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Standby Electronics a Waste?
gnunick writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that UK citizens waste quite a bit of electricity each year by leaving electronic gadgets on standby or charging. Critics are arguing that standby mode on electronics are completely unnecessary and should be removed for a number of reasons. From the article: "To put it another way, the entire population of Glasgow could fly to New York and back again and the resulting emissions would still be less than that from devices left in sleep mode."
These numbers are not new, and this story is 5 years late. See: http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2001/
They will keep talking about energy wastage and no amount of energy awareness if going to change that. Unless of course, you have to refill your electricy "tank" for $5.00 a gallon, and then everyone will buy the consumer electronics equivalent of a Prius or Insight.
The problem is that standby is very convenient. I don't want to have to walk upto my TV to turn it on. I want to sit down and press the power button on the remote. For me to be able to do this the TV has to be using a bit of power (how much I am not sure of).
Some devices, like my DVD player and amplifier, have no way turning them fully off. The power button on the unit simply takes them out of standby or puts them back into standby. It is not a hard power switch like devices of old. Even PCs these days (with ATX power supplies) can be considered to be on standby since there will be a little bit of power consumed.
Really, the only way you are going to stop this problem is by switching off everything at the wall. The power point for my hifi setup is behind a shelf and there is no way to easily reach it so that option is out. The only other thing that comes to mind is for manufacturers putting the older style power switches on equiptment, but I can't see that happening in a hurry.
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I find it strange the way people use electricity like it doesn't cost anything. I suspect it is because the link between using it and paying for it is weak in that you might pay for it upto a month after you use it. I firmly believe that _all_ electricity meters should have a display showing how much it is _actually_ costing you in some prominant place. How many people could honestly be bothered to climb into the broom cupboard to take a reading and then convert that reading from units in to £/$//etc using some tricky to understand pricing structure that changes with frightning regularity. It's just not going to happen so people will just keep paying whatever their bill shows and not understand how much different things cost to run.
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What they don't mention is why it's so high. I remember when we first got a TV with a standby mode. According to the specs, the draw in standby mode was absolutely miniscule (less than 1W). It did exactly what it said on the tin. Yet when I just checked the specs on my monitors, one is 3-10W in standby mode, and the other doesn't even bother listing power consumption in standby mode. I don't get it. What on earth could they be doing that needs to draw that much power? I don't agree with banning standby mode, but I do think it should be quite feasible to get devices down to using less than 1W while in that mode.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
For us that live in coldish countries, and I'd place Scotland in this group, as long as you have regulated heating, heat from PSUs is just as good as any other heat.
No, not quite as easy unfortunately. I'm renovating a summer house, and though hardly an expert, I've learned that where you place the heat sources matter a lot. You want your radiators below the windows for instance, because that is where the cold "fall" in to the room. If you put the heating somewhere else (a PSU in the computer of your desk for instance), you risk getting cold air currents along the floor and walls, and the nice heating going up to the ceiling and being wasted. Humans react to temperature changes, many will feel chilled if they get these cold draughts along the floor and walls.
Offtopic - What amazes me as a Swede is that all Anglo-saxon countries I've been to build so incredibly flimsy and energy-inefficient houses. England, Australia, and from what I've heard, the US as well. I mean, you are rich countries, why build like third world?
When I lived in Australia, my host had an aircon constantly blasting heat in winter and cold in summer. Since there were big gaps under the doors and around the windows, and very little insulation in the ceiling this desired temperature quickly escaped. In winter he closed much of the house except one room where the air con was, and we had to stay there wrapped in blankets. When I suggested he insulate the house to save money and energy, he said "No no, it is much to hot in summer here!" I tried to explain that insulating a house is like a thermos. It can keep your chocolate warm in winter, or your chilled drinks cold in summer. He remained sceptical.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
As a Norwegian living in England, I have to agree... Here in the UK I think it's largely down to mild winters. Insulation is practically non-existent in older buildings here (most new builds seems to be better, thankfully) - just a thin wooden floor with huge cracks and 20 cm or so of air separating you from the ground is quite common. And hollow wooden floors with cracks, only sealed with plaster plates for the ceiling in the floor below is pretty normal within residential houses.
Before I'd moved to the UK I hadn't even seen buildings built like that except in museums.
The lofts are usually equally bad - huge parts of the building mass still have completely uninsulated lofts (though admittedly there is a push to change that, with government grants often available to offset the cost of insulation) and huge cracks everywhere.
But my pet peeve is the British builders approach to leaks. Just fill the cracks with some silicone or other filler, and paint over whatever stains there are, wait until the next crack develops and try again, instead of ensuring bathroom floors are properly sealed.
I guess it's a cost thing combined with the fact that the climate lets them get away with it (for those who haven't lived anywhere COLD: Imagine having your walls full of moisture. Then imagine that water freezing and expanding. Now imagine the cracks developing after a few years of that happening on a regular basis...). But it annoys the hell out of me when I see bathrooms built in a way that'll give the people on the floor below a nice shower if you get the floor a little bit wet.
British builders, though, seems to be in a league of their own, and that is not a compliment. I've never ever had to deal with such a bunch of incompetent twits. Just got to love how they think that it's perfectly fine to just keep pumping more silicone into a flat roof if it's leaking, instead of actually trying to find a fix the massive leaks in the top coating of the roof. Because apparently that's too much work for them.
The lack of a proper certification system and a proper education is really a problem - to the point where it's not uncommon for people here to hire in German builders to get things done properly even with the extra costs (for larger jobs they'll easily pay for themselves by actually doing things properly, and without the massive delays British builders seems to take great pride in...).
Just a timely experience for this article: Last week I bought a DVB-T receiver. I noticed it is still very hot when put on standby, so I measured it, with the funny result of having the same identical consumption in power on state as in standby: 16W. That's price for total digitalisation: the CPU must be on to process a command or timer.
Solution? I sacrificed factory guarantee and I am currently in process of device modification. However, I mourn the electronics consumer droids without knowledge of circuitry and without soldering skills, not to mention I will never buy any AverMedia product in the future.
There you are, staring at me again.