| > I've read somewhere that generating a single AI image draws as much power as a full smartphone charge. To put that in perspective, using the 67 kJ of energy for a smartphone charge given in Saigonautica's comment you can charge a smartphone 336 times for $1 if you are paying the average US residential electricity rate of just under $0.16/kWh. You could charge a smartphone 128 times for $1 if you were in the state with the most expensive electricity (Hawaii) and paying the average rate there of around $0.42. Saigonautica's battery is on the large size. It's a little bigger than the battery of an iPhone 16 Pro Max. A plain iPhone 16 could be charged 470 times for $1 at average US residential electricity prices. For most people energy used to charge a smartphone is in the "this is too small to ever care about" category. We can do a similar calculation for AA rechargeable batteries, and the results might be surprising. $1 of electricity at the US average residential rate is enough to recharge an AA Eneloop nearly 2300 times. Of course there are inefficiencies in the charger and charging, but if we can get even 75% efficiency that's good enough for more then 1700 charges. That really surprised me when I first learned it. I knew it wasn't going to be a lot...but 1700 charges is I think more than the number of times I'll swap out an AA battery over my entire lifetime. I hadn't expected that all my AA battery use for my whole life would be less than $1 worth of electricity. |