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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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231–240 of 281 posts

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

#231

There are two ways to solve climate change. Lower the population or lower consumption. Efficiency gains such as these are a way to lower consumption and we should be continue to focus on regulations that drive towards lower consumption. Population control is still largely taboo so lowering consumption is the only way out of climate change at this point.

Seems like it would make a lot more sense to focus on things that really use lots of energy. Focusing on sleeping computers is like a certain wise man said a couple thousand years ago: straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel.

All venues need to be examined. Some with more intensity than others. But you must still look into solutions.

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

#232

There are two ways to solve climate change. Lower the population or lower consumption. Efficiency gains such as these are a way to lower consumption and we should be continue to focus on regulations that drive towards lower consumption. Population control is still largely taboo so lowering consumption is the only way out of climate change at this point.

You missed an option: more renewable electricity generation.

That is just shifting consumption but there are tradeoffs to that as well. Make sure you are mindful of the curves. Exponential year over year rise in greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 CH4 SF6 N20. Renewables help. But not enough. Lowering consumption is the main way to stop climate change.

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

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed an option: more renewable electricity generation.

That is just shifting consumption but there are tradeoffs to that as well. Make sure you are mindful of the curves. Exponential year over year rise in greenhouse gas emissions in CO2 CH4 SF6 N20. Renewables help. But not enough. Lowering consumption is the main way to stop climate change.

This doesn't make any sense at all to me. Aren't renewable energy sources like solar and wind zero-emission? How am I contributing to climate change even slightly if I'm using power entirely from these sources?

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

#234
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.

I'd really like to see that trended over time. California's energy mix tends to be low due to a lack of both a heavy heating (northern climates) and cooling (southern / south-eastern) load. Housing stock has been notoriously inefficient in insulation, though newer construction gains on that. Major usage has been in transportation. Sprawl'll do that to ya. LLNL has historical energy usage charts, and began breaking th…

The big difference between the high use per capita states and the low use per capita states seems to be industrial and transportation use.

Percent industrial and transportation use in the low states:

Rhode Island is 42.7%

California: 62.5%

New York: 41.4%

Florida: 50.9%

And the high states:

Wyoming: 79.4%

Louisiana: 86.5%

North Dakota: 73.7%

Alaska: 82.9%

Iowa: 72.5%

Texas: 76.1%

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

#235
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?

Manufacturer’s classification. 10W or 11W - it’s not a high bar really. If a computer can’t manage to stay below that, it’s ancient.

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

#237
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is idle power draw, so it’s more like banning a Ford F150 that cannot be turned off when it’s not being driven. Imagine if your neighbor got a car that just sat in the driveway with its engine running 24 hours per day.

Bad analogy. This is idle power not off power.

it's a much better analogy than wrycoder's. cars don't generally have long-term idle states like computers do.

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

#238

These overzealous "green" regulations crack me up. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-green-energy: I think my own country should stop building coal power plants and start investing heavily in solar and wind. However, a lot of these consumer-targetted rules are just ludicrous bureaucratic overreach that cause more issues than they solve. A quick example: My apartment block was just "upgraded" to meet some new energy-ef…

> I have made a name for myself running around to various customers doubling the performance of their core business applications by turning off dynamic power management on their database servers. There's a literal turbo button (in software) on every piece of server kit sold for about 15 years now because of some stupid regulation that was started by some hippie moron in California.

What regulation is this? AFAICT, this one doesn't regulate dynamic power management, it only requires a sleep mode for some computers (and the only mention of servers is "small-scale servers", which are exempted from all the sleep mode stuff)

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

You literally just went from being defensive about not being thought of charitably, to denouncing a gigantic group of people as destructive sycophantic iconoclasts, in the same breath.

Astounding.

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

#240
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not for heating, most people heat their homes by burning natural gas or oil. Obviously an AC unit is heat pump but most aren't bidirectional.
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