Re:The humble USB cable is part of an electrical revolution
by VLM on Tuesday October 22, 2013 @10:13AM
(#6591988)
This is a simplification, but take a bell curve and flip it upside down and that graph applies to efficiency, economic cost, and ecological damage per watt for DC power supplies along the y-axis and wattage along the x-axis.
At 2013 technology levels its a real bad idea on many different levels to provide 100 total watts of DC power via 50 separate power supplies to 50 devices when you could have just one DC supply.
As an example of sillyness, imagine if every chip inside a desktop PC required a completely separate wall wart power supply instead of sharing one common DC supply. Thats basically what an elaborate laptop setup replicates if you have a lot of external devices, especially if you're proposing running your room lights off the same system, etc.
The same curve at the higher end rather than lower explains why you'll likely not be running a kitchen stove or a HVAC system off low voltage DC anytime soon. Although that would be intellectually interesting to see. A massive array of mosfets to switch, and power leads thicker than water pipes (maybe actual copper water pipes for cooling?). It would be a sight...
At 2013 technology levels its a real bad idea on many different levels to provide 100 total watts of DC power via 50 separate power supplies to 50 devices when you could have just one DC supply.
As an example of sillyness, imagine if every chip inside a desktop PC required a completely separate wall wart power supply instead of sharing one common DC supply. Thats basically what an elaborate laptop setup replicates if you have a lot of external devices, especially if you're proposing running your room lights off the same system, etc.
The same curve at the higher end rather than lower explains why you'll likely not be running a kitchen stove or a HVAC system off low voltage DC anytime soon. Although that would be intellectually interesting to see. A massive array of mosfets to switch, and power leads thicker than water pipes (maybe actual copper water pipes for cooling?). It would be a sight...