Abstract
Despite technical advances in efficiency, devices in standby continue to consume up to 16% of residential electricity. Finding practical, cost-effective reductions is difficult. While the per-unit power consumption has fallen, the number of units continuously drawing power continues to grow. This work reviews a family of technologies that can eliminate standby consumption in many types of electrical plug loads. It also investigates several solutions in detail and develops prototypes. First, burst mode and sleep transistors are established as building blocks for zero-standby solutions. This work then studies the application of two types of wake-up signals. The first is from an optical transmission, and is applicable to remote-controlled devices with a line-of-sight activation, such as set-top boxes, ceiling fans, and motorized curtains. The second is from a wake-up radio, and is applicable to any wireless products. No single technology will address all standby power situations; however, these emerging solutions appear to have broad applicability to save standby energy in miscellaneous plug loads.
Highlights
The growth can be attributed to the proliferation of devices that require direct current (DC) power and/or networking, traditional alternating current (AC)-powered devices that have electronics, and mobile devices with batteries
The burst mode controller is comprised of a TPS78001DDCR LDO reference, MCP6542 comparator, CD4043BE latch, and two 10 mF 10 V electrolytic supply capacitors
Sleep transistors can have drawbacks such as on-state resistance and leakage current, both of which are mitigated by proper metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) selection
Summary
Standby power consumption by appliances, electrical devices, and other products continues to represent 3–16% (varies by definition and country) of residential electricity use [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The growth can be attributed to the proliferation of devices that require direct current (DC) power and/or networking, traditional alternating current (AC)-powered devices that have electronics, and mobile devices with batteries Many of these devices fall into the miscellaneous electrical loads (MELs) category, which continues to grow rapidly in terms of both population and energy use [10]. As technologies mature, there is a declining potential savings per device, coupled with an increasing number and diversity of electronic products with standby modes. This means that costs of “saving the last watt” must be extraordinarily low to be cost-justified. A portfolio of widely-applicable solutions presents the best path forward, and this work contributes to that portfolio
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