Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

dell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 281 posts

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#101

Post by teruakohatu »

npunt wrote: post #70
kccqzy wrote: post #36

Just want to remind everyone how far California has gone in energy efficiency: > In 2018, California's energy consumption was second-highest among the states, but its per capita energy consumption was the fourth-lowest due in part to its mild climate and its energy efficiency programs. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4 This is an achievement to be proud of.

Yep. According to Natural Resources Defense Council via NYT, "about a quarter of all residential energy consumption is used on devices in idle power mode" in Northern California [1]. Huge opportunity for efficiency improvement through regulatory action, given idle power consumption is otherwise an afterthought for both manufacturers and consumers. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/science/just-how-much-pow...

> about a quarter of all residential energy consumption is used on devices in idle power

That cannot possibly be true. I would love to know how they calculated that.

In New Zealand only about 20% of home electricity is used on electronics. And in the USA it appears to be even lower.

https://www.nzcompare.com/n/power/average-household-electric...

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/what-uses-the-most-energy-h...

Dryers, fridges, heating and lighting are the vast majority of power and they don't use much idle power.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#102

Post by busymom0 »

MrStonedOne wrote: post #74
busymom0 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone ELI5 this please?

87% + PSU efficiency at 100% and 20% load. 90% + PSU efficiency at 50% load. Power factor of 0.9 at 50% load. (Monitors must go to sleep within 15 minutes of no input)

Is watching a video considered "input"? And are these regulations enforced as default settings and do users have the ability to customize the settings? Or do they want the manufacturers to disable customization too?

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#103

Post by ghouse »

ww520 wrote: post #55
kccqzy wrote: post #36

Just want to remind everyone how far California has gone in energy efficiency: > In 2018, California's energy consumption was second-highest among the states, but its per capita energy consumption was the fourth-lowest due in part to its mild climate and its energy efficiency programs. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4 This is an achievement to be proud of.

Why do the electric bills keep increasing?

In part, because the fixed infrastructure is built to serve peak demand, not average consumption. Bring down the peak (flatten the curve) and the rates will come down too.

Or, put differently, rates are high exactly because California per-capita usage is low -- fewer kWh across which to amortize costs.

Importantly, while California rates are relatively high, customer's bills are not -- because the customers use less electricity.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#104

Post by [deleted] »

swiley wrote: post #76
Pxtl wrote: post #60

Honestly, now that SSDs are near universal why are we bothering with sleep mode anymore anyways? Can't full hibernate be made fast enough for no-power standby?

You have to copy things for hibernate and you don't for sleep. Also because you can go into/out of sleep quickly you can periodically wake back up for notifications. MacOS and some Linux distros do this.

[deleted]

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#105

Post by gruez »

oofbey wrote: post #80
c3534l wrote: post #17

I've never wanted an Alienware laptop in my life, but as a resident of Oregon there is absolutely nothing more that I want right now than an illegally powerful laptop.

Why? Because it’s cool to break the rules? Does it matter to you that these rules are trying to protect our civilization from dissolving in a heap of wildfires, floods, power outages, droughts, storms, etc? This stuff is not just hypothetical any more.

>Does it matter to you that these rules are trying to protect our civilization from dissolving in a heap of wildfires, floods, power outages, droughts, storms, etc? This stuff is not just hypothetical any more.

Half the issues you've listed are most certainly due to incompetence/mismanagement rather than PCs in CA/CO/HI/OR/VT using slightly more power. eg.

wildfires: Gov. Gavin Newsom cut the fire prevention budget by $150 million https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/gov-newsom-overst...

power outages: failure on PG&E's part to trim trees https://www.kqed.org/news/11737336/judge-pge-paid-out-stock-...

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#106

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

greesil wrote: post #89
kccqzy wrote: post #36

Just want to remind everyone how far California has gone in energy efficiency: > In 2018, California's energy consumption was second-highest among the states, but its per capita energy consumption was the fourth-lowest due in part to its mild climate and its energy efficiency programs. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4 This is an achievement to be proud of.

And yet I pay $.55/kWH at peak times to PG&E. Ugh.

This fact isn't in opposition to California's low energy consumption. It is one of the causes of California's low energy consumption. It is expensive to use power in Cali. This is a good thing, for the long term future of the environment. It would be better if using power stung a little everywhere, so people would make more considered choices about what to consume.

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#107

Post by nyanpasu64 »

mritun wrote: post #82

All that the rules say (yes, I read them) is that a workstation with 32G RAM (formula is 10 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB) must not exceed ~ 11W in sleep mode and a desktop with 32G RAM must not exceed 6W in sleep mode (5 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB). Basically, these desktops probably have very ancient/buggy motherboards with broken ACPI. Good riddance. Fun fact: Desktops/workstations shipped without an operating system at purchasers reque…

What distinguishes a workstation from a desktop?

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#108

Post by refurb »

kccqzy wrote: post #36

Just want to remind everyone how far California has gone in energy efficiency: > In 2018, California's energy consumption was second-highest among the states, but its per capita energy consumption was the fourth-lowest due in part to its mild climate and its energy efficiency programs. Source: https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4 This is an achievement to be proud of.

Proud of having a mild climate that doesn't require much heating or cooling?

Re: PC can't be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA due to power consumption

#110

Post by abz10 »

Years ago I bought a tiny hockey puck sized computer to act as an internal web server. AFAIK there seemed to be no way for me to prevent it from going to sleep, I presume it was due to a similar regulation. This one from the EU. Had to throw the thing out.

I’m not looking forward to having to fight hardware / software locks on my computer that make it go to sleep all the time.

Post reply on HN