Switch off at the socket?

"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...
Vortex4 wrote:
"alexander.keys1" wrote in message
...
There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

David Mackays book is a good read on this subject:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/w...page_155.shtml

So he says he can save all of 45 watts if he turns everything off instead
of leaving it on standby when he's not using it. The equivalent of a very
dim lightbulb therefore. Great!

However, he ignores the fact that he's also losing 45 watts of heat. To
keep his house at exactly the same temperature, an extra 45 watts of heat
need to be pumped out by whatever heating system he has, for as much of
the year as he needs any heating at all. Admittedly, that may be a bit
cheaper if it's gas-fired, but it's still the same amount of energy, so
it's unlikely to have a huge impact on climate change.

You are assuming that those 45W of electricity are converted to 45W of heat
with 100% efficiency which is clearly not true.

Z

Zimmy wrote:
"Norman Wells" wrote in message
...

However, he ignores the fact that he's also losing 45 watts of heat.
To keep his house at exactly the same temperature, an extra 45 watts
of heat need to be pumped out by whatever heating system he has, for
as much of the year as he needs any heating at all. Admittedly,
that may be a bit cheaper if it's gas-fired, but it's still the same
amount of energy, so it's unlikely to have a huge impact on climate
change.

You are assuming that those 45W of electricity are converted to 45W
of heat with 100% efficiency which is clearly not true.

Where else do you think it goes?

PeterC wrote:

My TV is 0.9W; the digibox is 9W (with a PF of 0.45!) so
well worth switching off.

Perhaps manufacturers should be required to specify
standy power consumption.
I've been surprised how much difference I have found
eg between different computer monitors.

I'd also like CFL manufacturers to be required
to specify the illumination in lumens.


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland

In article ,
Andy Dingley wrote:
On 15 Sep, 08:54, Gordon Henderson wrote:

I did the power meter thing a year or 2 ago - went round the house
meansuring everything. The only real surprise was my HP Colour Laser
printer. In it's "low-power" idle mode it's sucking 30W. That now gets
turned off. Nothing else does because it's not worth the effort.

Be careful with that. Larger copiers and printers have drums that are
damaged by moisture and so contain an anti-condensation heater. It may
also not be sucking 30W continuously, just intermittently.

I did leave it for a couple of hours, just in-case it had a "deeper sleep"
mode, but didn't see any change. I only noticed it when I'd powered down
everything in my office a while back - or thought I had - heard a fan
running and traced it to the printer on the other side of the room,
even though I knew I'd not done any printing for a few days...

Not that bothered about it if it dies - it's now 6 years old and was a
freebie anyway! Good workhorse though.

Gordon

"Paul Hyett" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 at 14:43:54, alexander.keys1
wrote in uk.media.tv.misc :

There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

Congratulations - you must be the only person in the country who enjoys
reprogramming their VCR/DVD recorder every day...


Although Paul this is the 21st century, so hopefully stuff such as time and
date and even timed programmes should set themselves up automatically, at
least they did even on a couple of ancient Panasonic videos I've long since
discarded.

In article ,
Norman Wells wrote:
You are assuming that those 45W of electricity are converted to 45W
of heat with 100% efficiency which is clearly not true.

Where else do you think it goes?

I suppose those LEDs produce some light? ;-)

--
*Husband and cat lost -- reward for cat

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , Andrew
scribeth thus
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:43:54 -0700 (PDT), "alexander.keys1"
wrote:

There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

They can't switch the power stations off overnight, so they may as
well power the 1W my TV takes to be in standby.

I seem to remember that some hydro electric plant is powered down and
some gas fired .. but coal is rather long winded to slow down and
restart..
--
Tony Sayer

In article , Vortex4
scribeth thus

"alexander.keys1" wrote in message
...
There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

David Mackays book is a good read on this subject:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/w...page_155.shtml

You can download the whole thing from he http://www.withouthotair.com/


See he' s some government advisor now so perhaps some sense will
prevail..
--
Tony Sayer

In article dd11dcee-9b58-4d46-899e-
, alexander.keys1
@googlemail.com says...

There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.


My parents' 1-and-a-bit-year-old TV broke down the other week. Stopped
receiving DTV and the settings menus became unavailable.

The repair man reloaded the firmware from a memory card, which fixed it.
Then he asked whether it got switched off at the mains a lot. It did -
every night. He said that that may well have been the cause of firmware
corruption and that they should leave the set on standby.

It's a Toshiba Regza something or other, if that matters.

On Sep 15, 5:47*am, Andrew wrote:
On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:43:54 -0700 (PDT), "alexander.keys1"

wrote:
There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.

They can't switch the power stations off overnight, so they may as
well power the 1W my TV takes to be in standby.

This time of year it's useful background heat.

MBQ