Re: Bollocks: Call to scrap TV standby buttons to help environment

In article <e1tjid0k5b@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Cardinal Chunder <cc@xxxxxxxx
pam.xyzabcfghllaa.com> writes
Norman Wells wrote:

But there's the nub of the argument. If you can't detect the 6 watts
from your TV on standby, and it doesn't alter the amount of heating you
require even in the room where it actually sits, it's hardly
contributing to global warming either.

That's absurd. 6 watts is 6 watts. Multiply by millions of households
and you're talking power stations worth of wasted energy, and therefore
hundreds of thousands tonnes of CO2 emissions.

No, you're not.

In 2003, the total electricity generated in the UK was about 378
TeraWatt-Hours, which, if you want it translated, means 378,000,000,000
kilowatt-hours.

If a house has a television on 6-watt standby for 20 hours a day, it
will use 43.8 kilowatt-hours per year. 20 million homes each doing that
will use in total 876,000,000 kilowatt-hours in a year. That is
significantly less than one quarter of one percent of the total
electricity generated in the UK.

There are about 40 power stations in the UK, so the most you could save
by turning all the TVs off is one tenth of one power station.

By way of contrast, China is commissioning a new coal-fired power
station every single week, ie a generating capacity equal to the whole
of the UK's every 10 months.

The whole generating capacity of Britain is a drop in the ocean. We
make no difference whatever we do. Give up. It's futile.

--
Norman Wells
.