The comparison was in energy saved by unplugging phone chargers vs using a residential sized windmill.
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The point I was contesting, is the unplugging a phone charger is equivalent to using a residential wind generator.
As an example of the comparison in question:
A residential skystream wind generator is rated at 2.4Kw.
If we assume that you are only generating 10% efficiency on average of that (extremely conservative) you are generating 240W each hour, or about 2.8Kwh per day.
I don't have the numbers on phone chargers. But if they come anywhere close to using 240 watts each hour (assuming full charge needed at all times to make it easy) I would be very shocked.
In conclusion, I sumbit that using a residential home generator is not equivalent to unplugging a phone charger.
But that is not the correct comparison.
Unplugging the phone charger is a (admittedly small, tiny) savings, but a savings period. No extra energy is utilized to unplug it*, and it was already manufactured. All the energy saved while unplugged is a 100% actual savings.
Now, in the case of a windmill - that has to generate enough electricity to first overcome the energy it took to produce it, ship it, install it, and maintain it. Until you overcome that there is no savings, only expenditure - waste. So if the average life of the thing was less than it's energy payback period, we would be better off without it. We need those numbers to know that.
Here's the numbers form the "w/o the hot air" reference - he estimates and has measured 1/2W for a typical charger. Let's compare to a personal windmill that lasts 20 years. The unplugged charger saves .012Kwhrs/day * 356 days/year * 20 years = 87.6KWhrs.
That personal WM cost $4,500 retail (plus installation) and they claim it will generate ~ 1,500 KWhrs/year (they claim lots of things though). But when does it start "saving"? We could take a guess, and say half the cost of it reflects embedded energy cost. $2,250 will buy 22,500KWhrs of electricity. Hmmm, 22,500/1,500 = 15 years... 3x longer than the warranty.
I admit, the embedded energy figure may be way off - but until you have a better number, you can't claim it is saving anything at all.
edit/add - In conclusion, I conclude that we need more numbers before we can say which is better.
-ERD50
* of course, if you wore out the plug, or the cable broke from all the extra handling, you would expend more energy manufacturing and shipping a replacement unit than you ever saved.