A bundle of AC adapters, such as for a notebook PC, digital camera, mobile phone, is one of the items that we have to carry around in a bag on a business trip. I guess everyone wishes for an AC adapter that can be used for any device.
Green Plug Inc is working to make this wish come true. If device makers can standardize their AC adapter specifications set for each product, users do not have to carry many adapters with them and makers can save the cost of supplying an AC adapter. In addition, it will result in a resource saving because of less adapters being disposed.
To achieve those goals, Green Plug is promoting the use of "Intelligent power supply," a common AC adapter, to device makers. The adapter exchanges information with a device to output proper levels of power voltage and current as well as to reduce standby electricity by cutting unnecessary power supply.
Some device makers are beginning to support Green Plug's idea. Westinghouse Electric Corp, a consumer-electronics maker in the US, expressed support for the common AC adapter June 13, 2008, at the conference hosted by the Alliance for Universal Power Supplies, an NPO of which Westinghouse Electric is a member.
How is Green Plug planning to diffuse its adapter? We interviewed Paul Panepinto, the company's SVP of Sales and Marketing. (Interviewer: Naoki Asakawa)
- There was a concept of common AC adapter in the past, but it was not supported by device makers. One reason is that an adopter supporting a wide range of output voltage has a low power conversion efficiency and, thus, a large power consumption. Another reason is that many device makers consider it difficult to ensure safety with other company's AC adapter. How are you going to overcome those problems?
Panepinto: It's true that the conversion efficiency of our AC adapter is lower than that of a dedicated adapter. However, considering the standby power consumption, I believe the common AC adapter has a lower power consumption overall.
If we use four dedicated adapters whose standby power consumption is 0.5W each, they consume 2W of electricity even when not in use. On the other hand, the standby power consumption of our adapter is about 0.5W in total. So, if we can replace four AC adapters with one common AC adapter, the standby power consumption can be reduced by 75%.
By the way, our adapter has a function of physically stopping power supply to each DC-DC converter. Like this function, by using our control microcomputer to minutely control power supply, the safety of adapter will rather increase.
Furthermore, it is possible to reduce the deterioration of power conversion efficiency to some extent. For example, we can assign output terminals with "for mobile phone," "for notebook PC," and so forth, and embed a DC-DC converter with different optimum output voltage in each terminal. So, the conversion efficiency of the terminal for notebook PCs would peak at 16-22V.
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