Our Respond! office system is powered by batteries. We technically describe the battery as providing approximately 200Wh of power for each complete discharge cycle.

Does a 200Wh technical specification mean anything to you?

Is your real question “how long will the battery power my computer system?”

This post is intended to try to explain battery life in simple rather than technical terms.

We also want to provide some guidance about products that pair well with our power system to create a strong sustainability solution.

This is the eleventh post in a series about the strategic value propositions for the Respond! power system.

What is a Wh?

All battery systems have a limit to their capabilities. To describe battery life, we measure the capabilities of the battery and the devices they power with a measure of power known as a Wh (Watt-Hour).

A Wh is a unit of measurement for electrical power over time (an hour). Watts are a measure of electrical power. Your utility charges you for the Watt-Hours (or kWh’s, in other words, 1000 Watts being supplied for an hour) you consume each month to power various electrical devices. Each device has a rating that describes the number of watts consumed. For example, a 40W light bulb consumes 40 watts. If you have it running for two hours, it consumes 80 watt-hours or 80Wh.

To avoid confusion, you should also know that in many locations, your utility has a separate charge for the distribution infrastructure (transmission lines, transformers, poles, and wires. If you install solar panels, your charges for the watts you use will decline but the charges for infrastructure will remain unless you go totally off the grid. If you stay connected, you will pay for the infrastructure.

There are many improvements in recent years that make devices more efficient in the amount of power that is consumed. LED lighting is one of the most widely known improvements, for example.

Are there improvements in the efficiency of office equipment such as computers, monitors, and printers? Will there be more improvements?

The answer is “Yes!” and reduced power consumption is an important part of the reason that the world is evolving to USB-C connections and DC battery power systems. This is not just in a few products. Starting in January 2022 in California, by law, all lawnmowers and leaf blowers must be battery powered. In the EU, authorities are pressing monitor makers to improve efficiency.

A word of caution. Not all manufacturers of electronic office equipment are making efficiency improvements at the same pace. Some provide explicit specifications easily found online. Others publish nothing about power consumption. There are also manufacturers that overstate the power consumption to avoid blowback from consumers if actual performance is worse than published numbers.

If you are concerned with sustainability and considering standards for equipment purchases, I would advise doing proper and thorough diligence on this issue. If first impressions matter, companies that avoid the power consumption issue might have a reason.

When you do your diligence, you will find that monitors can consume from 2-15 times more power than your computer, particularly a laptop. The monitor you select could consume the power in your Respond! battery in less than 90 minutes or last all day.

Monitor Compatibility Matters

There are differences in monitor design that matter to compatibility with a battery-powered office system like Respond! Consider some typical situations.

1.        No second monitor. The first situation is that you simply use your laptop and have no additional monitors. Laptop power usage usually varies between 8-16W. They also contain an onboard battery that adds to the available power. If the onboard battery, typically about 100Wh of capability, combines with our 200Wh battery, and your laptop consumes 8W per hour, you can easily work a long day and avoid any battery swap.

2.      Portable Monitors. The second situation is a laptop with a small portable monitor. These are offered by a few manufacturers and consume 5-7W of power. This additional power draw is not a challenge for all-day use of the Respond! power system. While current monitors are usually 14”, comparatively small, they could be a solution for certain hybrid work environments, especially remote teams.

Portable monitors draw their power from the laptop through a USB-C connection. In the Respond! power system, the laptop would draw its power from a USB-C connection to our QikPak Carry. You can have a  dual-screen solution anywhere as the monitor and QikPac Carry are portable products.

3.      Fixed Monitor. The third situation to consider is a workstation with a monitor that remains in place and is used by different occupants, not unusual in a hybrid or co-working situation. We believe that in the future this will be the most likely situation.

In these circumstances, the power design for the monitor matters. Some manufacturers choose to incorporate their DC power supply inside the monitor. Others have an external power supply.

We are partial to the external power supply designs. For these monitors, we can simply install a cable from the underside of the docking center for our QikPac Carry, replacing the monitor AC-to-DC power supply.

If a monitor has an internal power supply, it is possible to add an inverter (DC to AC). Frankly, this is an expensive and inelegant solution, and it might be more practical and less expensive to get a new monitor.

The second issue that matters is power consumption. There are wide variations in the amount of power required by a monitor. If your monitor uses 50W and your computer 4-8W, your combined usage will deplete the batteries in about 5 hours.

You can choose monitors that consume more power, but you should consider the trade-offs as you will need to swap batteries more often with higher power consumption.

4.     Exceptional Power Usage. In our product concepts, we chose to design our Respond! power system around the power usage of a typical user. If we added more capability for the exceptional situations, we would be penalizing typical users with unnecessary cost.

Our batteries can deliver as much as 240W, and we can combine batteries to produce more. Reach out to us if you have a situation where you need exceptional amounts of power. Our expert may be able to provide a workable solution.

Power Consumption Examples

Because of the variances in power consumption, this post includes five examples of monitors. Following these, I include a laptop computer with a 17” screen. I selected a large-screen laptop for an example, assuming most organizations that implement hybrid work strategies will select laptops as their preferred computers.

None of the examples are intended to be an endorsement of a product or manufacturer. The images shown are not to scale.

Monitors

Let’s begin with a challenge. The monitor shown on the right is a 75” Interactive Touchscreen. In normal operation, it uses 160W of power.

We consider this to be an exceptional situation, but it is a circumstance where we feel we can provide a solution that doesn’t require 120V wiring.

The monitor shown on the right is a 40” Wide curved monitor. In the “on” mode, it uses 41.7W. When used with your computer, it uses 240W.

This is not a practical product to pair with our Respond! power system. We could configure a special power system, but it would be more cost-effective to buy another monitor product with better technology.

Read the next example.

This is a 49” Wide curved monitor. When it is operational it uses 60W of power. This size of the monitor pairs well with the Respond! 72” Console Desk with our standard power design. The value proposition for the widescreen monitor could make it worthwhile for a user to make one or two battery swaps per day.

For those who are involved in a lot of online meetings, this 34” Wide monitor is designed for conferencing. Its shape is convenient for tiling images and comes with a built-in camera and an adjustable-height stand.

Power consumption is 31.5W,

This 27” Monitor is relatively low cost compared to the previous examples. We can imagine this to be a fixture in a co-working space devoted to hybrid work practices, particularly if WFO was one or two days per week.

Power consumption is 17W.

Laptop Computer

TThe laptop shown at the right has a 17” screen. It also includes a 97Wh battery. When connected to the Respond! power system, the batteries combine to provide just under 300Wh of power.

According to the technical support team at the manufacturer, the life of a charge on the 97Wh battery is just under 12 hours if you are using productivity apps. If you are live streaming, the discharge rate is about double.

These are estimates. In practice, this computer dynamically adjusts its power consumption depending on the activities of the user. We expect this feature to be replicated in more devices to enhance sustainability practices.

From these numbers, we can infer that the power consumption varies between 8-16W.

If the battery in the laptop is less than fully charged, our power system will charge the laptop battery. This is not instantaneous but under the right circumstances, users may find, they have fully charged batteries in their laptop at the end of their workday.

Five Key Takeaways

1. Battery Life depends mostly on your selection of a monitor. For those who combine a fully charged 200Wh Respond! battery with a 97Wh battery in their laptop (as in the example), use a second 27” monitor and use mostly productivity applications, the combined consumption is about 25W. The combined Wh available at the start would be just less than 300Wh. The workstation could function for about 12 hours. With a 49” curved monitor, power consumption would be about 68W so the workstation could function for about 4 hours.

2. Monitor technology is changing rapidly. Products are being introduced that are specific to gaming, video conferencing, and multi-tasking as well as general use. New designs are substantially more energy-efficient.

3. Diligence on technical specifications is important. Some products consume far more power than similar products. If you were setting corporate standards, you might want to do your own power consumption tests prior to committing to purchases.

4. The Respond! power system has limits. It is not designed to be a solution for power-hungry devices or users. Exceptional use cases should be addressed with exceptional solutions. If you are considering solutions, workarounds might better involve new computing equipment rather than power solutions.

5. The Respond! power system easily serves the needs of most users. At worst, for most users, it might be necessary to do one battery swap during the workday. As equipment power efficiency improves, the need for battery swaps will decline.