Apple Shares More Details on iOS 16.1 Clean Energy Charging Feature

[BigMcGuire]

Exactly. I don't want to get shaken out of bed at 2am by an earthquake only to find my phone is dead b/c it decided not to charge yet! I want my electronics to do what I say, not what they "think" is best. If i plug you in, I want you to *#%$**g charge! (And yes, cells may be out in an earthquake, but maybe not. also, flashlight, compass, etc would be useful)

Optimized charging charges the phone to 80% immediately then waits till right before waking up to do the last 20%. And it only does this for people who have consistent charging habits (like those who plug in overnight).

People like me who charge when and where I want never see this.

 

[nt5672]

What if they don't find any time periods which meet their criteria?

What if they decide that it should not be able to be turned off? You know to save the children or the planet or whatever.

What if they decide that because of your browsing history you just don't deserve to be allotted any time for charging because there are more politically correct users that need access to the limited charging available?

So where will you rank, when there is only limited availability? Billionaire, yeah, your ok. The rest of us, just out of luck.

 

[BigMcGuire]

You know humanity is a doomed species when they whine about and disable a toggle switch that has no direct impact on anything they do on a regular basis that could have a measured impact on the environment.

Agreed. It’s the small things that add up. It is amazing to me how many people freak out about something they don’t even attempt to understand.

 

[nt5672]

Agreed. It’s the small things that add up. It is amazing to me how many people freak out about something they don’t even attempt to understand.

It is not about what it does now, but what politicians and corporations will use it for in the future (and not so distant).

Don't supposed you read about the power company limiting the temperatures you could set your thermostat in Colorado did you? That is the future if we let these ideas get any hold at all.

 

[BigMcGuire]

It is not about what it does now, but what politicians and corporations will use it for in the future (and not so distant).

Don't supposed you read about the power company limiting the temperatures you could set your thermostat in Colorado did you? That is the future if we let these ideas get any hold at all.

While I understand and agree that we don’t want to give too much power to the Government, that starts to dive into politics.

As far as the temperature thermostat thing - I believe it is similar to how California has been doing it. In California, SoCal Edison allows people to join a plan that gives them the ability to turn off your AC in the event that it prevents grid outages. Also, there are “save power events” that will turn up your AC and pay you a nice little sum of $ to do so. I sign up for both of these. Both of these are over-rideable via the thermostat without any complaint. However, if I let these happen, I can see up to $100 off on my electric bill as I did this year in the summer.

Of course this didn’t stop people from freaking out saying this was control, and it would result in deaths, … completely ignoring that it was optional and just by pressing the down button, overrideable.

CA has been doing this for long time. Since early 2010s.

 

[Tdude96]

It is not about what it does now, but what politicians and corporations will use it for in the future (and not so distant).

Don't supposed you read about the power company limiting the temperatures you could set your thermostat in Colorado did you? That is the future if we let these ideas get any hold at all.

Precisely this. If you look at the facts, the feature makes no logical sense as-advertised. Unless it's solely to make people feel better about themselves for leaving it on. It's a solution looking desperately about for a problem.

"charge the iPhone during times of cleaner energy production"

Which, as someone posted earlier in this thread, is between 9am and 5pm (peak solar). When most people are at work or out running around on their daily business. Not charging their phones.

Peak energy usage comes after peak solar for the day. 5pm to 10pm. And optimized charging already takes care of overnight charging, for most people that means topping up the battery in the early morning hours.

The solution is looking for a problem. This "feature" does nothing for most people, so the true usefulness would be for it to do something to people. Most likely eventually (if it's not already) being set to not allow charging during peak usage times and to obey local restrictions around when energy usage is allowed.

 

[I7guy]

The real solution is energy austerity. Using less energy. This implies less compulsive buying of the latest techno gadget out there, less aimless screen time, etc. Which means less Apple, less Macrumors and other marketing resonance chambers techblogs... This BS is just conviniently beating around the bush.

The “real solution” should be implemented along with an easy solution. With 1.8 billion active devices (granted not all in the US) anything that helps should be implemented.

It’s amazing to see the “throw the baby out with the bath water” posts.

 

[crsh1976]

I may very well be missing something and/or be a hopeless cynic, but this reeks of greenwashing - the idea sounds commendable, but the actually implementation with current real-world limitations probably means this feature is completely useless.

 

[_Spinn_]

Turned this off. I’m shocked Apple turned this on by default.

 

[valkraider]

Turned this off. I’m shocked Apple turned this on by default.

Absolutely shocked! Very nearly ruined your entire life! Glad you dodged that bullet!

 

[I7guy]

Precisely this. If you look at the facts, the feature makes no logical sense as-advertised. Unless it's solely to make people feel better about themselves for leaving it on. It's a solution looking desperately about for a problem.

"charge the iPhone during times of cleaner energy production"

Which, as someone posted earlier in this thread, is between 9am and 5pm (peak solar). When most people are at work or out running around on their daily business. Not charging their phones.

Hydroelectric, wind, nuclear?

Peak energy usage comes after peak solar for the day. 5pm to 10pm. And optimized charging already takes care of overnight charging, for most people that means topping up the battery in the early morning hours.

The solution is looking for a problem. This "feature" does nothing for most people,

How do you know that?

so the true usefulness would be for it to do something to people. Most likely eventually (if it's not already) being set to not allow charging during peak usage times and to obey local restrictions around when energy usage is allowed.

With 1.8 billion devices some dent in the grid could be made by this little toggle. Of course system customization and frequent locations have to be on as well.

 

[CarlJ]

This is ridiculous nonsense. Charging from clean energy - honestly? How gullible would you have to be to believe that? The electricity that comes down that cable could - and does - come from any source - hydro, coal/gas, nuclear, wind/solar - there's absolutely no way to tell, and even less way to preferentially switch between them. So having a little thing on a phone to select 'clean energy' is beyond meaningless. If you think moving a little slider on your phone from position A to position B is having the slightest effect on anything at all, then I have a bridge to sell you.

"A forecast of carbon emissions in the nearby energy grid"... based on what? Using what data? What forecasting model? Virtue Signalling at its worst.

When you get done yelling at clouds, take a look around (you know, actually learning new things) and you'll find that in some areas of the country, you can fairly reliably tell what forms of power production are contributing what percentages to the local grid at any given time.

 

[valkraider]

When you get done yelling at clouds, take a look around (you know, actually learning new things) and you'll find that in some areas of the country, you can fairly reliably tell what forms of power production are contributing what percentages to the local grid at any given time.

Even better, they know *exactly* what energy source is coming through the wires at any point in time, and are fairly good at predicting the mix in the short term.

They *have to* - it’s literally how the system works. They have to know when wind is over producing and shut down turbines. They have to know when solar is waning so they can kick in natural gas. They have to know when hydro flows are high so they can shut down other sources. They have to know when to charge batteries and when to pull from batteries.

Within 24 hours we can easily forecast solar intensity and can pretty well forecast wind and very reliably can forecast hydro and geothermal.

This is what they do.

But sure - people flipping out about a single toggle setting that may or may not even impact you personally would probably not understand the system…

 

[quatermass]

When you get done yelling at clouds, take a look around (you know, actually learning new things) and you'll find that in some areas of the country, you can fairly reliably tell what forms of power production are contributing what percentages to the local grid at any given time.

Obviously I'm well aware of how an energy grid works - I've been following this subject for years. You can even follow that here:

Real-time Operating Grid - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

www.eia.gov

However, most of what I see and hear shows that much of what goes on in that regard is based on short-sighted agenda driven policies, under and over estimation of production and usage, bad forecasting models driven by bad data and bad assumptions, resulting in a needlessly chaotic situation which delivers nothing but higher prices, less reliable supply and huge subsidy payments. Surely you know about the situation in Texas?

Texas Heatwave Highlights A Major Problem With Wind Power | OilPrice.com

The Texas energy grid has been under severe stress due to a heatwave, and lower than average wind speed means wind energy has been unable to counter demand

oilprice.com

Also California and several other states. As for Australia.... a while back, they had a collapse of part of the grid when a solar facility went offline. The reason was that clouds had formed and blocked out the Sun, which was a situation they hadn't predicted.
OK - have the little slider and move it to position B if you like, but thinking that is having any effect on anything is hopelessly naïve.

As for clouds - it seems that climate modellers are still divided over clouds - do they warm or cool? Or both? Or neither? Some climate models - you know, the models that are used to set energy policies and ultimately the price we'll all be paying - leave them out entirely. The only thing that they can agree on is that clouds are insanely complex and have a significant effect. There's plenty of papers out there on the subject.
Try this one: https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.465
From the abstract: "Cloud feedback—the change in top-of-atmosphere radiative flux resulting from the cloud response to warming—constitutes by far the largest source of uncertainty in the climate response to CO2 forcing simulated by global climate models (GCMs)."
Clouds - quite literally A Thing.

 

[Powerbooky]

Will it charge with optimized charging kicked in? Or straight to 100%? 🔋

Yes, it will do the "optimised charging". The green thing is to have it both. A fast charged battery does actually do more damage than just using "green" energy. Besides... "green" energy from the grid is a farce; the grid is always a mix of many sources and I don't think that energy companies can distribute the right statistics for each address on each minute (yes it changes by the minute).

 

[CarlJ]

Obviously I'm well aware of how an energy grid works - I've been following this subject for years. You can even follow that here:

(Your URL produces an error for me - probably for others as well.)

In California, we have tracking, at 5 minute intervals, for the relative makeup of the majority of the state's grid:

California ISO - Supply, Today's Outlook​

Armed with information like that, and a bit of machine learning, it wouldn't be too hard to write code that looks at current usage and recent history, and a model that predicts what's likely to happen in the next 12 hours, say, and you'll be right most of the time. Particularly if you lean heavily on what you've seen in the last hour or two. That would make for a "charge when there's plenty of renewable energy sources online" algorithm that would be right most of the time.

And using an algorithm like that, across many millions of phones (keep in mind that they're not all going on one monolithic answer/schedule, each could be checking on their current local situation), could have a noticeable positive impact.

You go on to do a lot of handwaving about bad forecasting models. Yes, there are bad forecasting models out there, that are used to do stupid things - most of those are at a systemic level, affecting what kind of infrastructure states and/or municipalities choose to provide and how they chose to run that infrastructure (surely you know about the situation in Texas). I'm talking about "what does the current situation look like right this minute, and based on past experience, what is it likely to look like in the next few hours". That's a much smaller target to hit.

Apple doesn't have to predict whether clouds are going to impact solar production over the next week. They only have to look at what is actually going onto the grid right now, and make some educated guesses about the next few hours.

 

[zzmd]

While pointing out useless core features on Apple iOS. Get rid of hand washing and breathe

 

[Vlad Soare]

I'm glad to see Apple give so much thought to, and invest so much effort in, such virtue-signalling gimmicks which do absolutely nothing to save the planet but just to boost the ego of those using them, while proper mechanisms to fight spam messages and calls, which would be insanely easy to implement, still don't exist even after fifteen years since the introduction of the iPhone, and probably never will.
You've got to love Apple. They've certainly got their priorities straight...

 

[BigMcGuire]

I'm glad to see Apple give so much thought to, and invest so much effort in, such virtue-signalling gimmicks which do absolutely nothing to save the planet but just to boost the ego of those using them, while proper mechanisms to fight spam messages and calls, which would be insanely easy to implement, still don't exist even after fifteen years since the introduction of the iPhone, and probably never will.
You've got to love Apple. They've certainly got their priorities straight...

It was a lot of effort for them to slightly modify optimized charging to take in account grid load and prefer charging to be later (which optimized charging pretty much did anyway)?

Interesting. Didn’t know that, thanks.

 

[Vlad Soare]

It was a lot of effort for them to slightly modify optimized charging to take in account grid load and prefer charging to be later (which optimized charging pretty much did anyway)?

Interesting. Didn’t know that, thanks.

You're welcome.
Anyway, sarcasm doesn't invalidate my point, which is that I'd rather see Apple put into things that really matter at least a small percentage of the thought that they put into such stupid, useless trifles. By all means, give ecomentalists something to brag about if you wish, but do it after you've got the basics covered first.
It's 2022, the iPhone has been out for fifteen years already, and I still can't block a country prefix, I still can't block text messages sent from something other than a phone number, I still can't block text messages containing certain words. But boy, am I glad that I can choose to charge the phone at a planet-saving time (it won't do anything to save the planet, but let's gloss over that; the important thing is to be seen trying).

 

[I7guy]

You're welcome.
Anyway, sarcasm doesn't invalidate my point, which is that I'd rather see Apple put into things that really matter at least a small percentage of the thought that they put into such stupid, useless trifles. By all means, give ecomentalists something to brag about if you wish, but do it after you've got the basics covered first.
It's 2022, and I still can't block a country prefix, I still can't block text messages sent from something other than a phone number, I still can't block text messages containing certain words. But boy, am I glad that I can choose to charge the phone at a planet-saving time (it won't do anything to save the planet, but let's gloss over that).

What you would rather apple do and what apple does are two different things. This just goes along with their other environmental initiatives. Use it or not, your choice.

 

[Vlad Soare]

What you would rather apple do and what apple does are two different things. This just goes along with their other environmental initiatives. Use it or not, your choice.

I know. Apple's core philosophy - it's our way or the highway. Take it or leave it.
For now I'm taking it because it does have other advantages, which I won't deny. But it's still frustrating to see them come up with idiotic virtue-signalling trifles, when basic functionalities are being ignored.

 

[compwiz1202]

But how does it know. I have solar on my roof. So anytime I charged during the day would be fine. But it doesn’t know my current solar output of my home!! But I wish it did. I would have all my homekit devices connected to solar status so it would turn things on and off throughout the day. Or have my heater turn on when I have enough solar or AC. But that’s not smart yet either.

The one I wonder is in PA PPL transmits, but you can pick a different supplier. Does it know somehow who you are using, and when they are clean?

 

[compwiz1202]

Is there a minimum it will always charge, so it there was a true emergency, you wouldn't have a nearly dead phone? Maybe let people set it?

 

[compwiz1202]

Agreed. It’s the small things that add up. It is amazing to me how many people freak out about something they don’t even attempt to understand.

Yea definitely limit using the higher W items too, but start with the little things, especially things you can control yourself