Appliances Hog More Energy Than High-Tech Gadgets

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "A tech columnist looked around his home and wondered, 'All these TVs and cable boxes and computers and computer gear and chargers for various adapters have to be sucking up a lot of power, right?' So WSJ.com's Jason Fry bought a power meter to find the biggest power hogs in his home. They weren't his newfangled gadgets: 'The heavily used agglomeration of PC / two monitors / printer / hard drive / speakers in my downstairs study costs a bit more than $10 a month. The PC in our bedroom costs about $6 a month. The upstairs laptop? Less than $1 — a bit more than other always-on gadgets such as the router, cable modem, wireless repeater and Airport Express. So what were our apartment's power hogs? The lights and the dryer. I estimate our lights cost us around $30 a month, nearly a third of that from a chandelier with eight bulbs. Then there's the dryer. I don't know exactly how many watts it uses, but estimate it's costing us at least $25 a month.'"

Comments

Re:Lights?

[LWATCDR]

Yep old style lights are a huge waste. Not only that but the compact fluorescent seem to last much longer.

The bottom line

[rrohbeck]

Wasn't there an attempt to force a label on every appliance saying "this device will cost you $x.xx per month if it's kept running" or some such? Can't remember. That would definitely make a lot of sense.

On the other hand, as long as everybody I know never turns off the light in their office I don't expect them to do that at home either. That tells me that energy is still far too cheap.

Felt the article was lacking.

[gurps_npc]

It did not discuss the "remote on" issue at all. (When your TV, Stereo, etc. has a remote control that lets it turn on, that means it is really ALWAYS on, just in a kind of 'sleep' mode, draining some power, costing your money)

He also failed to give real numbers and total things up. Sure, maybe the electric clothes dryer is an energy hog as compared to say the a computer. But it does not let us know if the dryer is twice as bad as a computer, 10x, or 100x. If you have say 3 computers up and running constantly, then it still makes sense to unplug them instead of 'the energy hog' dryer, if the dryer only uses up twice the power of a single computer. I would have loved to know relative strengths, such as 1 electric stove = 7 laptops.

Re:Duh?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Erm, no. The sticker on your power supply shows the PEAK wattage available, not the actual current draw, which is undoubtedly much less.

Wasting electricity in the winter impossible?

[CaseyB]

I've spent time thinking about this recently.

Assuming that you're spending money heating your house in the winter, isn't it effectively impossible to "waste" electricity? Any electricity you consume is going to end up as heat (minus an irrelevant amount as light and kinetic energy), which you want anyway.

Of course, if your main heat source is not electricity (e.g. gas), electricity might be slightly more expensive. But I think the basic idea holds.

Re:Wasting electricity in the winter impossible?

[bcattwoo]

That does hold to some extent, but I think you are underestimating how much electric resistive heating can cost compared to other methods. I have a heat pump which will run with a coefficient of performance of around three for the usual winter weather around here, meaning it requires three times less electricity to run than straight resistive heating. Gas heating is still a bargain compared to electric in most places. Plus, don't forget that if one lives someplace where A/C is needed in the summer, the A/C will have to run even longer to get rid of that waste heat.

Re:Dual Use Tech

[inviolet]

I've always been curious why more people don't use gas. Is it not readily available across the nation? I've lived in the SE and deep south mostly....and have pretty much refused to even rent from the few places that didn't have gas, tho, I rarely rent in apt. complexes...mostly I rent houses or lived in a part of a house built as a double (common in NOLA).

Bingo. In a typical apartment complex with 16 units per building, all fire risks are multiplied 16x, because a single tenant can burn down all 16 tenants' apartments. So anything that significantly lowers the fire risk gives a bigger payoff.

American style science

[mnmn]

So you do not know how many watts your dryer is, yet take the liberty to 'estimate' the $25 figure.

I would start with reading the wattage close to the handle.

Re:Clotheslines are not allowed

[Eunuchswear]

And Americans fondly imagine they live in a free country.