All that the rules say (yes, I read them) is that a workstation with 32G RAM (formula is 10 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB) must not exceed ~ 11W in sleep mode and a desktop with 32G RAM must not exceed 6W in sleep mode (5 + 0.03 * RAM_GiB).<p>Basically, these desktops probably have very ancient/buggy motherboards with broken ACPI. Good riddance.<p>Fun fact: Desktops/workstations shipped <i>without</i> an operating system at purchasers request are exempt from the rule. So technically, if they don’t insist on shipping with OEM Windows, then the PC can be shipped just fine.<p>In any case, hopefully this rule will nudge them to use half-decent motherboards that maybe better supported under non-Windows operating systems.
Just want to remind everyone how far California has gone in energy efficiency:<p>> In 2018, California's energy consumption was second-highest among the states, but its per capita energy consumption was the fourth-lowest due in part to its mild climate and its energy efficiency programs.<p>Source: <a href="https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=CA#tabs-4</a><p>This is an achievement to be proud of.
Table V-7 on <a href="http://energycodeace.com/download/26420/file_path/fieldList/T20%20Computers%20FS-2019-070219-3.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://energycodeace.com/download/26420/file_path/fieldList/...</a> has details based on the "expandability score" which limits desktop to 50-75 kWh/year.<p>The issue seems to be that the devices don't have low-power modes that meet the criteria for annual idle power usage. However "If the model is shipped at the purchaser’s request with either a limited capability operating system or without an operating system, or if the model is not capable of having an operating system, the model is not required to comply with the power management requirements of Section 1605.3(v)(5)(B)." So it should be possible to buy the system without an OS from an appropriate provider.
I've never wanted an Alienware laptop in my life, but as a resident of Oregon there is absolutely nothing more that I want right now than an illegally powerful laptop.
I found this document published by Intel which has all sorts of technical information about "CEC Friendly Motherboards" that appears to describe the regulatory framework that rules out sale of certain computers to customers in those six states, <a href="https://processormatch.intel.com/Resources/Program%20for%20CEC%20Friendly%20MB%20Guidelines%20June%202020%20Public.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://processormatch.intel.com/Resources/Program%20for%20C...</a>.
20 years from now:<p>“This PC cannot be shipped to CA, CO, HI, OR, VT or WA because the ability to run unsigned code makes it an environmental and digital weapon.”
Years ago I bought a tiny hockey puck sized computer to act as an internal web server. AFAIK there seemed to be no way for me to prevent it from going to sleep, I presume it was due to a similar regulation. This one from the EU. Had to throw the thing out.<p>I’m not looking forward to having to fight hardware / software locks on my computer that make it go to sleep all the time.
Honestly, now that SSDs are near universal why are we bothering with sleep mode anymore anyways? Can't full hibernate be made fast enough for no-power standby?
Smuggling opportunity! Having legalized weed was a major blow to the unorganized carriage trade, I guess this counts as stimulus for that all important sector of the economy.
These overzealous "green" regulations crack me up. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-green-energy: I think my own country should stop building coal power plants and start investing heavily in solar and wind. However, a lot of these consumer-targetted rules are just ludicrous bureaucratic overreach that cause more issues than they solve.<p>A quick example: My apartment block was just "upgraded" to meet some new energy-efficiency building codes, and the result is that the car park now looks like a cave. The new LED lights turn on and off automatically, but they turn on <i>seconds after</i> you drive past them. So you're basically driving along in the darkness, but followed in the distance by some lights. It's a lot like the glowing trails of bioluminescence you see behind dolphins sometimes. It's insane.<p>A more IT-focused example relevant to this article: I have made a name for myself running around to various customers <i>doubling</i> the performance of their core business applications by turning off dynamic power management on their database servers. There's a literal <i>turbo button</i> (in software) on every piece of server kit sold for about 15 years now because of some stupid regulation that was started by some hippie moron in California.<p>Think about how absolutely crazy it is that to be "energy efficient", companies all around the world are buying servers <i>twice as powerful</i> as they actually need, just to save $50 in electricity per annum. The amount of time, money, and <i>resources</i> wasted waiting around for CPUs running at 50% of their rated clock speed is just mindboggling.<p>This extra computer power they've been forced to buy <i>isn't</i> energy neutral! More chips have to be made, more assembly is required, etc... It burns up an unbelievable amount of resources in order to save a negligible amount of electricity, which is now becoming increasingly clean anyway...<p>I'm not making this up. A large telco here kept doubling down on the scale of their new LOB application server platform because the performance was bad. The irony is that the more hardware you throw at something like this, the <i>slower it gets</i> because the percentage load drops, which lets the power management kick in more often and more aggressively. Last I hard, they were planning on buying another 100 blade servers, despite 5% or lower loads on what they already had.<p>PS: Some cloud platforms like Azure leave this on the default settings at the hypervisor host level, so now there is nothing I can do to improve this situation. The control has been taken away from me, so I guess everyone just has to learn to live with 3 GHz CPUs running at 1.5 GHz forever...
Anyone know the actual rules? Is it a hard limit on the amount of power a home computer can consume, or is it something more subtle like a limit on the power when its idling?
another link:
<a href="https://www.dell.com/community/Customer-Care/Shipping-restrictions/m-p/7986582" rel="nofollow">https://www.dell.com/community/Customer-Care/Shipping-restri...</a><p>"This product cannot be shipped to the states of California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont or Washington due to power consumption regulations adopted by those states. Any orders placed that are bound for those states will be canceled."
<a href="https://www.engadget.com/2016-09-11-california-pc-energy-standard.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2016-09-11-california-pc-energy-sta...</a><p><a href="https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-computer-efficiency-regulation-2016aug03-story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-computer-efficienc...</a><p><a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/cec-energy-efficiency-pc/" rel="nofollow">https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/cec-energy-efficienc...</a><p>I haven't found a lot of information about this, but it appears that this is about idle power draw in electronics. I've been seeing a few things say that they they aren't California Title 20 compliant (like lightbulbs).<p><a href="https://www.energy.ca.gov/rules-and-regulations/appliance-efficiency-regulations-title-20" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.ca.gov/rules-and-regulations/appliance-ef...</a>
Efficiency standards also impact UPSes, which is why a lot of them are listed as "not for sale in Washington, Colorado and Vermont."<p>More details on this reddit discussion, but it's not just APC affected. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ijmgnm/apc_ups_not_for_sale_in_vermontwhy/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/ijmgnm/apc_ups_no...</a>
While I don't own any recent Dell hardware (maybe apart from two thin clients I got off eBay), I own a similarly-spec'd HP Omen 30L desktop (AMD Ryzen 5800X version) that was shipped to WA.<p>I did get the 30L from eBay without a GPU, but Best Buy was willing to ship the GPU-encumbered version to me (Full disclaimer: I don't game, I develop FreeBSD in my spare time and need a powerful PC to compile kernels/packages, I am nc@ in FreeBSD).<p>Maybe HP is already complying since they are based in California versus Dell being Texas-based, who knows?
This is legally codified horizontal scaling. Blue state legislators know that taping together a bunch of cheaper computers is better than a single expensive high powered device. It's very considerate of them to force this on those who might make the classic mistake.
Last time I checked during a previous discussion of this on HN, there were slightly more expensive CA (and presumably the other states) shippable versions of essentially the same models that had that warning available, that meet the power regs.
Is this basically just because of adopting newer "energy star certification" junk, and some of these devices just haven't been certified to comply to the new standards yet?<p>Obviously they're not singling out these specific laptops...
None of this is the real reason. The real reason is that computers are known to the State of California to cause cancer. The other states in the list are just hitch-hiking, I guess.
There are two ways to solve climate change. Lower the population or lower consumption. Efficiency gains such as these are a way to lower consumption and we should be continue to focus on regulations that drive towards lower consumption. Population control is still largely taboo so lowering consumption is the only way out of climate change at this point.