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

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221–230 of 281 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High energy prices have probably done a lot to incentivize lower consumption & efficiency. But mild climate does still give it an unfair advantage if trying to compare it apples to apples with other states. South eastern states are always going to eat a huge chunk of Watt Hours in air conditioning, and in some states many people have little choice but to use electric heat or furnaces. I'd be very interested in state-…

It might not be that California has an unfair advantage, but that southern states have an unfair disadvantage. If southern states spike their watt hours due to aircon, we could say the cause is poor construction/architecture. The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon. And when homes are not designed for optimal environmental efficiency or…

> The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon.

Insulation can only do so much when the outdoor temperature doesn't drop below 80F for weeks at a time.

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

#222
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not going to get into the laptop discussion but the wildfires are 100% due to heat and drought, and those are much worse recently because of global warning. PG&E could bury ever cable, they could increase the fire prevention budget by 10 times over, and it wouldn't fix it.

You're saying that the wildfires are 100% caused by heat and drought? I think you should have a look at the huge heap of evidence pointing to poor forest management being the true culprit. It's a fact of nature that forests WILL burn and the more humans interfere with nature, the more unintended consequences we'll cause. There are plenty of natural ignition sources and forests are equipped to deal with relatively low…

"We should keep interfering with nature because the more humans interfere with nature, the more unintended consequences we'll cause."

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

#223
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…

Huh? That's not even remotely true, go read it again (and not just one of the table images this time).

All it requires of sleep mode is that it be configured to go to ACPI S3 within 30 minutes of inactivity. If it does not go to S3, then your quoted formulas are almost accurate, except all of the formulas subtract a base amount of memory; a workstation with 32G of RAM must not exceed 10W because the formula is (10 + 0.03 * (RAM - 32 > 0 ? RAM - 32 : 0)). Also, there's another formula for notebooks, and that one takes into account whether there's a dGPU.

But all of that is irrelevant because there's also a separate requirement, namely, all computers manufactured >=2019 shall "Comply with Table V-7" which has a yearly maximum power consumption (with base values and very complex "adders").

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

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are destroying civilization

A policy designed to make more power available to a civilization is somehow seen as destroying it. It is honestly fascinating to watch the human brain at work.

That is the least charitable interpretation of my comment. The sycophants and iconoclasts driving the modern left are a destructive force, it’s not about this particular “issue”.

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

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It says inactivity, not input. Generally doing thinks like watching video is considered an activity.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High energy prices have probably done a lot to incentivize lower consumption & efficiency. But mild climate does still give it an unfair advantage if trying to compare it apples to apples with other states. South eastern states are always going to eat a huge chunk of Watt Hours in air conditioning, and in some states many people have little choice but to use electric heat or furnaces. I'd be very interested in state-…

It's not an disadvantage, if you care about climate change you shouldn't flock to places where burnings tons of kwh's is the bare minimum to survive. Of course it's easier to deflect the subject to plastic straws and other pseudo topics.

I meant that you can't get an apple-to-apples comparison on different states' commitment to energy efficiency if you don't break energy consumption up into different categories of usage. It's also important to consider sources of energy: All else being equal, I would rather a state shut down coal power plants in favor of building or importing renewable electricity, instead of keeping the coal while reducing consumption. (They can do both, but in terms of priorities I'd go with switching to renewables first) These are the important details of consumption patterns that we have to focus on to keep moving forward. Are they pseudo topics?

I also don't think the world's temperate zones are large enough to facilitate everyone living in climates that have minimal requirements for heating & cooling. Also many areas that require a lot of energy for heating also require very little for cooling, and vice versa: another reason why consumption details are important when evaluating these things.

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

#227
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s funny how wrong people are about what consumes electricity and not. Washing dishes by hand is far less efficient than a dishwasher. It depends on exactly how you load it and how your water is heated, but running the dishwasher produces probably half the greenhouse gasses that washing by hand does. As a general rule of thumb, the guide here is to track heat and where it goes. Hot water down the drain is a bad thi…

I wouldn't be wrong if you just charged me for carbon. I'm sure there's plenty of things people are wrong about carbon emissions and have no idea, because no one pays for the negative effects of pollution and therefor everyone does.

In many cases this would be true. I think people would be a bit shocked if every pound of steel or concrete they bought came with a carbon tax attached, for example.

But in the case of dishwashing vs. hand washing you are already paying for the decreased efficiency in the form of your water and heating bill. The issue is that most of us have no way to measure the relative hot water consumption of either, so we’re left with the heuristic of “more convenient is less efficient”.

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

#228
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Address the dirtiest sources and the largest sinks, not the symbolic tiny sinks. Your laptop using 6 watts of idle power is not going to make a meaningful difference.

Sure one laptop doesn’t matter. But if everybody in the country has one it does matter. 300 million laptops each drawing 6 watts 24/7 adds up to 15 terawatt*hrs per year, which is real power. That’s pushing 1% of all the coal-powered electricity in the country. A handful of policies like that, each of which just feels like a minor annoyance and thus pointless, but it adds up and starts to make a real difference.

That's an unrealistically pessimistic assumption though. Many laptops are off, not failing to sleep. The great majority of people aren't buying these niche devices.

And the source should be cleaned up since that is a vastly bigger lever impacting all loads. This is just limiting consumer choice for a largely symbolic gesture. I would also be really surprised if the rule is kept up to date and relevant, vs left in the codebase to rot.

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

#229

Smuggling opportunity! Having legalized weed was a major blow to the unorganized carriage trade, I guess this counts as stimulus for that all important sector of the economy.

Would it really be smuggling (ie. something you could go to jail for if you did it)? If someone took some new laptops with them in their carry-ons or checked luggage when they flew from one state to another, or even acted as an official courier, would that be illegal?

See http://www.themanitoban.com/2015/03/the-toilet-wars/23367/ for some previous similar situations

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

#230
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might not be that California has an unfair advantage, but that southern states have an unfair disadvantage. If southern states spike their watt hours due to aircon, we could say the cause is poor construction/architecture. The poorer the insulation (southern homes' insulation is crap compared to northern) the more you need to pump the aircon. And when homes are not designed for optimal environmental efficiency or…

Heating is much more energy intensive than cooling (unless you have a heat pump, aren't particularly common in the U.S). Air conditioning consumes a lot of electrical power in comparison to heating, but if we're counting overall energy efficiency it seems like darker, colder northern climates should have a disadvantage.

heat pumps aren't common in the US?
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