Should resistors be outlawed?

[feklar]

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

 

[feklar]

Forgot to mention Zener diodes... voltage regulator diodes.

 

[Mark D. Zacharias]

Too much time on your hands, eh?

I would say, though, that many times a resistor runs hot due mainly to a
poor design, and this heat sometimes causes other problems.

Mark Z.


"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage
is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must
continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA
alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

 

[Verdons]

Maybe you should explain what you mean by DC transformer first?
A classical transformer with primary and secondary windings only works with
AC excitation.

Curious
Russell

"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage
is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must
continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA
alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

 

[mike]

feklar wrote:

I am not the expert,

You got that right!!
Don't quit your day job...

 

[John Del]

Subject: Should resistors be outlawed?
From: "feklar" feklar@rock.com
Date: 7/12/03 4:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

No no, I'm with you on this. Not only resistors, but all those transistors,
ICs, diodes and such that also perform below super conducting effeciencies
should be outlawed as well.

John Del
Wolcott, CT

"Nothing is so opportune for tyrants as a people tired of its liberty."
Alan Keyes

(remove S for email reply)

 

[Jeroni Paul]

No. Resistors do not always drop voltages, they sometimes are pull-up,
pull-down, start up resistors in switching power supplies, impedance
matching elements, etc.
For a DC circuit, there is no simple element capable to drop a voltage
without dissipating power. An inductor is a short circuit and a transformer
doesn't work. Remember the voltage dropped by a linear voltage regulator,
series zener or diode is also dissipated as heat. Your main concern is not
solved.
You would need to build a switching power supply for each resistor, and I
doubt that would be possible at all without resistors. Anyway todays designs
are good enough and they dissipate little heat.

I would be worried by another matter: stand-by modes and wall wart
transformers that are left plugged with no use.
A significant part of that consumption increase is due to those elements
left plugged in st-by or power supplies left running for no reason. See that
most of the cheap products that have a transformer inside leave the
transformer plugged and running even though you switch them off. Everything
that uses a wall wart power supply leaves that supply running. I've measured
significant amounts of wasted power from these. Since everyone does the
same, the wasted power goes up and up... That is what should be outlawed -
if you turn something off is because you want it completely off and not
wasting power. Amazing is the designers spend money with a switch to turn
off the equipment, but it only opens the output of the supply and not the
input as it should be.

"feklar" wrote in sci.electronics.repair:

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage
is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must
continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA
alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage
is
radiated away as heat.

mmm.. It's more technically accurate to say that resistors limit current.
They can provide voltage drops in circuits, but the device is designed to
reduce current flow, heat emission being a result.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

think miniature surface-mount resistors.. I doubt the manufacturing
technology even exists to wind a transformer that tiny for one thing.

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must
continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA
alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

Well, this is why the rush is on to create the first room-temperature
superconductor. Just imagine a superconducting world...
zero resistance = zero heat emission = a Gigawatt amplifier the size of your
thumbnail! That may be stretching it slightly, but at least we could get
rid of the massive heatsinks on our CPUs!

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

I have a suspicion that the electronics manufacturing industry would suffer
an abrupt shutdown from which it would never recover.

 

[feklar]

Like I said, (and someone reminded me... I'm so embarrassed) I am not the
expert on electronics, not even close, but it never hurts to attempt to be
creative. Don't mind me, I'm just tossing thoughts around. Good things
have sometimes been known to come from it.

Maybe something good will come from Jeroni Paul's attack on wall warts. No
one likes those pieces of junk, they ought to be outlawed on that basis
alone. But for any application that can logically be expected to be large
enough to have an internal supply, they ought to put it in the application.
I understand that they want an easy way to go either 110/220 120/240 but I
wouldn't think it would be that hard to just use different internal circuit
boards. One of the things I really like about my Epson 440 Inkjet is that
it has its power supply built in. Maybe they should pass a law at least to
have the on / off switch on the wall wart itself and switch the input off,
or more precisely, to require the input to be switched.

Hard to say there, first they come up with Energy Star and plaster it all
over computers, and then they come up with the "always on" ATX power supply
as the new standard, when the AT supply was always turned off. I think they
realized that they would sell more power supplies if they left them exposed
to lightning and other spikes on the mains all the time. Perhaps that is
also the true logic behind wall warts.

How about this approach to replacing some resistor applications:
Optoisolators. Combination photo emitters and receivers.

OK, OK, I know that photo receivers, miniature solar cells, aren't very
efficient, the best anyone has done so far is 25 percent efficiency for
solar cells. But how about inside a highly reflective chamber with a
reflective rather than absorbing backing material. Or by making the source
very small while having all of the sides of the inside of the enclosure
covered wth receiver material, again with a reflective rather than absorbing
backing material.

I don't think anyone has ever tried that: The only real research ever done
that way that I know of is for solar cell development, and reflection is
never considered in that application: if the material doesn't get the energy
the first time, there is no possibility for a second time (a reflection) in
that application, so the backing material / carrier material is of no
consequence other than that it doesn't interfere with the active substrate
material.

And another thought: the efficiency must be a lot higher for these types of
substrate versus solar cells, since advertised solar cell efficiency is
rated as broadband solar radiation efficiency, where if both the photodiode
and the substrate are germanium based, especially if a laser diode is used,
then all the transmitted energy is concentrated in the excitation energy
bands of the receiving substrate. This narrowband excitation level /
excitation frequency energy conversion factor for the receiving substrate
has to be a vast efficiency improvement versus the straight broadband
aborption characteristics of the same material.

Perhaps if the efficiency can be raised that way this would a viable
solution. One could then have a bank of photoemitters of varying output
power ratings and a matching photoreceiver for each one, all fed off the
same votage rail with the rail voltage calculated as the total drop of all
of the photoemitters. So if the circuit's requirements were 12V, 10V, 8.5V,
3V, and 1.1V DC power, the power rail voltage would be the total of all
these voltages, and there would be an optocoupler providing each voltage to
the part of the circuit that required it. (Of course, this is simplified
because it assumes 100 percent efficiency of the optocouplers.) The real
question would be, would there be less loss in optocoupler inefficiency, or
less loss in heat waste by resistors. I have a sneaking suspicion there
would be less loss with properly designed optoisolators.

Obviously, assuming the efficiency can be raised enough, this would only
work for lower voltage and amperage applications. Of course, if 20 billion
of these components get installed in new motherboards, and each is a 20
percent efficiency improvement over using resistors, then that would be a
very considerable total impact.

Any technician or engineer is by definition somewhat of a scientist.
Remember, the duty of all scientists is to attack the ideas of other
scientists, and most of you have that down correctly, but don't forget that
after your attack, you also have a minor resposibility as a scientist to
consider a new idea of your own, or the right way to implement that stated
purpose of the original idea. Although most of meeting these duties is an
automatic natural ego trip and happens automatically (along the perceived
personal insult lines of "as if someone else could be wiser than myself or
than the status quo"), it doesn't hurt to remind the few who have forgotten
this second responsibility from time to time that it exists.

 

[Allodoxaphobia]

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 08:32:13 GMT, feklar hath writ:
<-snip->

If am I right in presuming that, ....

This thread need go no further.

 

[Leonard G. Caillouet]

Gee, I'd sure like to get my hands on one of those DC transformers you
mentioned. It could change our understanding of electromagnetic theory and
physics completely. When you figure out how to efficiently put those
transformers in integrated circuits in place of resistors, be sure to
pattent the process. You need to take a basic electronics class before
trying to revolutionize the entire world of electronics.

Your idea that wasted heat in electronics could be reduced is, however, a
good one. Better design in many components could make them more efficient.
The use of resistors to dissipate energy in poorly designed circuits should
be an embarassment to any designer unless he/she is making hair dryers.

The only thing that will effectively cause people to stop wasting energy and
cause consumers to demand more efficient electronics will be the increase in
cost of energy. It is coming and it will happen. We don't need to
legislate it, it is inevitable. Note the price of natural gas right now and
its effect on the petro-chemical industry in places like Texas and
Louisiana. The price has trippled in recent years and it is changing the
way the entire industry operates. It is inevitable in other industries,
like electronics, as well. Any legislation would just be a feel-good
temporary patch on the problem and if it had any effect at all would only
delay the eventual.

Leonard Caillouet


"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage
is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must
continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA
alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

 

[feklar]

Like I said, I said right out front I wasn't the expert and what I had to
say might sound stupid and ignorant.... Don't blame me so much for that
though, I read somewhere else in another thread someone mentioned a DC
transformer, I thought it odd at the time myself, but I figured maybe
someone had figured out some new type using a moving voice coil or
motor/generator or something.

This is what I get for not keeping up :-(

I know basic electronics (about as basic as you can get), digital logic, and
physics, but when it comes to electronics what I don't know outnumbers what
I do know.

Give me some credit here, at least I knew there was a good sized chance I
would be putting my foot in my mouth, or I wouldn't have put in the
disclaimer... When I know something I speak right up, and when I don't, I
raise a disclaimer.

You are probably right about the rise of energy prices eventually forcing
better choices.

Its too bad it takes something like that to make people use common sense.

If you want to see a real waste of electricity consider Seti @ Home
sometime. Using an average of about 25 watts on each CPU, running on a
million CPUs an average of 12 hours a day. The entire sky gets scanned for
signals to boot, when the only places a signal could possibly emanate from
powerful enough to be received on Earth would be the closest 250,000 or so
stars. Or in other words, the only part of the sky that could realistically
be expected to receive signals (assuming that someone is actually out there
to generate signals) only gets scanned about one billionth of the time: the
other 999,999,999 CPU cycles are wasted scanning nothing but empty sky.



Leonard G. Caillouet <lcaillo_ns_@devoynet.com> wrote in message
news:%iVPa.2642$Sf1.91@fe02.atl2.webusenet.com...

Gee, I'd sure like to get my hands on one of those DC transformers you
mentioned. It could change our understanding of electromagnetic theory
and
physics completely. When you figure out how to efficiently put those

 

[Leonard G. Caillouet]

"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:x8WPa.170$cz4.57@newssvr22.news.prodigy.com...

Give me some credit here, at least I knew there was a good sized chance I
would be putting my foot in my mouth, or I wouldn't have put in the
disclaimer... When I know something I speak right up, and when I don't, I
raise a disclaimer.

Credit given. I think the point is that your energy is misdirected.

If you want to see a real waste of electricity consider Seti @ Home
sometime. Using an average of about 25 watts on each CPU, running on a
million CPUs an average of 12 hours a day. The entire sky gets scanned
for
signals to boot, when the only places a signal could possibly emanate from
powerful enough to be received on Earth would be the closest 250,000 or so
stars. Or in other words, the only part of the sky that could
realistically
be expected to receive signals (assuming that someone is actually out
there
to generate signals) only gets scanned about one billionth of the time:
the
other 999,999,999 CPU cycles are wasted scanning nothing but empty sky.

So we waste a few thousand watts scanning null space. The savings are
scant, since the added power required to conduct these operations is
negligible because these machines would likely be running anyway and wasting
far more energy just idling unnecessarily than is wasted by the
calculations. Can't you find something more significant to attack as waste?
You could probably save many thousands times more energy by having a few
hundred people carpool to work daily.

Leonard Caillouet

 

[LASERandDVDfan]

but it never hurts to attempt to be
creative.

The same could be said of mathematics. Doing creative algebra may be
interesting, but it won't get you a good grade.

Maybe something good will come from Jeroni Paul's attack on wall warts. No
one likes those pieces of junk, they ought to be outlawed on that basis
alone.

Not necessarily.

Sometimes, a wall wart may be necessary in certain situations. For instance,
it's not a very good idea to build a switching power supply into a Discman
without bumping up the cost, increasing the weight, and possibly even
compromise on reliability.

I understand that they want an easy way to go either 110/220 120/240

That's exactly the point. It's cheaper, so they can save money, keep profits
high, and maybe even pass those savings to the customer.

How about this approach to replacing some resistor applications:
Optoisolators. Combination photo emitters and receivers.

Why?

The resistor does exactly what it's supposed to. As mentioned many times
before, an overheat situation is mainly due to a poor design, an internal
and/or external problem, or both.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

OK, OK, I know that photo receivers, miniature solar cells, aren't very
efficient, the best anyone has done so far is 25 percent efficiency for
solar cells.

Or, use photovoltaic (solar) cells in conjuction with thermal collectors with
those desert solar power plants. - Reinhart

 

[feklar]

I think you underestimate Seti@Home.

Seti@Home beats the living crap out of your CPU, running it near 100 percent
capacity, with the floating point processor being beaten senseless 95
percent of that time.

This increases (on the average) the CPU's power consumption an average of 25
watts (it depends on the speed and the die size of the CPU). Normally the
CPU idles most of the time and uses a lot less power. Normally the FPU is
not even enabled when the CPU is idle. Just enabling it causes a
respectable increase in the CPUs power consumption: it accounts for around
half of the CPU's silicon real estate. This information is well documented
and widely known, including the watt consumption for many differnt CPUs.
You see, overclockers love to use Seti@Home to test the stability of their
overclocked CPU. If anything will crash a system that is even slightly
unstable, the demands of Seti@Home will do it. Check the overclocker sites
for the CPU temperature information, and you'll be amazed how much running
Seta@Home will heat up your silicon.

In other words, it wastes 25 million watts continuously 12 hours a day.

25 megawatts is no small matter, rolling brownouts and blackouts in
California depend on less excess power than that being used.

At 10 cents a kilowatt hour, that means it costs $30,000.00 a day worth of
electricity to run Seti@Home. Thirty thousand dollars a day to search for a
one in 500 quadrillion chance of receiving transmissions from space
aliens... if space aliens found out we were doing that they would never
contact our retarded carcasses in the first place since no one wants to hang
out with fools.

The only insignificant effect of Seti@Home, power wise, is the small amount
of electricity it takes to manufacture the couple of hundred replacement
CPUs required every day to replace the ones that get fried by running
Seti@Home and being melted down from the heat in the process. Most people
use common sense and run Rain or Waterfall to cool their CPU, but ignorance
is almost as common, and the ignorant like to run Seti@Home.

Leonard G. Caillouet <lcaillo_ns_@devoynet.com> wrote in message
news:7qWPa.15674$_j.8690@fe05.atl2.webusenet.com...

"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:x8WPa.170$cz4.57@newssvr22.news.prodigy.com...
Give me some credit here, at least I knew there was a good sized chance
I
would be putting my foot in my mouth, or I wouldn't have put in the
disclaimer... When I know something I speak right up, and when I don't,
I
raise a disclaimer.

Credit given. I think the point is that your energy is misdirected.

If you want to see a real waste of electricity consider Seti @ Home
sometime. Using an average of about 25 watts on each CPU, running on a
million CPUs an average of 12 hours a day. The entire sky gets scanned
for
signals to boot, when the only places a signal could possibly emanate
from
powerful enough to be received on Earth would be the closest 250,000 or
so
stars. Or in other words, the only part of the sky that could
realistically
be expected to receive signals (assuming that someone is actually out
there
to generate signals) only gets scanned about one billionth of the time:
the
other 999,999,999 CPU cycles are wasted scanning nothing but empty sky.

So we waste a few thousand watts scanning null space. The savings are
scant, since the added power required to conduct these operations is
negligible because these machines would likely be running anyway and
wasting
far more energy just idling unnecessarily than is wasted by the
calculations. Can't you find something more significant to attack as
waste?
You could probably save many thousands times more energy by having a few
hundred people carpool to work daily.

Leonard Caillouet

 

[feklar]

Trust me on this, this one of the things where I actually do know exactly
what I am talking about

One of the standard overclocker's favorite benchmarks in speed rating and
bragging about their newly overclocked CPU is how fast it can complete a
Seti@Home work unit.

Most distributed processing apps are like this, the RSA code cracker DPA,
the genetic analysis DPA, and the rest, almost all of them use very
instensive floating point calculations almost continuously, and even those
few that don't will still run the processing unti at near 100 percent
capacity.

Waterfall running on my slightly overclocked AMD K6 2-500 shows 97 percent
CPU idle time during periods of inactivity. The average idle time for any
CPU is about 80 to 95 percent of the time even for a heavily used internet
server CPU, or even a heavily used CAD workstation.

feklar <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message
news:jTWPa.42$k%3.28460138@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...

I think you underestimate Seti@Home.

Seti@Home beats the living crap out of your CPU, running it near 100
percent
capacity, with the floating point processor being beaten senseless 95
percent of that time.

 

[Grumpy OM]

"feklar" <feklar@rock.com> wrote in message news:<hIPPa.3$7C5.2910303@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>...

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.
stuff deleted

Yes, outlaw resistors. I'm for using conductances, but resistors do
help to heat the house during the winter.

Grumpy OM

 

[Bill Janssen]

feklar wrote:

I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

Anyone that has to ask that question should not be repairing anything.

Bill K7NOM

 

[LASERandDVDfan]

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

Anyone that has to ask that question should not be repairing anything.

Heheheh.

"The AMAZING resistor-less television set! This incredible television has no
resistors and will save you electricity! Plug it in and watch the action
literally EXPLODE right in front of you in your own living room, besting even
the finest filmed motion picture effects because it will be REAL, RIGHT THERE
in your living room. See additional pyrotechnics when nearby furniture and
curtains respond by burning to the INCREDIBLE and EXPLOSIVE image from your TV.
If resistors were used in this TV, it would use more electricity, but would
actually be safe. But why concern yourself with safety when you can save
electricity AND see an amazing fire show LIVE in your living room? Disclaimer:
Not responsible for property damage or loss of life from electrocution or fire.
These sets are sold as-is with no warranty coverage."

- Reinhart

 

[feklar]

Actually, it was the vast but not immediately apparent energy waste of
Seti@Home that made me wonder if there aren't other ways power can be saved
in cicuits.

After being invited here, I wonder what the Energy Star and Department of
energy think of these "forums"? Its too bad really, the decline of USENET
from its beginnings as a military and higher education meeting places, with
constructive criticism and productive debates. At least some assistance
still goes to people trying to get electronics repair information.
sci.engr.metallurgy and sci.physics are in really bad shape.

Oh well, maybe Energy Star will get on the TV news one of these days and
point out Seti@Home for the energy waste that it is, and maybe propose
legislation regarding wall wart power switching, if nothing else.

Date: 7/12/2003 4:06:34 AM
To: feklar@rock.com <feklar@rock.com>
CC:
From: "energystar@optimuscorp.com" <energystar@optimuscorp.com>
Subject: Contact ENERGY STAR

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MESSAGE
I posted this to sci.electronics.repair on USENET. If you wish to follow
the thread, go to google.com, search for feklar, and then choose sort by
date when the results are displayed. The title of the thread is "Should
resistors be outlawed?"

begin thread:
-------------------------------
I am not the expert, so maybe this is a stupid or ignorant idea. On the
other hand, maybe I'm right, so at the risk of flames I will either make
sense or make an ass of myself.

Resistors are used in circuits to step down voltages. The excess voltage is
radiated away as heat.

A question: Can any resistor that exists be replaced by a AC or DC
transformer? (think miniature transformer for small value parts)?

If am I right in presuming that, then the use of resistors must continually
flush probably at least a Gigawatt down a toilet somewhere in the USA alone
every day, just as waste heat. (What's the total power generation capacity
of the USA, 13 point something gigawatts total? 13.6 gW?)

What are the heat losses for transformers vs. for resistors?

Can a transformer always replace a resistor, or does it create
insurmountable circuit design problems in frequency generation and control
circuits? Can inductors usually be used as replacements in those cases?

I have a sneaking suspicion that if a law was passed making it illegal to
use a resistor in a circuit as a voltage dropping device, that law would
save at least a continuous half a Gigawatt from being wasted in the USA.

---------------------------------
there are enough experts in there (sci.electronic.repair) to answer the
question correctly.

My e-mail address is valid, should you know the total USA generation
capacity and wish to forward it.


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