Standby Myth Debunked: Modern Conveniences Are To Blame For Excessive Energy Quaffing

Back in January I poured no small amount of scorn onto a product intended to save us all from standby-related power squandering.  In the comments section for that post, an inventor called Karl Dorn pointed me to his own potential solution, a product which even appeared on UK TV show "Dragon's Den" earlier this year and which garnered healthy investment from the capitalists there.  Both addressed the casually-concerned's latest eco-piñata: that leaving TVs, stereos, set-top boxes and computers on standby is a major cause of lost electricity.  The Guardian's Ron West decided to take this assertion direct to the plug, using a digital power meter to monitor exactly how much energy is taken up by not only gadgets on standby but common tasks around the home.  The results are very interesting...

Take for instance a standard TV; Ron's 28-inch CRT set gobbles up 0.168kWh a day when left on standby, whereas having your daily shower (using around 40 litres of water) demands 1.4kWh, more than eight times the amount.  Leaving your cellphone charger plugged in but not attached to your phone uses around 0.009kWh a day, meaning you could neglect to turn it off for more than 220 days for the same amount of energy needed to run a tumble dryer for 50 minutes (2kWh).

Now I'm not saying that we should all keep everything on standby and ignore the matter completely; even if you don't care much for the environment the prospect of saving even just a little money on your electricity bill might be a good incentive to hit a few power switches when you're not using something.  But looking at Ron's chart (click the picture above for the full-sized version) the bulk of our domestic usage comes not from our tech toys but the conveniences like dryers, freezers and dishwashers.  Even just a one-percent increase in efficiency in those would make a far bigger difference.

Stand by for some home truths about power consumption [Guardian]