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

In article <1he4biw.1wdwwp01l8iv4mN%me4@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Wayne Stuart
<me4@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Norman Wells <norman@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

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

What, and spoil the fun? No way!

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'm not sure that's right. It's only semantics after all, and the two
are not mutually exclusive. But the amount that is 'wasted' is
something that's worth arguing over because all subsequent questions of
what, if anything, to do about it depends on it. Hence, I argued that
the actual figure was something like:

just over 0.5 of a terawatt hour saved
per year, or about 0.14% of British generating capacity.

We can still argue over whether that is consequential, but I'm convinced
it's more realistic, and I've given my reasons and calculations that
have led me to that conclusion.

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.

We may be closer than you think. There is no point in generating heat
when it is not required. It's waste. However, there may be
justifications for doing it. The effort involved may be one, the
economic cost of waiting for systems to power up every morning may be
another, the inconvenience may be another, as may be the risk, whatever
its magnitude, of devices going awol because of repeated switching off
and on. Against that must be set the benefit to the planet, and the
economic benefit to the consumer. I've argued that there is no benefit
to the planet because it's all so trivial, and that the average consumer
could save just £3.60 a year by turning eight electrical devices off
every night. There will always be those who think that is worthwhile
and will go to any lengths to do it, but I don't, and I doubt if many
do.

Point one, made previously: Devices often get replaced whether they're
still working or not.

Then perhaps you should be railing against that as a waste of rare earth
resources?

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.

Well, I gave the example of lightbulbs that always blow when you turn
them on. The same principles apply to any piece of electrical
apparatus. Turning it on causes it or parts of it to heat up causing
differential expansion which can cause all sorts of problems. Turning a
device on also causes a voltage spike which can also cause damage.
Turning a computer off when it is accessing its hard drive can also
cause problems with the head crashing into the disk (or so I've been
told). Why else does Windows ponder the matter for several annoying
seconds before telling me it's now safe to turn the computer off
whenever I press the switch? And why, if I do so earlier, does it
insist on checking my hard drive for errors the next time it powers up?
There must be a clue there.

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.

Well, I'm not a great believer in wearing hair shirts, self-
flagellation, or having a puritan outlook. There indeed is a gulf we
will never bridge. If there is no apparent shortage of something, nor
any cost implications, nor any significant effect on the world or its
environment, I don't feel guilty about using it. Hence, I continue to
breathe normally, drink the water, avoid hunger and keep myself warm.

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.

That's all very well and pious, and if it makes you happy, so be it.
But it does smack a bit of self-flagellation, which is not for everyone.

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.

But how is that heat generated? Your fridge? Your other electrical
devices? It can't appear from nowhere.

Therefore, any heat generated by electrical devices during those months,
is superfluous.

Ah well, let's see how you answer the previous question.

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.

Since you're so concerned about waste, though, I'm sure you have plenty
of insulation. And I think you're being disingenuous when you say you
have no idea how quickly or slowly your house cools down. Surely a
thermometer is one of your favourite instruments?

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.

I'll take it that you can't then.

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.

No, it's not inefficient, though it may at times give out heat when it
is not needed. But that's for a very minor part of the year in Britain.

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.

But how much less is being paid in heating bills by virtue of their
being on?

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?

Isn't everything about this government hypocritical?

C'est la vie!

Isn't that a huge waste of French, when there's plenty of cheap English
you could have used?

--
Norman Wells
.

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