http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11458726

dubbed “incredibly stupid” by one critic

😀

Haha what a crock of…. I’d rather pay the extra few quid a year on my bill and be able to just down and use the remote 😉

One of the features on my TV is “Full Power Down Option,” complete with a little branding logo for the feature.

It’s an on/off switch.

Mine uses less than 1w on stand-by. Not a big issue.

I have some E-On plug that has an IR receive…it knows when I’ve put the TV on standby then turns the power to the TV off completely after about 10 seconds.

some of them.

why bother inventing the remote control if you still have to go over to it to turn it on and off?

I have this device my old man bought me so when I put a device on standby it cuts complete power till an infra red remote triggers it on and saves me a few quid a year too.

Can’t remember what they’re called but saves power and good for the U.K. and environment!

RealMan, is this thread a subtle way of discerning which of us are fit cycling enthusiasts and which of us are overweight IT working bike enthusiasts? Clever.

Ours is on a cheap-as-chips timer so it’s only on standby in the evenings and completely off the rest of the time. Not quite as super efficient as all these clever gadgets but a lot cheaper!

of course I switch it off – in a thunder storm the lightning can come down the aerial and blow it up otherwise 😛

Mine uses less than 1w on stand-by. Not a big issue.

Do you also leave the car engine running, while it is sat on the driveway all the time, on the ground that it only used a little bit of petrol on tick over?

Pretty sure these timer and remote stand-by units still use power 24 hrs. Modern TVs have pretty good low power stand-by modes anyway, maybe if you have an old TV its worthwhile.

I switch not only the telly off but also the microwave when not in use.

We also don’t sit in a house in the middle of winter with T-shirts on because the heating is switched way up high either, higher than you would have it in summer. There are 3 water butts in the garden etc.
The list is endless to what I do to try and help our envoirenment, but if people aren’t interested and it doesn’t suit them, they won’t give a flying fig.

However I would never blow someone up 🙂

However I would never blow someone up….

Not even with a homemade, sustainable, eco-freindly compost bomb?

Do you also leave the car engine running, while it is sat on the driveway all the time

The average car uses plenty of power just sat on the drive if it has remote central locking and an alarm. Do you disconnect the battery? TV stand-by is a popular target but in reality makes little difference. There are much better things to unplug (like the microwave as above)

Lol @ TSY

Mine [& everything else with it] goes off at the wall socket

I’ve seen at least 3 fires caused by faulty TVs, for the sake of 2 seconds, I can’t see why not do it

Had an Amstrad tv a while ago, camer in one day when it was left on standby, just as smoke started coming out the back, it appeared the transformer had overheated ,a common problem then, and possibly now, luckily i threw a balnket over it and carried it outside , before it burst into flames.

Switch mine off whenever not in use. Bit odd if you want to watch it and can’t wander across to switch it on before sitting down on sofa. Do all of you that have yours on standby have Jimmy Saville chairs with built in teasmaid for when you fancy a brew?

The last time I turned my TV off was in 2001. Then I unplugged it and took it to the tip.

Can’t see me ever owning another one.

We did some tests of various bits of electrical gear round the house last year, modern TV’s on standby use nack all energy. Not even worth thinking about. Plasma TV’s don’t use much more energy then LCD, dispite all the negative press about them. It’s heating and boiling kettles that use the power, but the enviromental brigade don’t really get excited about them, because there is nothing to be jelous about someone owning a kettle.

It’s rarely on. I have a Cathode Ray Tube TV and I’m fairly sure it sucks electrons in standby. I have noticed that the digibox stays warm in standby. Everything goes through two wall switches so it is easy enough to fire everything up or down when needed. One day I might get a small LCD TV with a built in digibox.

I’m with Bunnyhop here, anything with a little green or red light gets turned off overnight, Mrstubing calls me the power-nazi!

The average car uses plenty of power just sat on the drive if it has remote central locking and an alarm. Do you disconnect the battery?

Dose it?
It can sit there for a good few moths before the battery goes completely flat. (talking from experience)

Even at 1 watt on standby a device costs around £1.05p to run for a year, if you start adding it up in an average house, it soon turns into a significant amount.

It can sit there for a good few moths before the battery goes completely flat. (talking from experience)

I agree, its an insignificant amount, much like the stand-by drain on a modern TV. That was the point 🙂

errrr, see Dibbs post above

why you should turn off your TV
(may contain Marcus Brigstock)

The thing is that the reason there’s a lot of waste about is that most people do think “ah, it’s only a little bit”. Sure it is, but lots of little bits add up to a lot. It’s just a case of how much you’re willing to contribute to the problem I suppose. I turn most stuff off because I dislike paying people for nothing. Things of note:

TV – standby – 1W
Digi box – 11W
Humax – 20-30W depending on recording or not
Wii – 40W turned off.
Hifi – 10W just to have the clock displayed.
Router 20W
Oven 5w (clock)
Microwave (didn’t register on the tester).
By far the most surprising is PCs. Even turned off (not even in standby) a PC uses upward of 10W if it remains plugged in. The PSU sits there idly consuming power for no good reason.

By far the biggest use is not TV in our house. We average 7-8KWh a day in elec, the things that constitute the majority of that are washing machine/drier and stuff on standby. Watching TV in the evening adds about 500Wh, everything on standby has a base consumption of about 4KWh/day.

I think plenty of people think the “greenies” have some sort of jealousy problem or just are out to spoil peoples fun. Well you’re allowed your opinion. I’m a fairly techy person, I like my computers, I like my gadgets, I like my petrol drinking cars. However I work in the field of renewables (actually waste energy harvesting) and daily work with the figures of just how much power we waste in various disguises. It really is pretty shocking, and the more I work in the field the more I realise I’ve no excuse – I can see the figures, I can see the problems and I can see I’m part of the cause.

The majority of energy expenditure is in space heating and transport. However vast quantities of elec are wasted in general tat on standby, so any move to reduce such waste is a good thing. However I’m not sure the end user should be the one targetted here – people don’t change easily, and we’ve a tendency to be very wasteful. It’s really not hard at all for the vast majority of the household goods that waste megawatts per year (combined) to be dropped to <1W consumption in standby. Very few items require more than that, a change of display method from VFD to LCD, using smarter power supplies rather than dumb power hungry ones. Businesses could make a huge difference with little extra cost.

A few months ago we got an energy meter, I went round the house and discovered that just turning off the DVD player and the Wii (never used anyway) saved me 3p an hour…about half of my ‘always on’ power consumption. Thats 72p per day, and I can’t quite believe that I’ve done my sums right, but that works out at £65 per quarter. The TV on the other hand, didn’t really make any difference.

Its the ‘always on’ power where you will make the savings, you don’t have to actively save power, just work out where its all going for the 16 hours you are either out of the house or asleep. Bit like a dripping bath tap…its only a tiny amount of water but the bath will still be half full if you leave the plug in during the day.

I bet the Sky+ box and Router are costing me a fortune, and I just bought a network hard drive that is a pain to turn off (hold down a very hard to push button for 5 seconds)

I’m pretty sure I’ve left one of the burners on, on the gas hob today. Not very energy conscious but the house should be toasty when I get in 🙂

lol^^^

im bad for all, everything stays on standby unless i go on holiday.

my laptop is on 24/7 and i only turn it off for updates which i do once a month for maybe 2 minutes.

im an impatient person and want something to instantly work. i dont care about paying said 70p per day or even £2 a day as long as i have the convenience to just start it instantly.

your car wont last months btw if you have a tracker fitted 😉 all depends on what systems you have and are running just like in your house 😉

TV, Sky box, microwave, stereo, router/wifi box and PC all get powered off at night. I dont use them overnight so why would I need them on standby??

When I am going to be away for more than one day I also switch off central heating, hot water, again not a requirement if I am not going to be about.

nuke – Member

I have some E-On plug that has an IR receive…it knows when I’ve put the TV on standby then turns the power to the TV off completely after about 10 seconds.

This

Although since moving the furniture i’ve had to resort to standing upo and turning it off.

It’s so hard, i cant believe how hard it is to do. I must have to move at least 3 ft.

Mine uses less than 1w on stand-by. Not a big issue.

Not for your bill perhaps. But it all adds up to a huge amount nationally, never mind globally.

Wiki suggests that appliances left on standby in the USA waste 18 whole power stations’ worth of power all the time.

Our TV etc are all on one power strip that gets turned off at the wall every night. Must set something up for the wifi router too.

i dont care about paying said 70p per day or even £2 a day

Shame it’s not just about the money, isn’t it?

Mine uses less than 1w on stand-by. Not a big issue.

True. I just throw my rubbish into a field in’t countryside. S’only a little bit, so it’s not an issue.

Sheesh, these bloody do-gooder environmentalists eh? FFS.

TV – standby – 1W

Both TV’s in our house measured c. 0.15w.