Cost of leaving a 10W device on ALL YEAR...

My set idles at 335W, i have used the power meter but the router and vnet modem which are permanently on, my speakers, monitors, allusb stuff that needs power as well as the computer all go through that plug.
I figure it's on 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 15 hours a day at weekends, so 60 hours or so of lets say 333 Watts, 20kWh@15p per week, £3 a week.
My wife has a similar computer setup, which hasn't as many peripherals but is on longer than mine, so we easily spend £300 a year on computing electricity alone I'd say.
 
EffBee said:
The power saving brigade are rapidly turning into a new mafia to stand up there against us all along with the Elven Safety Brigade.

My PC costs about £120 per year to run and it is on 12 or 14 hours per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year.

I wouldn't bother to save £3 per year turning it off for 20 mins at a mealtime every day.

Further, if everybody was stupid enough to do that, statistically the extra power cycling would cause extra expensive hardware failures.

You can rest assured that if there was any benefit to shutting down machines if left unattended for short periods, commerce and industry would be doing it already. PCs are turned off overnight, or if the user is away for a very long meeting. Otherwise constantly turning thm on and off is a nonsense.
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It's not just about saving money for yourself. As has been pointed out all the little things add up in just one home. Now multiply that by, what, 30 million households in the UK? [Based on there being about 22m in England]

I would say almost every households has at least a few devices, be it a TV, DigiBox, mobile phone charger, PC or whatever that get left on for days/weeks/months. The cost to each person is small, but the amount of energy wasted is staggering.

The monetary cost and the cost to the environment [and I am not just referring to climate change] are just one part of the problem. The more important part is the blatant waste of resources. They wont last forever so why waste it all on a dozen different appliances that aren't doing anything useful?
 
brad82 said:
Ive never understood why people put their TV's on standby - its only 3m(ish) to the power button :S
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Still, that's effort every day. Would you be willing to turn the TV off and then turn it on every day for a year for a £1?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article686287.ece

Apparently standby buttons waste 8% of all electricity. Lets say the average electricity bill is

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7533389.stm

£450 a year. Thats £36 to turn every appliance in the household on and off every day for 365 days.

You can't multiply this figure by all households to make it sound big. That's irrelevant.

The more important part is the blatant waste of resources. They wont last forever so why waste it all on a dozen different appliances that aren't doing anything useful?
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Well its being priced low enough, for people to feel the cost of actually turning everything off is greater. If the actual cost of the electricity is greater than the cost of the effort, then it should be priced accordingly and the market already would do that. Although the environmental cost isn't factored in. But if you are going to factor it in, it shouldn't just be considered for times when someone else feels I'm lazy, but for all uses of electricity.
 
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Intresting post guys! :)

i'm always leaving the old standby button on my TV :o oh no's
 
NeilFawcett said:
I believe electricy costs around 12 pence per kWH?

So a noddy calculation equates to:-
12*10/1000=0.12p per hour?
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Hi, 12p is for 1000w for 1 hour. 12p per kWH.
1.2p is for 100w for 1 hour.
0.12p is for 10w for 1 hour.

Move the decimal point a couple of places, and you'll have the right answer.

EDIT: I've gone and done it wrong, I'm getting my pounds and pennies mixed up. Good job I didn't become an accountant... :o

If you assume there are 10000 hours in a year, it makes the maths a little easier... ;)
 
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When talking about phone chargers etc. are they using power when they're plugged in the wall and there is no phone charging? If so, is it as much as it is when it is charging? Never really found that out
 
Just thought id add if anyone else hasnt already yet, our leccy is something like 20p kw/h for the first x amount of hours, then 8p kw/h after that, so i usually work everyone out with 8p an hour as we allllways go over the standard limit at 20p kw/h!
 
This thread is missing the point.

Get your incandescent electric lights swapped to low energy ones. Turn the heating down and wear a jumper. Turn off lights when you are not in the room. Don't leave outside lights on. Walk instead of using the car for short journeys. Evaluate the cost of running every appliance in your house and think about your usage. Don't take overlong showers. Watch out for your use of energy guzzling appliances like oil filled radiators (which guzzle the best part of 3000Watts) and electric ovens. Dont boil more water than you need in your kettle.

And when you have done these things, as I have, and slashed your energy usage, as I have, sit back and enjoy using a few watts keeping your TV on standby, as I do. Besides, it picks up the programme info overnight while it is on standby.
 
SiriusB said:
20 Minutes might not sound like a lot, but if it is 20 minutes say 6 days a week, that's 120 Minutes or 2 Hours your PC [and speakers etc] has been sat there doing not a lot.

Two hours is probably nothing on its own but all the little things add up. I bet you don't leave your PC for just 20 Minutes a day doing nothing. For the sake of waiting a few seconds to wake up from sleep it is worth the energy saving. You can set it to go into Sleep all on its own, so even less effort.

The question shouldn't be "how bad could it be?" it should be "how much better can I make it?".
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On the back of this.. how much energy do PC's use in sleep mode?

anyone answer?

I was trying to argue with someone the other day that a computer on standby/sleep would use less energy than a TV on standby... and stopped when I realised I had no idea if I was right or not. :/
 
Biohazard said:
I was trying to argue with someone the other day that a computer on standby/sleep would use less energy than a TV on standby... and stopped when I realised I had no idea if I was right or not. :/
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Fail! You must continue to argue your point right up and until you are proved wrong. Then change your stance, and claim you were agreeing all along. You'll get the hang eventually. :)
 
whitecrook said:
Fail! You must continue to argue your point right up and until you are proved wrong. Then change your stance, and claim you were agreeing all along. You'll get the hang eventually. :)
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lol :)

Nah I think I was right, I mean everything stops dead and it must be a trickle of electricity to keep the ram going etc

not as much as constantly charging a CRT? my knowledge of how TFT/LCD panels work also let me down badly :mad: :p
 
NeilFawcett said:
The question actually comes from our new Wii. When measuring it's usage on standbye my meter says about 7.5W. Now, I'm dubious about it cos officially it's suppose to be around 1W.

Either way (7.5W or 1W) I wondered if it was worth worrying about. Considering it'll be a less that £10 over the course of the whole year, it's not...
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Thats because you have the standby connection turned on in the Connect24 settings.

If you turn it "off" and the light goes orange then it is in standby connection, if it goes red it's fully off.

In standby connection the Wii is partially turned on, easiest way to describe it is the unit is on but the fans are turned off. THis is so that it can grab updates for news, weather and such when not in use.

Unless you use stuff like the weather or news channels on a regular basis I would turn it off.

You can leave WiiConnect24 enabled just turn off the standby connection.

it's not used for playing any games online or using the shop.
 
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Larkspeed said:
Thats because you have the standby connection turned on in the Connect24 settings.

If you turn it "off" and the light goes orange then it is in standby connection, if it goes red it's fully off.

In standby connection the Wii is partially turned on, easiest way to describe it is the unit is on but the fans are turned off. THis is so that it can grab updates for news, weather and such when not in use.

Unless you use stuff like the weather or news channels on a regular basis I would turn it off.

You can leave WiiConnect24 enabled just turn off the standby connection.

it's not used for playing any games online or using the shop.
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My light goes red at the moment, but I don't have an internet connection at the moment - awaiting a usb/ethernet adapter.

So I should leave wiiconnect24 on, just turn off "standby connection"?
 
yes just turn off the standby connection part that's the lowest consumption then. To get lower than that you would have to unplug it when not in use :)

The main WiiConnect24 setting is just the connection itself which it will only kick in when you run something that wants to use it.
 
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Anyone know cheapest place to get one of those plug in energy monitor things? Would be interested in having one just to test the sockets where stuff is plugged in to check the standby power draw and the 'in use' power draw.
 
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