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

Norman Wells <norman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1he0mem.1q87xsx3f2kgcN%me4@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Wayne Stuart
<me4@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Norman Wells <norman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <e23ht801noe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Cardinal Chunder <cc@xxxxxxx
spam.xyzabcfghllaa.com> writes

<snip>
Whether government legislate or not, it's still worth trying to save
energy in the home if for no other reason than having more money to spend.

Well, that's everyone's personal choice. Not everyone will agree with
you that it's worth all the hassle of turning the TV off every night for
a year just to save the price of a pint.

I've got a power monitor gadget, and I thought you all might be
interested to hear what sort of power the various things in my house use
that could run permanently or on standby.

So adding that up, if I don't shut any of these things when I'm not
using them, my house is permanently using at least 89 watts. [1] That's
2.1 kilowatt hour per day, 780 kilowatt hour per year...

Assuming 20 million households in our country were to do similar, that
would be 15.6 terawatt hour of electricity needing to be generated every
year, for no appreciable purpose.

No, it wouldn't. It's 0.0156 terawatt hours.

You sure about that?

89 watts
x 24 hours
x 365 days
= 778640 watt hours per annum - Note *not* kilowatt hours

x 20,000,000 households
= 15,592,800,000,000 watt hours per annum

÷ 1,000,000,000,000 (10 to the power of 12, i.e. tera)
= 15.5928 terawatt hour per annum

That's the trouble with maths. It's just too complicated for some people.

<smirk> You were saying?...

Or in money terms, I'd guess that's
about 1.25 billion pounds per year. [2] And that's not even including
business premises.

It costs you just under £55 a year to keep all of your equipment running
on standby 24 hours a day, or just over £1 per week. Do you really want
to go round switching off 16 devices every night and whenever you're not
using them, resetting and waiting for them every time you turn them back
on,

That's assuming all 16 devices are used every day. They're not.

and replacing those that blow under all the repeated strain to save
£1 per week?

LMAO! I love it when this old chestnut gets trotted out!

I'm sure some of us can pull stories out of our arses of electrical
devices detonating when you turn them on, but on the flip side, I
present my 10 year old Sanyo TV, used virtually every day since
purchase, and turned off every night. Never missed a beat. In fact, I
can't recall any electrical device I've ever had going the way you
suggest they do - barring the washing machine, which are notoriously
short lived anyway.

It is my experience that more often than not, electrical devices are
replaced with newer, better featured models long before unreliability
becomes an issue. But if your experiences are different than mine, with
electrical items exploding around you on a regular basis, might I
suggest that you don't buy such cheap ***.

The fact that you appear to keep them permanently on would indicate that
you're not. In that case, I suggest you're in the sensible majority.

Reading not your strong point, is it? Maybe you should try maths... oh
wait... no, scratch that... ;p

I am one of these so called "unsensible" minority,or what I would
describe as the rational, thoughtful minority. I do indeed turn stuff
off if I don't need it, and I don't particularly feel too unburdened by
that. The 89 watts I quote, is what I *could* leave on if I was someone
like you who doesn't give a ***. In actuality, I only leave on 4 of
those devises, using about 19 watt; 13 of which is the extremely
wasteful Sky+ box. Plus the fridge of course, which uses about 1kwh per
day (£25 a year).

If every 20 million households did likewise, that would require 12
terawatts [1] less power needing to be generated per year, in this
country alone. How many tonnes of unreplenishable fuels that burns, or
how many tonnes of undesirable gasses that spits out, I have no idea,
but I'm pretty damn sure it's probably not worth it.

[1] - Adjust however you see fit, depending on how long these devices
are sat unneeded per day/year.

In any case, as I've pointed out, most of the heat emitted by electrical
devices is not wasted, but serves to keep your house just that little
bit warmer so the heating doesn't have to work quite so hard and use
quite so much fossil fuel.

Most electrical devices are not designed to be heating devices. As
such, they're likely somewhat less efficient as doing this task that a
device designed for the job, and functioning only when they're needed,
e.g. not during the summer. Like a central heating system. Probably
best to leave the heating to that I reckon. Best tool for the job and
all that.

If I go to bed leaving my living room at about 20 degrees with no
electrical appliances running, and the outside temperature drops to
about 5 degrees, that room is still at about 17 degrees when I get up in
the morning, so only about a fifth of the internal/external temperature
difference has been lost to the environment. This indicates that about
80% of the energy consumed by your devices on standby overnight is
usefully employed as supplementary heating.

80% er? Are you sure it's not 0.08% or something? <s***>

The cost of keeping all your electrical equipment on for eight hours
overnight, which is the major time when you won't be using it, is
something like £18 per year. The wasted electricity which escapes
through the windows etc and serves no heating purpose is just one fifth
of that, ie £3.60 per year, or just about a penny a day. Go round
turning your 16 pieces of equipment off every night to save that if you
wish, but please don't try to convince me it's worthwhile or will save
the planet.

Sounds like you're trying to convince yourself that your irrational
wastefulness is a good thing. Sounds like a crock of *** to me.

--
This message was brought to you by Wayne Stuart - Have a nice day!
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