The Rev Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 What I mean is... Consider all the electronics we use in all facets of society, from global telecom, to national power, all the way down to home electrical usage and cell phones... Is it possible that we can power everything we use at a MICRO-FRACTION of the wattage we're using today.... and still function? Take cell phones for example... Batteries right now are measured in terms of "mili-amp hours".... Most of the smartphones we have today eat those miliamps up like candy, and not too many, if any, smartphones can go longer than a day of heavy usage without dying. What if we started thinking "Micro-amps"... "NANO-amps" even.... Do you think there's any work going on regarding efficient conduction and usage of energy on the micro level? Could it be possible to one day be able to have a "high end" smartphone run for MONTHS without recharging? Maybe run your entire house for a month and only have an electrical bill measuring Miliwatt hours? Could we one day be able to power the entire united states on 3 or 4 power plants TOTAL?? Could it be possible that we're doing it all wrong, and one day we'll achieve a "conduction revolution" that will change the way we look at using energy completely? Do you think there's even any work going on to make this type of discovery? To me, it seems we're WAY overpowering devices that should be able to function on a LOT less energy. Granted, i'm no energy expert, but i feel like we have no IDEA how to efficiently power our electronics, and are suffering terribly in the wallets because of it. Thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nagisan Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 Superconductivity. In short, apply power to device to power on, then let it sit and it maintains its power level until it loses its superconductive state. EDIT: Outside of that, electrical usage is constantly being improved, but with our current level of technology, we can only work so fast. Devices as powerful as what we use today would not function on similarly sized battery sources that we had even 5 years ago. The reason it doesn't look like its moving, is because devices are constantly becoming more energy efficient and the raw power of the device is also being improved at a similar rate. So a device might use 20% less energy at the same speed as a previous device, so they bump the performance up 20% (or more in most cases), so the overall power usage is about the same for better performing devices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phouchg Posted October 3, 2011 Share Posted October 3, 2011 No. First thing: energy efficiency does not imply work efficiency (of humans, mainly) Second thing: energy efficiency does not imply the reduction of (or more cynical: is inversely proportional to) electricity prices (governed by demand and supply laws) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metal_dragen Veteran Posted October 3, 2011 Veteran Share Posted October 3, 2011 There is some work being done in semiconductors - take a look at the work Intel is doing with the Haswell platform. The big area to consider though is displays - these are the vast majority of the power drain on a mobile device. They are improving them, but display technology evolves at a much slower rate than semiconductors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocM Posted October 4, 2011 Share Posted October 4, 2011 Some answers - Lighting: YES - quantum dot technology is going to revolutionize it. Much more efficient than LED or even OLED. The tech is called QD-LED. Usable as lasers too. Displays: YES - quantum dots again. Electronics: YES. In computers one of the big power users is memory refreshing. HP and others are 1 year into a 3 year commercialization of memristors - the long predicted 4th basic electronic component (resistor, capacitor, inductor & memristor). Memristors remember the last voltage applied as a resistance change, requiring no refresh and they are also non-volatile. They can also be formed into logic gates, can be used in spintronics (uses electron spin instead of voltage) and they use miniscule amounts of power. Also may be usable in memcapacitors and meminductors, whose properties depend on the system state & history. Computing: both quantum dots and the various incarnations of memristors. We're in for another tech revolution. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Mirumir Subscriber¹ Posted October 5, 2011 Subscriber¹ Share Posted October 5, 2011 imho, we are getting close to being "overdue" on power revolution because, with the exception of nuclear technology, we still resort to the most primitive method of getting energy from combustion by burning coal, oil, and gas... As for the power efficiency, I think there has been some good progress in the electronic chips - they've become smaller, faster, and they now use much less power. Their dies have shrunk enabling the placement of more transistors per area. The cars are now more efficient and more powerful too thanks to turbo/compressor technology and direct electronically controlled injection. MightyJordan 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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