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The True Cost of Standby Power
Luther19 writes, "How much do all of our computers and electronic devices sitting in standby mode cost us? The author of the article concludes that he could save $24.44 per year by switching out wasteful power supplies. The article also touches on a global initiative to cut down on standby power, called '1-Watt': 'The idea has been promoted by the IEA, which first developed an international 1-Watt plan back in 1999. Countries like Australia and Korea have signed on officially, while countries like the US require 1-Watt in government procurement, which will have ripple effects throughout the economy. The goal of the program is to have standby power usage fall below 1W in all products by 2010.'" It's estimated that in industrialized countries, devices on standby consume on average 4% of the power used.
Mind you: it's not always a device with an explicit stand-by mode. I once used such a wattmeter on all devices and learned that my 40W lamp with a seemingly #$%#$% cheap transformer was using 25W while "off"!
:S
Factoid: if all American households would not use the stand-by mode of their TV, an entire _nuclear_ power plant can be saved on a national level.
I just finished a comprehensive audit of all the electricity drawing devices in my house:
o ld_energ.html
:-)
http://digitalcrusader.ca/archives/2006/10/househ
I learned that my Stereo system consumes 22W when on "standby" and only about 35W when in use - what a total waste! So I put it on a power bar. My older TV is 0W standby, and all the newer Wall Warts that I have seem to be OK as well - 4 of them together only rate 1W. Your milege may vary
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Analyzing your budget, you decide you need to cut back. While it appears that cutting the $700 mortgage would be the best way to save money, in actuality you're better off cutting out the $19.99 Netflix subscription to movies you never watch.
If that makes any sense, you'll know what I mean - while cutting the largest consumer of power or money may *seem* like the best place to start, it's often a necessary function which just cannot be cut. However, cutting back on unnecessary waste, even if it's a mere 4%, can be a great investment of effort.
As a republican I feel it my responsibity to manufacture criminals. People need punished!
"Standby power" is what you have when you can use the remote control to turn on the TV, DVD player, etc. It is powered up enough to be able to respond to the remote, i.e. it is standing by for your commands. It need not be a remote, however. A printer with an electronic power button (like a little HP inkjet, for example) is in standby mode, as opposed to the gargantuan EPSON 132-column industrial dot matrix printers that have what looks like a circuit breaker to turn them on and off. A touch-lamp would be using standby power, while a bulb on a mechanical pull-chain switch would not.
This is only very loosely related to your idea of laptop-style standby mode.
I can tell your from experience (this is one of the more popular demonstrations in the power engineering lab) that cheap watt-meters can be terribly wrong with loads that are not simple resistors.
A transformer with no load (probably in your case - most lamps with halogen lamps have the switch on the secondary side) is almost a perfect inductive load. Current and voltage are not in sync and the (real) power is very close to zero.
Not all instruments can show this correctly. Especially not if they measure voltage and current separately without taking the phase shift in account (as is often the case with cheap stuff). Switching power supplies (almost everything electronic uses one of those today) are also hard to measure. You need a high sampling frequency if you want to accurately measure the power they draw from the mains. Again, consumer instruments don't have this because fast AD converters are expensive.
Just about the _only_ instrument I would trust outside the lab is the watt-meter the power distribution company installed in your house. These things have to go through very thorough testing before they are approved.
Factoid: if all American households would not use the stand-by mode of their TV, an entire _nuclear_ power plant can be saved on a national level. :S
Even better it could save coal usage, which puts out more radiation than nuclear plants do, and still pollutes otherwise.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Around here you can buy power strips with a special "TV" socket. Plug the TV in the TV socket, and the rest (DVD etc.) in the other sockets. As soon as the power strip detects the TV using less than 20W, it powers off the other sockets. At least that way it's only the TV on stand by.
Is this the one you're talking about? Looks like a good solution, from what I can tell; I'm intrigued. Combine that with using compact fluorescent lights instead of incandescent light bulbs as possible, and you can significantly reduce your home's electricity consumption.
To put some actual numbers on it, I've measured ATX standby consumption on a few PCs with an AC power meter. They range from a low of 2W for an NForce4 system with a good quality Seasonic PSU to 8W for an NForce2 system with a cheapo no-name PSU that had an LED fan that stayed lit and kept spinning slowly even in standby. The NF4 system could also suspend to RAM which is almost the same as standby but with power still going to RAM. That used about 8-9W. That's bad compared to shutting off, but better than the 50-60W from the computer powered on and idle.
Why do I get the impession this is like people that drive all over town to save a penny on the price of gas then spend twice as much as they should on say, bell peppers and underwear cause they just aren't careful.
IMO you should worry about this chit AFTER you've coverted every light bulb in your house to CFL. Until then you're just pissing money away.
Need Mercedes parts ?