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200+ GWh/year is a rounding error on world scale, where yearly total electricity generation is at least 1e5 times larger.


Just TVs. Just one type of consumer product needs a full Power Plant added to the earth every year to support their standby draw. Yes this assumes that a significant proportion will be plugged in, but it adds up.

Just TVs, not monitors, not computers, not audio receivers, not game consoles, not microwave ovens, not etc. I doubt the cost of designing this converter even approaches the yearly cost of a power plant.


200 GWh/year is a little less than 23 MW. A full power plant is on the order of several hundred MW to around a GW. You also don't need to replace the power plant every year. I agree that standby power usage is terribly wasteful but your calculation is off by a large factor.


Given the Jevons Paradox, we can predict that the lower energy use will translate to higher demand for IoT technologies, thus increasing the world energy requirements for these devices.




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