Talk:Standby power

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Article merged: See old talk-page here

Contents 1 Standby power & standby mode 2 Neutrality 3 Why the anti-standby bias? 4 Proposal: Merge pages into standby power 5 Completing the phantom merge 6 Phantom Power consumed in US as percentage of US consumption; comparison to Greece, Vietnam, and Peru 7 Terminology/History 8 Article Unbalanced

[edit] Standby power & standby mode

Not like many people check this article, but I think Standby power and Standby mode although two seperate things are also slightly redundant, or could easily become redundant.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Dphrag (talk • contribs)

Try the Template:Merge then.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 15:34, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've never done much wiki editing, sort of fun. Added the template. dphrag 16:57, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Because Standby Power uses up to 5% of total residential electricity use in the U.S. and can be easily reduced in many cases by unplugging an unused appliance or switching it off at a power strip, I would love to see it stay separate (and be expanded), if only to raise awareness about this issue.Sustainableyes 18:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed with last point. In addition Sleep Mode is different mode that more subtly pertains to the behavior or requirements of the device regarding the power consumption as opposed to the power consumption itself. rijksband 0:23, 28 December 2006 (GMT +2)

[edit] Neutrality

"As global warming becomes more of a factor, reducing power consumption gets more and more important and eliminating standby power is a urgent measure to adopt a hard line to save the environment. Standby power is often wasted energy that evaporates without people recognizing. If a majority senses the importance of that "hidden" energy consumption, this could be a first step to face global warming"

Sorry, but doesn't sound very neutral.

-- I agree, whilst elimination or management of standby power could reduce CO2 emissions, I don't think it's a "urgent measure to adopt a hard line," or a "first step to face global warming." dphrag 19:01, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

The way to do this is to avoid discussion of controversial points like global warming except as explicit quoted in the press. I expect this to be fairly easy, as I've seen a lot of discussion of the idea of "vampire power" popping up in recent news. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 16:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

It looks to me like this problem has been taken care of. Can we remove the dispute tag?Ccrrccrr (talk) 01:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. Removed tag. Muffinon (talk) 00:44, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why the anti-standby bias?

I just noticed how much power my laptop saves by being put on standby. I'd assumed it wouldn't be much, but apparently the consumption drops from about 25 Watts to less than three! If I want to walk away from it for a few minutes, the keystroke it takes to put it to sleep and the one it takes to wake it up again are certainly worthwhile. D021317c 21:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I think this bias is regarding standby vs unplugging your equipment, and not what you described. Assimilateur (talk) 04:07, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Merge pages into standby power

[edit] Completing the phantom merge

The stuff under the heading "Phantom Load" really needs to be merged into the corresponding sections of the rest of the article. Ccrrccrr (talk) 12:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree, don't hesitate to go ahead and work on it. Zodon (talk) 19:19, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Phantom Power consumed in US as percentage of US consumption; comparison to Greece, Vietnam, and Peru

The section Standby_power#Consequences_of_standby_power Consequences of standby power quotes a 2004 article stating that total phantom load caused by the United States alone could power Vietnam, Peru, and Greece. (ref). I don't think this reference is good enough to use in an encyclopedia citation. It is not a scholoarly or primary source, or one in other publications for good information in the field. It says it gets its figures from a "well-designed study" reported in another magazine (home power), but does not give information sufficient to find the source of its own information. The information it gives does not square with information available from other sources, and it does not even give a data attached to the data, so we could use it to say "in a certain year this was the case".

I propose removing the bad reference and the portion of the article built around it.

Here are some things wrong with the reference:

• It doesn't say when the study was done
• It doesn't say where the estimates of per-household phantom load wattage comes from. How many devices, on average, per household? How many watts, on average, per phantom device? How many kwh of phantom load power are used per day in the US? Was the study based on self-reported usage in fewer than 100 households in a small region (as in This paper and this other paper)?
• It doesn't say where the estimates for other facts, like number of households in the US, come from
• It doesn't say where it gets its figures for power consumption in Greece, Peru, and Vietnam.

The article states that the average US household uses 1.45 kwh of phantom load electricity per day, or 43 billion kwh of phantom load electricity per year, but doesn't say how much power the other countries use. According to the US census data, there were 105,480,101 US households in 2000. At 365 days/year, that gives us 56 billion kwh/year, much higher than the figure the article gives -- perhaps the article was using a lower figure for number of households?

According to 2004/2005 estimates, power consumption in the other countries is:

Greece	54.3 in 2005	https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/gr.html
Peru	22.6 in 2005	https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/pe.html
Vietnam	51.4 in 2005	https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/vm.html
Total	113	billion kwh/year

So the 3 countries mentioned use twice as much power as this estimated US phantom load. The numbers don't add up.

Also interesting is the fact that the figure given (43 billion kwh/year) is only about 1% of US power consumption (3816 billion Kwh/year in 2004), which is at odds with the statements in the following paragraph of the wikipedia article giving estimates of standby power consumption in affluent nations from 5% to 13%.

Can anybody find better-quality references that estimates US phantom-energy usage in one or more years?

--SV Resolution(Talk) 16:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the paraqraph and its two references, one of which is unaccessible anyway (as of 2008-09-19).

For any single appliance the load is never very large (the most inefficient designs draw 15-20 
watts<ref> [http://www.sustainability.ca/index.cfm?body=SourceView.cfm&ID=440 "Phantom Load,"]  
29 June 2003, Accessed on: 7 May 2008.</ref>), however when factored over all of the appliances 
in a country like the U.S. the load can come to billions of watts. Some studies have suggested 
that the total phantom load caused by the [[United States]] alone would provide enough power to 
handle the electric needs of [[Vietnam]], [[Peru]], and [[Greece]].<ref>Rhodes, Troy, 
[http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/m0402.htm "Phantom Loads,"] February 2004. 
Accessed on: 7 May 2008.</ref> 

--SV Resolution(Talk) 16:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

LBL lists estimate of US residential standby power usage for 2000 as 45 Terawatt hours [1], which is in same ballpark as the 43-56 terrawatt hours calculated above.

Note that the 3816 terrawatt-h/year from the fact book is total electrical energy usage, whereas the percentages mentioned in the article (5%, etc.) are out of residential usage. So there is no obvious contradiction there. (At least if residential electric use is about 1/5 of total US electric use.)

I don't know what percent of industrial, commercial, agricultural, etc. usage is in standby power. Although considering all the computers, switches, control systems, electronics, etc. involved, (and after listening to talks by Amory Lovins), I would imagine there is significant standby power use in these settings as well.

I did look at that reference once, thought at the time that the numbers checked out okay, but it was a while back, so I don't remember the details/how deeply I checked.

Since energy usage increases exponentially in many places, comparing with usage in different years may introduce significant errors. (e.g. use in Greece, etc. may have changed significantly between 2000 and 2004.) But I don't object to the removal.

The sustainable.ca reference is accessible on the internet archive [2], but don't see much interesting there. Zodon (talk) 06:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology/History

I am moving the section on history of terminology here, because it appears to be WP:OR. The reference seems to be just to the article in Home power magazine, which is claimed to be the first use of the term. Have not been able to verify what the article says, but even if it does claim to be the first use of "Phantom Load," it seems unlikely to be a reliable source for historical/etymological purposes.

==Usage History==

Phantom Load

The earliest known use of the term Phantom load was in "It's Gotta Be Spring" by Brian Green (N6HWY) on page 25 of Home Power magazine^[1] #11, the June/July 1989 issue.

The following was in the section as a comment.

It would be great to add usage history for the alternate terms, as well. What is now the most commonly-used term?

Standby power

First used in ....

Vampire power

First used in ...

Leaking electricity

First used in

It seems more likely to generate input on the talk page, where it is more likely to be seen. Zodon (talk) 19:57, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

As to the more commonly-used term. Google Trends shows more searches for "phantom power" than "standby power" (the others don't have enough data to rate). However, since both terms have other uses (phantom power is also something to do with microphones, standby power can refer to generators), this may not be significant.

• Google gave 649,000 hits for "phantom power" -microphone.
• and 1,020,000 hits for "standby power" (but as noted above, this includes other uses of the term.)

And of course this is all WP:OR. Zodon (talk) 19:57, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Additional - just realized I was using "phantom power" not "phantom load" (term mentioned above). Of the terms listed above, standby power is the only one that has enough searches to show up in google trends.

• google 16,600 hist for "phantom load"

This might also be relevant to tracking word history: WordSpy Phantom load

Zodon (talk) 20:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Good Point. I like a good etymology. I hope we can get some good ones into the article. --SV Resolution(Talk) 16:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article Unbalanced

So, i can see where the "consequences" section came from, but shouldn't there be a note about why manufacturers use this technique? We have the cons, but where are the pros? dunerat (talk) 05:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)