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While a major point of this effort is to
allow power adapters to outlive the devices they power, I believe a second
point is to enable a user to get around with ONE adapter for all his electronic
goods. A personal narrative may illustrate the point. On a vacation trip last week, my wife and
I brought two cell phones, two digital cameras, and a computer. Had we brought
our granddaughter the head count would have doubled. Because we bought our cell
phones from the same manufacturer and in the same “generation”,
they can share each other’s chargers. But the cameras do not use the same
power adapter, and the laptop is totally separate. The laptop has a dual mode
adapter which can run either from the 120 volt wall outlet or from the 12 volt
cigarette lighter outlet in the car. We have a separate charger in the car for
the phones. Although the computer was primarily run on
the adapter, none of the other devices needed charging more than once during
the week. Had these devices shared a UPAMD, one would have sufficed. If we are serious about reducing
electronic waste, a good place to start is not forcing the consumer to buy a
second charger when he gets an additional device. The charger not bought is
never a disposal problem. Alex Schneider From: upamd@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:upamd@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Leonard_Tsai@xxxxxxxxxx I agree with Mike. USB spec is good up
to 10W and that is where the UPAMD pick up and go forward. I doubt that USB will even go into 130W
range. Even with notebook and netbook, the
common power adapter these days are 35W (netbook) and 65W (notebook) mainly; I
don’t have the exact number but I expect these 2 class represents the
majority of the shipment. The 95W and 130W are for those beasty gaming
notebook and mobile workstation. Leonard From: upamd@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:upamd@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Finch,
Mike (GE Indust, ConsInd) The answer may be in your question.
The apple IPod can be charged from a USB charger, it does not require apple to
change their connector on the product, just the connector on the other end of
the charging cable. I think we should leverage USB as much as
possible, in thought process and extensibiility as it has been extremely
successful in the marketplace Mike From:
upamd@xxxxxxxx [mailto:upamd@xxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Paul Panepinto Hi Karen: I appreciate
the detail you provided in your thinking on this topic. When I look at
the iPhone, iPad, iMac and iPod, it is clear these devices are extremely
popular. It’s unlikely that Apple is willing to change its
connectors or be forced to add a separate power connector. While having
everyone adopt a load-side power connector is the ideal, it will add years to
the time it will take to develop a standard, if ever possible with this as a
requirement. Seems to me,
first priority for the UPAMD is to eliminate eWaste caused by premature
disposal of power adapters designed to serve just one product. Other
benefits of UPAMD are energy savings, convenience and a wealth of energy
monitoring and control applications that are possible with a smart power
adaptor. The convenience of having every load device able to provide a
universal physical power connector may be too much to ask and can prevent the
group from succeeding. I am just
sharing my direct experience with executives from many of the world’s
largest CE vendors. Is this really a battle we want to wage now?
Might it behoove the UPAMD to develop the standard and later evolve towards a
common physical connector? We shouldn’t underestimate the
resistance CE vendors have to the concept of universal power. Forcing a
physical connector on their devices might be too much to ask. Just my
opinion. Thanks for sharing yours. Regards, Paul
Panepinto VP Ecosystem
Development Green Plug,
Inc. From: Woolf, Karen
(AS) [mailto:karen.woolf@xxxxxxx] With regard to Paul's comments: I understand his concerns with the difficulty of defining
and making mandatory a physical connector between the power cord and the mobile
device, and I recognize the challenge presented to manufacturers. We have
to consider the current work various countries and industry groups
have done toward this goal, the costs and form
factor considerations for the devices themselves, and the
limitations that requirement might impose on power
supply flexibility. But I would say that far from being optional,
this is the MOST important of all of our goals. Both as a consumer and as an engineer, I have experienced
the frustration caused by having to locate (and then organize and lug
along) myriad power adapters and cords before traveling or going to a test
site - and the inevitable problems that occur when one is forgotten, or
one of the many all-too-similar plugs turns out not to be the right one. I know
it will be hard, and require a great deal of coordination, to create universal,
mandatory standard for this - but from the user's point of view, the only
thing harder to deal with than the supply-side adapters needed for
international travel is the tangle of cords one has to manage in one's own home
or workplace. If our team's work can eliminate this problem, or at least
significantly mitigate it, I think that beyond the impact in our own technical
worlds, we will have a concrete and visible impact in the daily
life of ordinary consumers. So while it presents a mighty big hill for us to climb, I'd
like to encourage the group to think of the potential benefits, in the longer
term. After the short-term cost and design impacts are dealt with, this could
ultimately reduce costs as those components become common. For the travel
industry, imagine the benefits of every plane, train, car, and hotel being able
to make available to every customer built-in power sources for most of their
devices, without the cost of providing dozens of form factors. For engineering
teams, it would have a great impact if we could take many of our measurement
devices from a commercial site, to a military base, to a testing lab, and not
have to worry about having a power source. Also, think of the "public
relations" benefits to both IEEE and the world of standards in general.
While most of our standards have substantial benefits to our industries and the
public, most people don't know much about it. Like the 1394 standards for
wireless, this would provide another example of the importance and usefulness
of having and following standards that any consumer or engineering manager
could point to - which ultimately helps us all. To address concerns that Paul (and others with similar - and
perfectly legitimate! - worries) has raised, maybe we should consider some
areas of flexibility. For example, perhaps we should make abundantly clear in
our documents the difference between providing power, and providing data
transmission. Many devices currently have one cable for both - but when the
device is truly "being mobile", generally only power supply is
needed. We might consider some statement encouraging the use of wireless means
of data transfer to address this. While I know that wired transfers are
sometimes really necessary, so some devices may still need two connections, it
might help with the adoption process if we at least make it clear that we
haven't ignored that consideration. We also might consider having more than one
(although of course as small a number as possible) "standard"
connector devices can choose to use - just having two or three
"choices" in our standard might help it be applicable to a much wider
range of devices, because we could cover quite a lot of size and
power-"quantity" concerns by offering just a little flexibility. Sorry for having been long-winded, team, but for those who
haven't been on the list the whole time, I hope it will be helpful to share
some of my own personal reasoning behind this goal. Karen Woolf From:
upamd@xxxxxxxx on behalf of Paul Panepinto Hello: We’ve
gotten feedback that there are too many considerations to expect in a
reasonable timeframe the entire electronics industry to adopt a single
load-side power connector. Our approach is to view the universal power
adapter as 3 components: (a) a power supply capable of powering any load within
its maximum output power range; (b) a universal connector on the power supply
to allow vendor-specific power cords to work with it, (c) the load-side power
connector. While it is
important for the power supply to offer a common physical connector so that it
can work with any load, in order to prevent getting bogged down in an elusive
attempt to develop a common load-side physical connector, perhaps the latter
can be an option and not a mandate. Is there a
reason this working group must define a mandatory, physical load-side connector
spec? Regards, Paul
Panepinto VP Ecosystem
Development Green Plug,
Inc.
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