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LOL. This is classic “virtue signaling.” Your iPhone battery is not even a rounding error on your electricity consumption.

dybber 4y ago
If all iPhones do this it will matter. Charging when energy is plentiful also means that electricity is more likely to come from renewables.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Steve Jobs famously once compared speeding up a boot process by 10 seconds to saving a dozen lives: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
- ars 4y ago
  > If all iPhones do this it will matter. No it won't. An phone has around 5 watt hours. So: 5 watt hours / day * 150 million people * 365 days = 273GWh / year / 4,116 billion kilowatthours / year = 0.006651% of electrical usage. Yah, it's virtue signaling, not anything real. And keep in mind 0.006651% is total electrical usage - this time shifting might save 10%, so actual savings are even less than that.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - spoonjim 4y ago
      No. Do you celebrate programmers fixing 1 in a million cosmetic bugs when the software crashes on boot and deletes the user’s disk?
  - parker_mountain 4y ago
    "150 million people" There are over a billion iPhones in use worldwide. This technology is also being brought to MacBooks (100 million+), Watches (100 million+), and iPads (150 million+). Your fundamental numbers are staggeringly inaccurate. And, most crucially, representing it as a whole of the electric usage instead of peak hours intentionally misses the point of reducing peak hour usage. It's called "peak hour" for a reason.
    - Stupulous 4y ago
      They're using US numbers both for iPhone count (which they overestimate by ~40 million) and total electricity. That should bias their estimate against their point, as the US is particularly consumerist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that measuring as a fraction of total usage would also bias their result upwards- x/avg(y) > x/max(y).
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      And the total worldwide use of electricity is 22,848 TWh/year, (according to the IEA [0]). So that would be 5Wh/day * 1 billion phones * 366 days = 1,830 TWh = 0.0008% of world electricity consumption. Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder, but I would wager it's at most as much of that. So yes, completely insignificant at a large scale. If anything, the biggest impact will come to individual consumers, if and when electricity prices start varying more widely across times of day. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview...
      - parker_mountain 4y ago
        > Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder That is the entire point of this exercise. My point is that OP fails to address that with data (as do you).
        tsimionescu 4y ago
        Do you have some data? Or some reason to believe that iPhones are a much larger part of peak hour consumption than they are of overall electricity consumption? Based on the data we do have, there doesn't seem to be any reason to care about iPhone charging - so, if you don't come up with some data or rationale for why we should, then I still feel it's justified to say that this change has little chance of helping the world in all but the most minor of ways.
- jerlam 4y ago
  Phones are rarely plugged in unless the battery is dead. This strategy actually works with laptops though. I know that one company set up all their laptops to stop drawing power from mains and run from the battery at peak hours, even though it was still plugged in. This was for cost savings and not for environmental ones, but the same strategy would work.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    > Phones are rarely plugged in unless the battery is dead. ??? Most people I can think of charge there phone as part of their nightly routine.
Scoundreller 4y ago
Helps further centralize/converge appliance control into the iPhone. Good move.
JohnFen 4y ago
"virtue signaling" is doing something useless in order to make yourself look good to a particular group. Could it be that this isn't "virtue signaling", but rather people overestimating the impact of the action? In other words, an honest (if mistaken) attempt at doing a good thing rather than just wanting to be perceived as doing a good thing?
- spoonjim 4y ago
  I think many virtue signalers are earnest and think that Tweeting #BLM or other useless actions are actually useful.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    If someone is doing something because they think it makes a real difference, then it's not virtue signaling by definition.
    - kortilla 4y ago
      Those are orthogonal. You can either think something helps or it doesn’t and virtue signal in either case. It’s right in the name. When you “virtue signal”, you are signaling morals to a wider audience. It’s “virtue signaling” regardless of conviction.
      - jholman 4y ago
        I think you didn't read @JohnFen carefully enough. If the reason I am doing something is that I believe it will create results independent of being seen to have done it, I am not virtue signalling. Which is what @JohnFen said. Conversely, if the reason I am doing something is because of the signalling value I believe will be attached to the way others see my actions, I am virtue signalling. Which is what you said.
    - nikau 4y ago
      Virtue signalling is typically something easy with no real inconvenience to the person doing it. So doing a #supportsoupkitchens on a twitter repost vs actually going and volunteering at one.
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
More like product placement.
parker_mountain 4y ago
Very short sighted to think it's about "your" individual power consumption. There are over a billion iPhones in use today. Assuming 10% of them get charged during peak times, each one shaving a watt off of its peak is 100000 kilowatts of load reduced from the energy grid. Considering the number is probably a lot higher, and the load reduction a lot greater, my estimate is probably pretty conservative. And then further consider that this is being rolled out to iPads, Macbooks, and Apple Watches as well. It starts to add up!
- morsch 4y ago
  It's still a rounding error, 100MW is 0.003% of the average global electricity generation. It's probably still worthwhile doing, especially if sets a trend for other categories of devices. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=100+megawatt%2F%2828500+terawatthours%2Fyear%29+as+percent https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=100+megawatt%2F%2828500...

dybber 4y ago

If all iPhones do this it will matter. Charging when energy is plentiful also means that electricity is more likely to come from renewables.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Steve Jobs famously once compared speeding up a boot process by 10 seconds to saving a dozen lives: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Saving_Lives.txt
ars 4y ago
> If all iPhones do this it will matter. No it won't. An phone has around 5 watt hours. So: 5 watt hours / day * 150 million people * 365 days = 273GWh / year / 4,116 billion kilowatthours / year = 0.006651% of electrical usage. Yah, it's virtue signaling, not anything real. And keep in mind 0.006651% is total electrical usage - this time shifting might save 10%, so actual savings are even less than that.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    No. Do you celebrate programmers fixing 1 in a million cosmetic bugs when the software crashes on boot and deletes the user’s disk?
- parker_mountain 4y ago
  "150 million people" There are over a billion iPhones in use worldwide. This technology is also being brought to MacBooks (100 million+), Watches (100 million+), and iPads (150 million+). Your fundamental numbers are staggeringly inaccurate. And, most crucially, representing it as a whole of the electric usage instead of peak hours intentionally misses the point of reducing peak hour usage. It's called "peak hour" for a reason.
  - Stupulous 4y ago
    They're using US numbers both for iPhone count (which they overestimate by ~40 million) and total electricity. That should bias their estimate against their point, as the US is particularly consumerist. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I would think that measuring as a fraction of total usage would also bias their result upwards- x/avg(y) > x/max(y).
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    And the total worldwide use of electricity is 22,848 TWh/year, (according to the IEA [0]). So that would be 5Wh/day * 1 billion phones * 366 days = 1,830 TWh = 0.0008% of world electricity consumption. Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder, but I would wager it's at most as much of that. So yes, completely insignificant at a large scale. If anything, the biggest impact will come to individual consumers, if and when electricity prices start varying more widely across times of day. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview...
    - parker_mountain 4y ago
      > Getting data about peak hour usage is much harder That is the entire point of this exercise. My point is that OP fails to address that with data (as do you).
      - tsimionescu 4y ago
        Do you have some data? Or some reason to believe that iPhones are a much larger part of peak hour consumption than they are of overall electricity consumption? Based on the data we do have, there doesn't seem to be any reason to care about iPhone charging - so, if you don't come up with some data or rationale for why we should, then I still feel it's justified to say that this change has little chance of helping the world in all but the most minor of ways.
jerlam 4y ago
Phones are rarely plugged in unless the battery is dead. This strategy actually works with laptops though. I know that one company set up all their laptops to stop drawing power from mains and run from the battery at peak hours, even though it was still plugged in. This was for cost savings and not for environmental ones, but the same strategy would work.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > Phones are rarely plugged in unless the battery is dead. ??? Most people I can think of charge there phone as part of their nightly routine.

Scoundreller 4y ago

Helps further centralize/converge appliance control into the iPhone. Good move.

JohnFen 4y ago

"virtue signaling" is doing something useless in order to make yourself look good to a particular group. Could it be that this isn't "virtue signaling", but rather people overestimating the impact of the action? In other words, an honest (if mistaken) attempt at doing a good thing rather than just wanting to be perceived as doing a good thing?

spoonjim 4y ago
I think many virtue signalers are earnest and think that Tweeting #BLM or other useless actions are actually useful.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  If someone is doing something because they think it makes a real difference, then it's not virtue signaling by definition.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Those are orthogonal. You can either think something helps or it doesn’t and virtue signal in either case. It’s right in the name. When you “virtue signal”, you are signaling morals to a wider audience. It’s “virtue signaling” regardless of conviction.
    - jholman 4y ago
      I think you didn't read @JohnFen carefully enough. If the reason I am doing something is that I believe it will create results independent of being seen to have done it, I am not virtue signalling. Which is what @JohnFen said. Conversely, if the reason I am doing something is because of the signalling value I believe will be attached to the way others see my actions, I am virtue signalling. Which is what you said.
  - nikau 4y ago
    Virtue signalling is typically something easy with no real inconvenience to the person doing it. So doing a #supportsoupkitchens on a twitter repost vs actually going and volunteering at one.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago

More like product placement.

parker_mountain 4y ago

Very short sighted to think it's about "your" individual power consumption. There are over a billion iPhones in use today. Assuming 10% of them get charged during peak times, each one shaving a watt off of its peak is 100000 kilowatts of load reduced from the energy grid. Considering the number is probably a lot higher, and the load reduction a lot greater, my estimate is probably pretty conservative. And then further consider that this is being rolled out to iPads, Macbooks, and Apple Watches as well. It starts to add up!

morsch 4y ago
It's still a rounding error, 100MW is 0.003% of the average global electricity generation. It's probably still worthwhile doing, especially if sets a trend for other categories of devices. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=100+megawatt%2F%2828500+terawatthours%2Fyear%29+as+percent https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=100+megawatt%2F%2828500...