks, Rich

I made a careful list, and I have about 65 items in the house that are always on (that's an average of about 3W per item). They range from wired-in things like smoke and CO2 alarms, to the door bell and HVAC transformers, to the garage-door opener, to the microwave oven. The plugged-in items range from clocks to radios to hi-fi to TVs to networking stuff (from a cable modem to the wi-fi to networked printers, etc) to the washing machine to the fridge to the COMCAST digital-video recorder (DVR) that's always digitizing one channel or another. Don't forget computers and accessories. And various battery chargers.

Ah! Mother Nature's way of telling you that you have way too much stuff. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

Well maybe, but actually I didn't think there was so much there; much less than my neighbors with kids, for example. Except perhaps for the small pile of internet office stuff, which I use in my work activity. You know, electric toothbrushes, VoIP phone with UPS, computer speakers, IR-triggered floodlight in the driveway, hey, we're just talking about normal stuff. I mean, I don't even have a surveillance system with 3 cameras, multi-channel slow-speed video recorder, and an alarm hookup!

YOU have NOT shown any such thing.

Piss off.

...... Phil

Or remote controlled machine guns for the driveway? ;-)

One of his assemblers gave us the story initially, and there was a "super cosmic rush" order for 500 transformers or his new assembly line would be shut down.

After two weeks he fessed up to our magnetic designer what he'd done and wanted to know how to specify transformers. We explained that we only built the transformers to his application and if he wanted the design specs he'd have to pay for the design. He did pay - it wasn't all that much, ~$300 in '72 - I think my boss and he worked out an arrangement where we would supply his first 3K transformers at the prototype price.

This guy was one of the "featured foreigners" Moves to the US from India and latches on to the "American dream." (with a little help from the small business administration and tax concessions for new businesses in SD). He was a "player." Sort of thing they put on TV to keep Americans believing that the grass is greener here. After the TV piece, the guy actually felt he was special and everything he touched was turned to gold.

The overseas transformers were still marginal after we specified the steel and gave them a post mortem on the faulty ones - the inter winding shields weren't insulated so there was a shorted turn between the primary and secondary and the steel they used was abominable.

I'm not denigrating the overseas electronics assembly houses - just that when it comes to transformers - they seem to be way behind the curve. We had some hand soldered circuit boards from China that were absolutely perfect - and got junk from Mexico, and very good quality from a wave-solder facility in San Diego - during the same time frame, with the same board.

I'm with you there. I did an energy audit to find out how much everything I owned was costing me. Right around $100 a year - wasted. All those wall-warts and VCR, Word processing typewriter, computer printer, etc..

My electricity has gone up roughly double since the Iraq war has started . . . or 170% this month compared to this month last year.

It cost me a day of fooling with an ammeter and voltmeter and checking everything I own - in 1992 - then about $100 in switches, receptacles, boxes and wiring to make every thing without a switch to turn off when the power is off (CD player, VCR, etc.. that switch power after the transformer or never really turn off). That, and a switch to the water heater - big savings(!), compact fluorescent, and my electric bill went from $39 - 45 a month to $18-22.

With the war it is back to $30 a month and climbing . . .