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

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:Clotheslines are not allowed

[Eunuchswear]

And Americans fondly imagine they live in a free country.