[Elecraft] Saving Energy and staying dry (WAS: FCC rules part 18 [CF bulbs vs. LED])

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

This thread seems to have come around to an Elecraft issue again. 

Running in parallel is a discussion about whether it's necessary to leave
equipment powered on in a marine environment to avoid corrosion. I've
serviced a lot of electronic equipment on ships and have seldom encountered
either special coatings or corrosion. The exceptions are those things
actually exposed to the salt water, such as equipment on deck that is
sprayed with salt regularly and occasionally might flooded by a wave. They
are sealed in a gasketed enclosure with desiccant inside. 

Leaving the power applied might help but it's has become a huge energy sink
for our nation - and most nations. In the USA an estimated 5% of our total
residential power goes to keeping gear "alive" when we're not using it. The
percentage is greater in some European and Asian countries. (I'm not sure
whether that's because more gear is running in "standby" or they have less
total residential power consumption.) You can plug "standby power" into your
favorite search engine and get a whole lot of responses. One is
http://standby.lbl.gov/faq.html

According to the above site, here in the USA currently 5% of our total
electrical demand goes to power equipment we're not using running up a US$5
billion dollar annual bill for homeowners! 

Of course, most of this gear is not Ham gear left on to keep the cabinet dry
or the circuits stable. That's a much bigger sink than the average "standby"
power consumer: your TV, stereo or anything that lacks a mechanical switch
you must throw to turn it on. All of those appliances have a little
keep-alive circuit sitting there watching for the "power on" signal. It's
the total of all of those appliances that adds up to most of that 5 billion
dollar bill, but you can be sure a Ham rig sitting there cooking away is
consuming more than most of those devices - likely more than a dozen such
devices. 

While it's likely most of us can afford the extra cost of leaving our gear
powered up to keep it dry, it doesn't sound like the right choice for those
who want to be good stewards for our planet. 

Has anyone considered using desiccants? I believe the one used most often
around electronic gear is silica dioxide (SiO2). It's a naturally occurring
mineral that is commonly sold in an "indicating" form, small crystals that
change from blue to pink as the material absorbs moisture. It can absorb up
to 40% of its own weight at normal room temperatures and is quite easy to
"recharge". You just put it in a warm oven for a while until it turns blue
again! It's often sold in inexpensive five-pound cans by stores catering to
the dried-flower trade. 

Even though I've lived within a few hundred feet of the Pacific Ocean I've
yet to encounter any corrosion problems. If I did my first choice would be
to reduce the humidity in some energy-efficient way rather than simply leave
the power on. If one wanted to be really rigorous about it, a small solar
oven could handle the recharging process <G>. Even on ships, it takes months
- often a year or two - for something like the old-fashioned lifeboat radios
that enclosed about a cubit foot of air inside their case to have a
desiccant tube about 1 inch in diameter and 4 inches long become saturated.


Ron AC7AC