What is so good about Low Power Electronics?

If you read my last post, you would have noticed that this has the potential to reduce overall Power Requirements.  Up until now,  only Battery Operated Devices have really cared about Power Consumption.  If you could plug it into a wall outlet then all was OK unless you were consuming more power than a standard circuit allowed.

Today, things are different.  Climate Change is a global concern and reducing the Carbon Footprint for a product is important, regardless of what sort of power it consumes.

If we can reduce the Power Consumption of an appliance by 50%, then provided it’s Electronics Manufacture does not add that back again, we have a net Carbon Footprint gain.  In fact, if we can do this across all products then we will meet our Global Carbon Reduction target of 50% by 2050 with this strategy alone.

How to reduce Electronics Power Consumption

This is not a new topic, and much of what I present here represents the combined experience of the Electronics and Embedded Software industry.  Here is the short list:

• reduce the Supply Voltage for Microcontrollers, Microprocessors and CMOS Circuits in general
• use Sleep Modes and keep the Wake Periods as short as possible
• replace High Power Consumption Devices with Low Power Consumption Devices
• replace high utilisation Digital Filters with Analogue Electronics equivalents
• replace Polled Operating Modes with Event Driven Operating Modes
• use Low Power Smart Peripherals that Wake the rest of the System only when required
• reduce the Time To Wake and the Time To Sleep
• optimise the Software Execution Flow
• use Energy Harvesting
• Remove power from sections of Electronics Circuitry when not in use

There is overlap and interdependency between these but that is a good starting point.

Next I will start look at specific examples.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.

Low Power Electronics is a Green Strategy

There are 2 ways to reduce your Carbon Footprint.  The first is to get the same power from a Green Power Source that reduces the Carbon Footprint at the power generation phase.  This is where Wind Power, PV PhotoVoltaics, Wave Power, Geothermal Power and other such technologies come in.

Wind Power Generator

The second way is to use less power from the same source, which is a Power Reduction Strategy.  This is a bit different to the concept outlined in Unlimited Wealth by Paul Zane Pilzer where he shows that we keep finding ways to meet the expansion needs of the future. That is also happening.  The ‘use less power’ approach is about getting more from the existing. The great thing about this is that you can effect a reduction in you Carbon Footprint independent of the Power Generators and so this strategy can run ahead of large scale system changes.

First you have to have a baseline to measure from.  This will become critical for businesses that must show Carbon Footprint reductions once legislation in this area is brought in around the world.  The issue isn’t if, but when this happens, and what the specific details are.  Carbon Trading is an interim measure that allows money to be made off the problem while not actually ensuring there is real progress.  Eventually significant net reductions must happen.

Carbon Footprint Calculation

There is a Carbon Footprint Calculator available at IEEE.  You can see what your Carbon Footprint looks like by clicking on the IEEE picture below

IEEE Carbon Footprint Calculator

How did you go?  Some of the questions are not that easy are they?  We often don’t know the source of some of our power or the real Carbon Cost of our lifestyle.

Carbon Footprint Reduction

So reducing the Electronic Power Requirements for Electronic Devices is a primary Green Strategy for reducing your Carbon Footprint. For a complete system the calculation is of course much more complicated.  The survey above is aimed at households but the principle is the same.  A true Carbon Reduction Strategy requires you to consider not only your own operation but upstream and downstream operations as well.

This is of course only one strategy and we will look at others in the near future.  But for my next post I’ll concentrate on design techniques for Reducing Power Consumption in Electronic Appliances so that they become Low Power Electronics Appliances and help to reduce the overall Carbon Footprint.

Ray Keefe has been developing high quality and market leading electronics products in Australia for nearly 30 years.  For more information go to his LinkedIn profile. This post is Copyright © Successful Endeavours Pty Ltd.