That's only when the compressor is running though, which it only does when the temperature is above the setting. For a well-insulated modern refrigerator, that is far from continuously. In an unheated space in a cold climate it would be rare. In a heated space the net effect of installing the refrigerator may be to slightly reduce energy consumption because you end up partially heating the space with a high efficiency heat pump rather than a less efficient resistive or oil/gas based heating system.
Obviously it isn't the typical case, but a refrigerator consuming less net power than a phone is a thing that can happen under some circumstances that actually occur in real life.
So what you are talking about is very atypical result.
My phone has a 4Ah battery, which typically would last me two days. Since it runs at 5V, that's 0.02*182 = 3.65kWh per year. So it's 136 times less than the typical fridge.
My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency.
The problem with "typical" is that the variance is high. It's even worse than that in hot climates with air conditioning because not only does the refrigerator compressor have to run more, it's pumping heat into a space that then causes the air conditioner to run more.
So the average isn't very informative without knowing where you are in relation to it. The difference in the numbers between Colorado and Florida is dramatic.
> My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency.
Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside.
More than two orders of magnitude?
>Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside.
Well it's charging overnight. My phone is inside the house probably half the time. Honestly this is a really silly argument. If we cared about the extra heating from fridges then we would put them outside in hot climates.
If we're talking about a hundred phones versus a fridge, it might be comparable.
I take your point about hot climates but I still think any comparison about power usage between a phone and a fridge is ridiculous and draws into question the credibility of the writer.
More than two orders of magnitude. You put a refrigerator in an environment where the outside temperature is below its set temperature and it doesn't run at all, or one where 100% of its power use displaces less efficient heating methods and its net consumption is negative. By contrast in a high exterior temperature environment it never stops running and can cost in excess of $1000/year in energy. Or anywhere in the full range in between.
> Well it's charging overnight. My phone is inside the house probably half the time.
So in a cold climate it has no energy cost when it's indoors, but does the rest of the time. Meanwhile the refrigerator is inside all the time, and is a heat pump which is more efficient at heating than the phone which is equivalent to resistive heating.
> Honestly this is a really silly argument. If we cared about the extra heating from fridges then we would put them outside in hot climates.
Then the air conditioner runs less but the refrigerator runs more because it's cooling against a higher exterior temperature. That might be more efficient but not by a lot. It's still going to result in high energy consumption.
> If we're talking about a hundred phones versus a fridge, it might be comparable.
If the question is can a refrigerator use less net power per year than one phone, the answer is yes. Not always, not even usually, but it can actually happen in places like Maine or Canada.
> I take your point about hot climates but I still think any comparison about power usage between a phone and a fridge is ridiculous and draws into question the credibility of the writer.
It's a widespread rhetorical device in the media. State something which is technically true but generally misleading in support of your point. Then the statement is defensible from a pedantic technical perspective but still causes people who don't know better to come to inaccurate conclusions. It's basically motte and bailey:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
The problem isn't that the claim is factually inaccurate, it's that it's purposely misleading. It's the difference between incompetence and malice. Not to say that either of them is commendable, but if we're going to be pedantic about things then let's see it through.
>The problem isn't that the claim is factually inaccurate, it's that it's purposely misleading.
Good point.
http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-c...
You do raise a good point that behind msny. products is a long chain of either embedded manufacturing or complementary products costs. But the avoidable costs of food vs. data (refrigerated or not, people need food to eat; we'd survived 200,000 years before iOS) argues against your comparison.
The 1GB of data cost is sunk cost, whether it’s accessed by one or a million. On the other hand, if we only had one smartphone in this world, we wouldn’t be storing zettabytes for it to access :)
More suitable numbers were 3.5 kW/h for the phone, and 23.4 kW/h for each connection. So, phone consumption should more accurately be 23.4 + 3.5 + (19.1 * total world storage / total world smartphone) !
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630
The majority of data heavy stuff also tends to happen in WiFi environments. So I dont know where this 300x overhead increase is supposed to come from. A typical 3G base station is burning 500W/h no matter what data usage is. So unless you share you wireless cell with less than 5 people this should be magnitudes below a fridge. The wired part of the infrastructure is much more efficient and aggregated in general.
I suppose the biggest culprut are not even the smarthones, but their cloud storage services, which are completely optional and not used to a large extent by the majority of smartphone users.
Most of all ISP profits and subscription costs would also be decisively lower/higher if energy use and therefore cost was supposedly that significant.
Again, "W/h" is almost always wrong. You mean just "W", which already contains the "per time" part because W = J/s.
It’s a big problem with evaluating news articles. They’re not journals and you can’t be sure what they are knowingly summarising and what they are over simplifying or obscuring and why. Definitely worth keeping a critical stance though.
Except those services don't exist in a vacuum. Presenting that power usage as if it is just stacked on top of the usage of a person without a phone is gross misrepresentation. Time spent on a phone is time not spent on a television, on a desktop pc, on a games console, driving a vehicle to some other distraction like a movie theater or amusement park. Except for the printed word a smartphone is among the least energy intensive ways to entertain a human being and I put forth that using one results in a reduction, not an increase, in overall energy use and carbon footprint compared to a person without one.
So do you include the energy used by the grid and its maintenance to provide power to your individual fridge? I guess not.
It would be interesting to do some back if the envelope calculations based on energy usage of Google and Facebook datacenters, percentage of content consumed on phones and data consumed by average vs heavy users.
Reminds me of how every year when a new and incrementally improved phone is released, the phone company shills and morons claim that the camera is so revolutionary, it's almost as good as an SLR.
Yeah, pros and enthusiasts are so ill-informed that they continue to lug around their bulky 5kgs and $5k worth of camera/lens, when it could all be replaced by the latest plastic iCrap and its revolutionary 5mm lens.
Critical thinking seems to be in short supply.
Bull-fucking-shit. At minimum a refrigerator uses 150 watts and averages over 200. In comparison, a flagship gaming smartphone with an overclocked SoC like the Asus ROG phone uses 3.8 watts while benchmarking. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together could be stupid enough to think a phone uses more power than a goddamn refrigerator. The fact the author treats that as a serious possibility should make you question the credibility of every single thing they've ever written.