Government wants to abolish 'standby' button

On 09/09/2007 21:37, Graham. wrote:

Never mind the LED tubes, click on the bare arse in the right margin.

at which point adblock users willbe saying "what bare arse?"

Scott wrote:

On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:33:19 GMT, "David"

I think it is the Green people who want this to hapen to save electricity.
But I have allways understood to power up a TV set from Off each time you
use it shortens its life. If this is right then good for set makers and
shops, they will make and sell more TV sets. Of course the electric we
saved will be used making and selling them.

This is often said - also about leaving on fluorescent lights - but
is it true or an urban myth?

This help? After a long calculation, this guy says in effect, in the
last sentence, that you should switch off fluorescent lights if you're
out of the room for longer than 10 minutes.

http://www.energyideas.org/default.c...g,ds&c=z,z,495

--
Dave Farrance

Graham. wrote:
"Linker3000" wrote in message
...
Scott wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:33:19 GMT, "David"
wrote:

"Ian Jackson" wrote in
message ...
I heard that the UK government is going to put pressure on
manufacturers to do away with the 'standby' button. The intention is to
force us to switch things like TV sets and STBs completely 'off', thus
saving electricity. How will this affect things? How will overnight
updates still occur? As most recorders need to be switched to standby
to enable the timer function, will they be have to be exempt?
--
I think it is the Green people who want this to hapen to save
electricity.
But I have allways understood to power up a TV set from Off each time
you use it shortens its life. If this is right then good for set makers
and shops, they will make and sell more TV sets. Of course the
electric we saved will be used making and selling them.
This is often said - also about leaving on fluorescent lights - but
is it true or an urban myth?
Apparently tube life is shortened by regular power cycling, however, I
always use electronic starters which are much gentler on the tubes than
glow starters. I last replaced the tube in my kitchen about 2 years ago
and the dead one must have been about 8 years old.

PS: LED Tubes!

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/747/

Never mind the LED tubes, click on the bare arse in the right margin.


LOL - didn't even see that as I have Firefox with Adblock Plus

In article , Charles wrote:
I think it's something to do with not allowing a mains cable into a piece
of equipment unless it's constructed in a particular way, so the
transformer has to be external.

It's not a matter of 'not allowing a mains cable in'. *It's avoiding
getting safety testing (and CE approval or other country's approval) for
the whole unit. *All that needs testing is the power unit. *And of course,
in different countries you can use different power supply configurations so
that the main unit can be used world wide, allowing bulk manufacturing.

Funny it doesn't seem to be necessary with desktop computers. All it needs is
either a 240/120 switch or a SMPS that can handle the full range
automatically, and a removable mains cable with the appropriate plug on the
other end. It's perfectly "do-able" in practice, so whatever the exact
wording of the regulation, it seems to be bureacracy rather than engineering
that is preventing it being done. I'm sure more energy saving could be
achieved by suitable adjustment of this regulation than by trying to enforce
yet another one to cancel out its effects.

In the meantime there's always the big switch on the wall.

Rod.

In article , Ron Lowe wrote:
What about all the skyscrapers in the cities, which all seem to have*
gigawatts of lighting on long after everyone has left? *And all the millions*
of corporate PCs left running all night for no reason? and the vanity*
floodlighting of corporate buildings? and the shop front displays*
illuminated 24/7 across the land with 10 million halogens?

Agreed. That's where they should start, but the trouble with corporate
computers is that if they're nobody's responsibility, it won't happen.
Individuals with their own offices can look after their own computers, but the
rest will probably have to depend on IT departments setting the automatic power
saving because nobody else will bother.

Rod.

The message
from Linker3000 contains these words:

Scott wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:33:19 GMT, "David"
wrote:

"Ian Jackson" wrote in
message
...
I heard that the UK government is going to put pressure on
manufacturers to
do away with the 'standby' button. The intention is to force us to
switch
things like TV sets and STBs completely 'off', thus saving
electricity. How
will this affect things? How will overnight updates still occur?
As most
recorders need to be switched to standby to enable the timer
function, will
they be have to be exempt?
--

I think it is the Green people who want this to hapen to save
electricity.
But I have allways understood to power up a TV set from Off each
time you
use it shortens its life. If this is right then good for set makers and
shops, they will make and sell more TV sets. Of course the electric we
saved will be used making and selling them.

This is often said - also about leaving on fluorescent lights - but
is it true or an urban myth?

Apparently tube life is shortened by regular power cycling, however, I
always use electronic starters which are much gentler on the tubes than
glow starters. I last replaced the tube in my kitchen about 2 years ago
and the dead one must have been about 8 years old.

The 'Quickstart'(tm) running gear used by BT in their fluorescent light
fittings was even kinder to lamp life. This was effectively a high
leakage reactance transformer (or, rather, the equivilent of) with
cathode heater windings.

The leakage reactance provided the ballasting once the arc was struck
(usually within about 300ms of switch on). Prior to striking, the heater
windings transformer would be getting almost the full mains voltage to
fully heat the cathodes cum anodes which initiated striking of the arc
(the kind way).

After striking, the heater transformer voltage would drop to about half
allowing the cathodes to remain at a higher temperature than ionic
bombardment from the arc discharge alone could provide, significantly
reducing the risk of cathode stripping inherent in the classic "Bash
Start"(tm) cheap running gear commonly available to Joe Public.

The results were a fluorescent light that lit up almost instantly (and,
most importantly, sans the strobe light effect of the cheap 'n' cheerful
bash start circuit so commonly employed in domestic lighting) and had a
much longer tube service lifetime. The amazing thing is, no fancy solid
state electronics required, and, to my knowledge, a 'technology' that's
at least 30 years old, perhaps even dating back to WW2.

The great shame about this was that it was never 'offered' to Joe
Public, seemingly on account of the slightly higher capital costing over
the cheap 'n' nasty bash start circuit fittings.

Regarding the 'Urban Myth' aspect, this is no myth for incandescent
tungsten filament lamps and bash started fluorescent lamps. Frequent
switching, in these cases, _does_ shorten the service life of the lamps.
The quickstart ballasted fluorescent lamps show a much reduced switching
cycles effect on lamp life.

For the past twenty odd years, I've enjoyed the smug satisfaction of
having instant, flicker free, startup fluorescent illumination every
time I walk into my kitchen and hit the light switch. A feature of
fluorescent lighting very few domestic users had ever experienced until
the advent of the 'modern' electronically ballasted CFL (albeit, tainted
by the half minute or so runup time to full brightness due to the need
to use a mercury amalgam to gain better efficiency at the elevated
operating temperature these lamps normally run at - the classic linear
tubes, including those bent into a circle, don't get so hot as to
require an amalgam and thus reach full brightness instantly once the arc
is struck).

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

There are 12 Quickstart ballasts under the floorboards of the room above
the one I am sitting in, servicing the concealed lighting that's been
in this room for over 20 years.
I most admit I am tired of it now and wish to replace it with something
different.

--
Graham.
%Profound_observation%

Graham. ] said:

"Ian Jackson" wrote in message
...
I heard that the UK government is going to put pressure on manufacturers to
do away with the 'standby' button. The intention is to force us to switch
things like TV sets and STBs completely 'off', thus saving electricity. How
will this affect things? How will overnight updates still occur? As most
recorders need to be switched to standby to enable the timer function, will
they be have to be exempt?

I heard a guy on the radio say "A well designed TV should consume
less than 1 Watt when in standby". A Watt is an enormous amount
of power just for an IR receiver to listen for an "on" command from a
handset.



4mA really isn't a "huge amount".

Roderick Stewart wrote:
In article , Graham. wrote:
I heard that the UK government is going to put pressure on manufacturers to
do away with the 'standby' button. The intention is to force us to switch
things like TV sets and STBs completely 'off', thus saving electricity. How
will this affect things? How will overnight updates still occur? As most
recorders need to be switched to standby to enable the timer function, will
they be have to be exempt?
I heard a guy on the radio say "A well designed TV should consume
less than 1 Watt when in standby". A Watt is an enormous amount
of power just for an IR receiver to listen for an "on" command from a
handset.

Agreed. These government technical experts ought to look also at whatever rules
and regulations have resulted in the proliferation of electrical devices with
outboard power supplies and on/off switches on the devices themselves that only
break the low voltage but not the mains. I expect there are lots of well
meaning people dutifully switching these off at night and thinking they're
saving electricity when they're not.

This is becoming less of an issue as more and more wall wart type PSUs
are moving to switched mode designs (smaller and lighter for bigger
power outputs etc). These consume very little energy when there is no
load on the output.

--
Cheers,

John.

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Andreas Schulze-Bäing wrote:

http://vorort.bund.net/klimaschutz/publikationen/publikationen_72/files/3117_bund-tv-stromverbrauchsliste-2007-februar.pdf

According to this list, the power consumption in standby mode varies
between 0.3 Watt and 5 Watt. It's also interesting to see that some of the
tube televisions have quite a low power consumption compared to flat
screens of the same size. The yellow collumn is listing the energy costs in
Euros of running the TV-set for 10 years.

And interestingly a 70W TV with 2.4W standby costs 4 euros more to run over
10 years than a 70W TV with 0.9W standby. Or according to them for a TV 1W
of standby power will cost you 0.27 Euros or 18p per year.

As I pointed out in another thread standby power is not all waste and
overnight power generation has a high proportion of zero carbon emission
nukes providing it.

The overall savings for a TV with moderate standby power requirement won't
pay for a replacement wall socket after you have knackered it pulling the
plug or flicking it on and off 7300 times over 10 years.

Carbon emissions from the manufacture of a replace socket will exceed the
savings, carbon emissions from the electrician driving to your house to
replace it will exceed the savings.

If all the pulling of plugs and flicking of switches results in just one
electrical fault causing a 100,000 quid house fire you have wasted the
potential annual no-standby savings of over half a million TV sets.

And all the above probably pales in comparison to the productivity loss and
pain and suffering from slipped discs and back problems caused by having
to bend over and reach for a plug or switch 7300 times.

--