Modern mobile tech – waste of energy, or an energy savior?
Are todays modern mobile tech devices a wasteful use of energy and resources, or are they actually energy saviors?
Many people condemn the never ending cycle of consumerism and environmental waste with devices like the iPad, stating that the year-on-year upgrade routine promotes a society based on dumping last year’s device and moving quickly to the next best thing at any cost. However, take a different approach and the never ending cycle of device improvement could be considered an encouraging investment in power saving and efficiency advances in the personal computing arena.
Before I start, let me say that I am aware there are many complexities calculating power usage because devices do not always use all the maximum power available to them, which is often the only figure quoted by manufacturers. An average PC unit will have a 300W power supply, but that does not mean that it is running at 300W all the time. Similarly when charging a battery, the charger is not running on full power throughout the charge cycle, it gradually tapers off towards the end of the charge to protect battery longevity. For the sake of this article I have made calculations based on a simplistic average power consumption figures.
The vast majority of functions performed by most people on a home PC can be done on devices such as the iPad. I specifically deal with the iPad because at the moment is it the only low power rival able to perform the majority of functions as well as a desktop. If we used a device such as the iPad instead of a PC, let us see what sort of affect that will have on energy consumption taking an average of 3 hours use per day.
Designed to make the most of the battery, the hardware in the iPad can eek out up to 10 hours of continuous use on a single charge, and then consumes a maximum of 10W when on charge, taking approximately 5 hours to charge from empty. Although in reality the final 20% of the charge takes considerably longer by design to preserve battery life as I previously mentioned, so assuming we half charge the device from 30% to 80%, that will take 2 hours with the supplied 10W charger. As a user of an iPad, I know the battery will easily last 6 hours of continuous heavy use, and 8 or 9 hours of typical use are certainly not out of the question, but if we conservatively estimate that the iPad will only last 6 hours between full cycle charges, that’s a average daily power consumption of 20W per day given our two hour power charge will last an estimated 3 hours.
Working those figures for an average desktop PC with a power consumption of 250W (including the monitor) gives a daily average power consumption of 750W – going on 40 times more than using an iPad! Suppose we consider a best case scenario that a laptop is used rather than a desktop, with a charger drawing 75W, we have a total consumption of 225W per day on our 3 hour average – a good improvement on the desktop, but still over 11 times more power consumption than switching to using an iPad.
There are further energy saving benefits of using portable tablet devices. They are designed to be instant on/off, much like a mobile phone is. When working with a desktop machine, most people do not put it into sleep mode when they walk away from it briefly, much less turn it off as this would mean saving and closing everything down, and then waiting for the machine to restart before continuing, sometimes a long and painful process. However, because of the persistant and instant on nature of tablet devices, you can press the off button and then immediately return to where you left off when you come back, leading to significant and easy power saving. An estimated 87 billion killo-watt hours per year are used to power the worldwide use of personal computers running in their low power idle mode, effectively doing nothing.
The huge energy saving advantages of moving to modern mobile computing solutions such as the iPad, and eventually other similar rivals can clearly be seen. Leaving aside the personal cost savings of using less power, this can only be a good thing for the environment. I am not suggesting everyone abandon their desktops and laptops overnight and move to low power tablet solutions, but as the world gradually moves over to low power, portable devices, initially driven by consumerism and desire, it will produce long term environmental benefits.
Devices such as the iPad are just the start. Modern mobile processors are increasingly designed to consume less power, not only to allow longer battery life, but to reduce heat generation, which in turn allows the processor to run faster meaning we can get more done in a shorter time. Combine that with slowly improving battery technology giving longer autonomy, and we will vastly reduce our overall energy consumption of personal computer use by moving over to low power portable computing devices.
yes...finally
x6XUVm Good point. I hadn't thought about it quite that way. :)
yes...finally
iPads and other tablets are the future for reading news and they can also be utilised by professionals working in the built environment. On my website called The Planning Boardroom I explore the options for industry to utilise the iPad. View the post here; http://www.theplanningboardroom.net/tapping-in-to...
iPads and other tablets are the future for reading news and they can also be utilised by professionals working in the built environment. On my website called The Planning Boardroom I explore the options for industry to utilise the iPad. View the post here; http://www.theplanningboardroom.net/tapping-in-to...
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