"Green Plug" Tries to Push Smarter Charging Standard
Considerable power is wasted by battery chargers and wall warts, even when they're not recharging or powering a device. The "Green Plug" standard aims to remedy that problem by establishing a universal plug system with an intelligent charging base that will power down the charger when not needed. It will even work as a hub, powering multiple devices and turning off the power to each as necessary.
Great idea, but getting companies to settle on a universal power plug system—and then stop bundling superfluous chargers with their product—will be quite a hurdle for the company to clear. It took several years for phone companies to come to an agreement about mobile charging standards. If the Green Plug system could also work with other plug formats, especially USB and its variants, it would have a much greater chance of succeeding.
Company Page [GreenPlug.us via Gizmodo]
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Why not mini-USB?
Oh, right, because then they won't be able to get a share of royalties. Sigh.
Hey Joel. At the risk of exposing my ignorance, are you saying that chargers are still drawing power whether they're charging something or not? If so, I've got to rearrange my cabling :(
@ALEX: Chargers generally draw power even when they are not charging anything. Not as much as when they are, but a non-trivial amount. Touch one of your chargers that has been plugged in, but doing nothing for a while in a cool room; It will be slightly warm.
This is of course really stupid and easily avoidable. If the manufacturer would spend an extra penny or two they could save you dollars a year, and/or the hassle of unplugging wall warts all the time.
@Twoshort
This is actually true of just about any device without a "firm" on/off switch that physically cuts all power to the device. Otherwise, a trickle of current is still drawn.
In the EU, there is an increasing trend to require these on all devices, especially TV/Computer monitors. British power outlets also have switches next to each socket.
Updating the North American electrical standards to require these two features would be a lot more practical if you wanted to save energy in this manner. It'd take a generation or so to be fully implemented, but also wouldn't break compatibility or force an upgrade at any point.
Standby power is a major problem. (See the One Watt Initiative.) It's not just chargers, but anything with a transformer.
Personally, I recently purchased a "Smart Power Strip. (Here's an old US model.) I got the "Click 6-way socket strip with overload protection and master-slave function" (cpb6ms), which is apparently not on the Internet anywhere. Basically, it monitors the master socket and when the power draw drops below 30W (for my model) it switches off all the slave sockets, ie; my monitors, speakers, iPod charger, etc.
As for my other chargers, I use a strip with switches for all the sockets.
But if you're coming up with a standard for charging small electronic devices, surely something based off USB would be the ideal solution. Did you know that you can get power out of a powered USB hub without having to plug it into a PC? Powered USB hubs should provide an extra port or two that's power-only, no data, so you can charge stuff via USB without it trying to connect to the PC.
And as a final note, why can't you buy computers without the power cables? I mean, who hasn't got a whole pile of those IEC leads kicking around? A network cable would be more useful than yet another power lead. Here in Australia they often come with TWO leads; a useless US one that you have to throw away and the Australian one added as an afterthought.
I'm with @1 -- FFS standardize on mini-USB for charging portable devices. I was really annoyed that the Kindle has a mini-USB port but can't use it to charge -- instead it requires yet another separate charger that I have to buy two of (one for home, one for work).
hello, regarding wall warts, they are chosen by manufacturers in order to avoid having to pass every new product test by the UL standard and others, they just have to include a wall wart that has passed these tests.
green plug seems to be pushing a standard based on mini USB but has developed a hybrid variant that can go beyond the 5W max of mini USB to power higher power devices and backwards compatible to all USB devices- Brilliant! Also, they seem to have put this in the public domain so they arent't collecting royalties. I guess their revenue model is based upon selling their Green Talk chip and they are simply putting the other pieces together to make things work. Smart guys. Who are they? Looking at their website they are connected to some very bright people including the inventor of the iPod. I like the whole "one plug, one planet" notion and am glad that finally one company has the ballax to attempt such a significant change for us all.