EU to Propose Legislation for Common Mobile Charger, Could Force Apple to Drop Lightning Connector

[Brian_B]

Yeah, I read the rest of the article. I seen where they claimed if all 3.5B phones in the world suddenly switched to wireless charging. You know, because last year there was 0 phones in the world.

Wonder how many power plants had to be built in the last 30 years JUST to charge cell phones with a cord.

I've worked in the Energy sector for a long time. I've found that every time you find a way to increase efficiency - LED lights, motion sensors, variable speed drives, whatever you want... After you implement it - your energy use always goes up.

A lot of people come back and say -- Hey, you said this would save us XYZ and $$$. And it did, you just ran it longer, or plugged in three times as many of them as you had before, or your production went up by %% because of the increased efficiency.

So yeah - to power the 3.5B smart phones listed in the article, we installed around 150 Million solar panels. Most of those in China. That represents about 10% of all the solar installed in the world. Just for smart phones.

 

[LeRoy_Blanchard]

I've worked in the Energy sector for a long time. I've found that every time you find a way to increase efficiency - LED lights, motion sensors, variable speed drives, whatever you want... After you implement it - your energy use always goes up.

A lot of people come back and say -- Hey, you said this would save us XYZ and $$$. And it did, you just ran it longer, or plugged in three times as many of them as you had before, or your production went up by %% because of the increased efficiency.

Yeah, save power on LED lights, but at the same time TVs are super cheap so let's put one in all the bedrooms now. Or that awesome Keurig machine we just bought.

 

[Endgame]

I don’t particularly care about that individual article, but I do care about efficiency when running Pis for distributed computing. There is no particular reason I’m aware of that prevents a usb c power brick from being as efficient as a titanium power supply. The fact I have to put up with 80% efficient is annoying on principal in addition to taking a chunk out of my points per watt.

as for wireless Qi charging my phone, I personally don’t find it any more convenient. I can plug in a lightning cable in less time than I can align the charger, and I’m pretty sure getting that hot while charging is not very good for the battery in general.