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

Norman Wells <norman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1he262b.10ii2ft1hfutfeN%me4@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Wayne Stuart
<me4@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
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

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?

No, I'm not now that you mention it.

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

Ahah, you noticed my deliberate mistake then?

Uh huh.

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

Indeed it is. I made a mistake.

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

<smirk> You were saying?...

Alright, alright, you've had your fun. Let's get on with it, shall we?

You think perhaps you might think twice about being so condescending in
future then? Hmm?

15.5928 terawatt hours still only equates to 4.13% of British generating
capacity. To save that, 320 million electrical devices would have to be
permanently switched off and never used. Ever. That means no-one in
Britain ever watching the television, a DVD or a video, or having a
clock radio and so on. It also rather unrealistically assumes that all
households have on average as many as your 16 devices permanently on
standby, and that all the heat they generate is immediately lost to the
atmosphere.

You see, this highlights the problem here. What you call "only 4.13%",
I might call "a not inconsequential 4.13%". There is a fundamental
chasm of difference between our philosophies and values, that it would
appear cannot be bridged. I suspect we are never going to agree. But
hey, that's Usenet I guess!

If we take a somewhat more reasonable scenario that a normal house has
perhaps 8 devices on standby rather than your 16, that they are all just
turned off overnight not all day, and only a fifth of the heat they
would generate overnight on standby is lost to the environment as I
showed earlier, that reduces to just over 0.5 of a terawatt hour saved
per year, or about 0.14% of British generating capacity.

Play with the figures as much as you like, this has been done to death
in this very thread, and I continue to reject your claims that the heat
generated is more, or just as efficient as using a proper heating system
only when it is needed. What is the point of generating heat, when heat
is not required? It's waste. Unnecessary waste. Period.

Not a lot
really, is it, given the inconvenience and the damage that may
conceivably be caused, even though you don't believe it, by turning
every one of those devices off and on 730 times every year?

No, I don't believe you. I think you're using this exploding devices
theory as an excuse. Granted, I only have a very small sample that says
electrical devices are *not* breaking due to being switched on and off,
but it's the only evidence I know to be true. And it suggests your
position is merely unfounded superstition.

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.

No, it doesn't assume that at all. It comes from your own calculation
above that your devices use 778640 watt-hours (778.64 kilowatt-hours) a
year on permanent 24 hour standby. A kilowatt-hour of electricity costs
7p approximately. If you do the maths, you'll find that comes to
exactly what I said over the course of a year.

My point was you seem to putting a lot of weight behind how often
switching my devices on and off is required, and how prohibitively
onerous you believe it to be. I have no idea how lazy you have to be to
find this such a major issue, but personally, I don't find it
particularly gruelling at all. And trust me, me and the couch are very
well acquainted.

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 ***.

It's not what I buy that matters. It's what the 20 million households
in Britain buy. Much of that you may consider cheap ***, but if just
one device blows costing, say, £200, that negates about 12 years worth
of savings by turning all 16 off overnight every night.

Point one, made previously: Devices often get replaced whether they're
still working or not. A broken devise merely speeds up the upgrade
process slightly, negating much of this supposed loss... which you still
haven't convinced me exists to any significant degree.

Point two: Here highlights another fundamental difference between us.
To me, there are bigger issues than what you can put a pricetag on.
Even if this policy of saving what I see as unnecessary wastage of
energy had no monetary value to me, I would still do it. For example, I
don't have a water meter in my house, so there'd be no financial penalty
for me to use water irresponsibly and wastefully... but I don't. I'm
still just as frugal with that as if I was paying for it by the gallon,
because that's the kind of person I am.

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.

Well, as I showed above, the total is actually nearer 0.5 terawatts,
which is small beer frankly. It may pain you to know that you're not
doing any real good by turning everything off, and that the polar ice
caps are not about to grow again because you care enough to do
something/anything however small, but that's the truth. You're tiddling
around at the margins.

What may surprise you is that I too am unconvinced of these assertions
of melting icecaps being our fault. Could very well be our planet doing
what it would have done whether we're here or not. But just in case,
it's very little skin off my nose, to do my bit anyway.

What concerns me most, is the rate of which unreplenishable natural
resources are being squandered by our generation, needlessly and
extravagantly, just for minor conveniences and thoughtlessness. It's
human nature to be selfish, adopting a policy of "I'm alright Jack",
with any thoughts of diminishing resources being exhausted, far away,
long past our own mortality. Whereas I take the more thoughtful view of
future generations looking back at our generation, and cursing their
ancestors selfish, extravagant ways. But at least when they do this, I
know that their accusations are less aimed at me than most, because I'm
doing my bit, whereas it is the majority of my co-generation members who
are the ones who can't be arsed and don't give a *** for anyone or
anything but themselves.

[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

Er no, actually. Physics tells you that there is such a thing a the law
of conservation of energy. That means if you put 6 watts into a device,
you will get 6 watts out. In the case of electrical appliances on
standby, it comes out as 6 watts of heat. No buts. So, as heating
devices they're 100% efficient.
, and functioning only when they're needed,
e.g. not during the summer.

What you mean to say is when the outside air temperature is above what
you want for comfort indoors, ie 20 to 21 degrees. I agree that heat
from electrical devices is not needed then and is wasted. However, it
may have escaped your attention that summers in Britain are rather poor,
and that there aren't in fact many periods when the temperature is
consistently above this level. Certainly, temperatures like that are
rare at night when you suggest we should all turn our electrical
thingies off. It's then that they're needed and their heat output does
not go to waste.

Can't speak for everyone, but about June time, my central heating system
is turned off, and usually doesn't start churning in anger again until
about late September. It's just not needed. Heat generated during the
day, is enough to keep perfectly comfortable during the night.
Therefore, any heat generated by electrical devices during those months,
is superfluous.

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***>

No. Now would you like to address the point seriously? How much does
the temperature in your living room fall under the conditions I outlined
above?

I have no idea. But whatever it is, no conclusions can be drawn, due to
no two houses having exactly the same insulation properties.

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.

Well, look at the calculation again and prove me wrong.

If you can.

There's no point. Your calculations are meaningless, because you've
failed to convince me that your points have any significant merit, or
include many of the parameters to arrive at a conclusion. To reiterate,
much of the heat generated by devices not designated as a heating
device, at times of day or year when it is not required, will bleed
away; the degree of which will be partially dictated by the efficiency
of any insulation. Hence, it is an inefficient heat source, and
unnecessarily wasteful.

I recalled having a similar conversation to this somewhere on usenet
previously. So I had a look back. And I find this conversation I
recall, was with you, 4 months ago. We're just going over the same
thing, with the same stalemate result.

This last conversation revolved around PCs in my office being left
burning full pelt 24/7. Turned out you saw this as no big deal, using
the same arguments then as you are now. Presented with the same facts
and figures, what you saw as insignificant, I saw as irrational,
irresponsible wastefulness.

Just for kicks, I've since updated the figures...

My office is one of a network of offices across the country, employing
about 5000 staff, each with a PC on their desk. From upon high, it was
decreed that all these PCs should be left switched on permanently,
waiting for that once in a blue moon occasion when they might need to be
updated over the network.

These PCs never sleep. The monitors switch to power saving mode after
an hour or so, but the beige boxes buzz away permanently at a steady 61
watts each.

All this works out that our little department uses 2.9 gigawatt hours
per annum, just for these desktop PCs & monitors. I calculate that of
this, only 0.75 gigawatt hours is actually needed to do the job. This
results in 2.1 gigawatt hours being burned while sitting doing
absolutely nothing. Or in monitary terms, that's £154000 per annum in
unnecessary electricity bills. A bill that the British taxpayer is
footing out of their pockets.

And do bear in mind, this is one small corner of the civil service.
Just picture how many millions of PCs are sitting on desks, up and down
the country in government departments, doing nothing but burn the watts.
Does it strike you as somewhat hypocritical of our government asking us
to save energy, when their own departments squander it wastefully with
scant regard?

Again, I realise you'll see this as an insignificant amount, and how
much they heat the building - whether this heat is needed or not - and
how it prevents this exploding electrical equipment phenomenon you
insist happens - even though I've seen no evidence of this in the real
world - but again, I suspect this vast chasm between our philosophies,
will never allow someone like you and someone like me, to agree.

C'est la vie!

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