this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
41 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35764 readers
506 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)

Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.

Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.

Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.

Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.

Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.

Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.

Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.

Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.

Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
ja2@lemmy.world
_MoveSwiftly@lemmy.world
Rooki@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
automodbeta@lemmy.world
L3s@lemmy.world
41
Why do surge protectors continue to draw power from wall sockets even if switched off or if nothing's connected to them? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Edit: As others have pointed out, it seems switching them off does stop them from drawing power.

top 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

switched off? no. that breaks the circuit, no power, no usage. it's basically the same as unplugging it from the wall. if nothing is connected to them, many surge protectors have a small indicator light that shows the surge protector is on. that's about the only power use being used if nothing is plugged in and drawing power.

you might be confusing turning the surge protector off itself, vs the devices it's connected to- many of which will rather enter a standby mode which still draws some power. (for example, microwave ovens will draw some power continuously so that they're always ready, even if they're not always drawing enough power to cook food.)

A surge protector (and the outlet it's plugged into,) will only draw enough power to meet it's demand; even if the supplied power is potentially greater- for example, computer power supplies. A PC with a 60w power supply will operate quite happily with a 120w power supply.

[–] Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That’s good to know, so I actually don’t need to physically unplug the power strip to trim down the bill. I’ve been doing it wrong for a while

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Well, you can keep doing it that way, if you want. It's still a good idea if you get surges during storms or something; mind. for both the protector and whatever its protecting. but as far as power usage goes, yeah, you can just flip the switch.

[–] Epicurus0319@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As I type this it actually is thundering and raining torrentially here in the PNW- and I live in one of the tallest apartment buildings in my neighborhood

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Probably fine. Cities are usually very well protected; including at the circuit breakers

In any case… stay safe!

[–] Synnr@sopuli.xyz -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Surely you thought of this, but a lot of surge protectors have (used to have?) a battery backup for short outages. Keeps the PC on so you can save your data.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Those are not surge protectors, but uninterruptible power supplies- most of which will have a surge protection circuit, mind.

Edit: for comparison, this is a UPS:

It weighs 5 pounds, and is about the size of a shoe box. The batteries don’t provide surge protection- instead those use a circuit to effectively trickle charge and maintain the battery. If normal power is lost, that circuit flips over to discharging the battery.

[–] Synnr@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 year ago

Ah I was aware they made surge protectors without battery backup, but I wrongly thought they were both just 'surge protectors' and wondered if OP somehow left out that his had a battery backup.

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When nothing is connected, the capacitors used to smooth power spikes will leak some current and draw power that way

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Surge protectors don’t use capacitors.

They use a variable resistance circuit- usually metal oxide varistors. When the supply is at the correct voltage, it just goes through them. When it’s too high (a surge,) the resistance increases and excess voltage is sent out a fork to ground

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh! Yeah that makes sense... idk why I thought they mainly used a capacitive circuit. So those varistors must dissipate power in normal operation right?

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Varistors change their resistance loads depending on the voltage coming into it. the hot wire is connected to ground, and when in normal voltages, they're very high resistance. electricty follows the path of least resistance- similar to water flowing down hill.

so, when the voltage is normal, the power goes into the plugs does it's thing. when a surge hits, the MOV's loose resistance with the increased voltage, letting it flow into the ground wire instead. This brings the voltage going down the hot wire to normal, until the MOV's go back to being highly resistive, and normal power.

basically, think of it as being a water wheel, when the flow of water is 'normal', the sluice gates are open and the water goes down the sluice driving the wheel. when there's a lot of water coing in, though it spills out and doesn't make the wheel spin too fast.

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Side note, if you ever want to get real mad about paying money for something open up a cheap surge protector or power conditioner 😹

[–] Alchemy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just empty shell with low grade solder and cheap wiring?

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

That would be a “power strip”- but the surge protectors do have rather little in them all the same. The varistors are where the magic is- and they’re basically about the size of a grape. Or a coin.

[–] SquiffSquiff@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 1 year ago

It didn't used to be this way, but modern power adaptors are required to implement standby power:

In the past, standby power was largely a non-issue for users, electricity providers, manufacturers, and government regulators. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, awareness of the issue grew and it became an important consideration for all parties. Up to the middle of the decade, standby power was often several watts or even tens of watts per appliance. By 2010, regulations were in place in most developed countries restricting standby power of devices sold to one watt (and half that from 2013).

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe they're actually listening to us.

Do they draw power when switched off completely???

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do they draw power when switched off completely???

Nope. so that rocker switch physically breaks the connection between the wall socket and whatever is plugged into it's sockets. as far as power consumption goes, it's basically identical to unplugging from the wall.

Maybe they’re actually listening to us.

Do... you know about your cell phone? they don't need to but bugs in surge protectors because we so very handily take the world's greatest spying device with us everywhere we go. willingly. without a second though.

[–] mvirts@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So true 😁 George Orwell was a bit off on the timing and missed the scale of surveillance by a mile, but got the idea spot on.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I wrote that on my phone. If i blink three times, they got to me.