Curbing Energy Use In Appliances That Are Off

KarmaOverDogma writes "The New York Times has an interesting piece on the slow but steady movement to reduce the power drain for appliances that are never truly turned off when they are powered down. In the typical house that's enough to light a 100-watt light bulb 24/7, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, a research arm of the Energy Department. In the United States alone, over $1 billion per year is spent powering devices such as TV's VCR's, Computers and Chargers while they are 'off.' Called 'vampires' and 'wall-warts' by Energy Experts, there has been growing support of their recommendations to adopt industry-wide standards, which would require manufacturers to build appliances with significantly lower consumption when not in use."

Comments

Yeah and do the math.

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It costs money, time and _energy_ to make new devices or modify old ones to use less power.

100w for 24 hours is = 2.4kWh. Oh wow. Pardon me if I find this whole thing rather silly or even stupid.

1 litre of petrol is approx 9kWh. So if you drive about 3 to 4km (2 to 3 miles) on a typical car you'd use that much energy already. Imagine if you just decided to be a bit heavy on the accelerator one day whilst slightly late for an appointment, or have to go up a hill.

If you can save that 2.4kWh/day from your wallwarts/vampires easily, sure do it. But if it takes a lot of effort, I think there are plenty of easier ways to save 2.4kWh/day.

If you're in somewhere warm, use two airconditioners for an hour less each (or four for 30 minutes less), or put them on a higher temperature setting.

If you're in some place cold, turn your heaters down and/or use your computers as heaters - run the protein folding thing - so at least you're doing something useful while generating heat ;).

I think people should get their priorities in order. Rather than get worked up over low priority/impact stuff. Makes me wonder if politicians or someone is trying to distract people from more important stuff.

I mean how many kilowatt hours does it already cost to get a single 70 ton battle tank to Iraq and how much to keep it running there? And even that is not as important as wtf are the US doing there in the first place, and how they ended up there. Sheesh.