Be responsible and turn it off

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (http://standby.lbl.gov/DATA/International.html) reports that as much as 10% of a typical residential electric bill is spent on standby power – the power consumed while products are turned off or otherwise performing no useful function. We engineers must not only keep focusing on reducing power loss in our designs, but also become responsible users of electronic products.

Looking to the future, the standby energy standards, such as the 1-W specification from Energy Star, are voluntary and certainly a step in the right direction, but consumers also must be part of the solution. We as consumers can do better by turning off products when not in use. I would be interested to see if any of you have compared your home energy consumption/cost when turning off all your electronics and leaving everything turned on.

TI buys PowerPrecise

Texas Instruments (www.ti.com) has acquired PowerPrecise Solutions (www.powerprecise.com), a fabless portable power management IC company based in Herndon, VA. Acquiring PowerPrecise allows TI to accelerate development of battery and power management ICs for consumer, automotive, medical, computing, and industrial applications, such as robotics, power tools, and electric bicycles, as well as large battery systems, such as those used in hybrid-electric vehicles and uninterruptible power supply systems.

Panasonic follows RoHS

Although batteries and battery packs are exempt from requirements of the RoHS Directive, Panasonic (www.panasonic.com/pic) has voluntarily committed to eliminate the use of RoHS-proscribed substances from its products.