Turning off at the wall

black-saturn

Can someone tell me what's the difference between turning an appliance off at the wall instead of switching it off and NOT leaving it on standby. Surely it only uses electric if the appliance is in use or on standby?

bunking_off

For the difference between switching off versus leaving it on standby, it depends on the appliance I guess. I recently dug out the manual for my TV (Panasonic 32", 5 years old so not exactly state of the art) to check and it uses 1.6W on standby. In context, that's, say, 40WH per day, or 14KWH per year, or approx £1 per year.

However, I think you're asking about the difference between turning it off and unplugging/turning it off at the socket. Unless the appliance is incredibly badly designed, there shouldn't be any difference beween turning the switch off on the appliance and turning it off on the wall. I suppose in principle if you have an appliance with an external transformer, turning off the appliance leaves the transformer powered up so there'll be some usage there, but I would imagine that it would be so small as to be immaterial.

djohn2002uk

From the safety aspect, leaving it on standby leaves some components in the set still "live". Switching off using the On/Off switch leaves only the cable up to the on/off switch "live". Switching off at the socket removes all voltage.

ManAtHome

And wall sockets are easier and cheaper to replace than appliance switches.

Ted_Hutchinson

If your cooker has a clock then you have to reset the clock each time you want to use the timer programmes. However in total the energy saving per household to switch off all standby appliances is significant.

In most probability standby electricity is more likely to cost somewhere in the region of £38.

The idea of paying for something that we are not using is not very encouraging. Consider switching appliances of properly in a bid to safe electricity, this is not only saving you money but also helping the environment. If you want to find out how much money you could save by reducing standby electricity consumption in your own house please try the Standby Electricity Consumption Guide.

From our calculations the current average household standby power consumption as 60W, however this amount could increase further with the growing number of electronic appliances in the average house.

60W = 0.060 kW x 8760 hrs = 525.6 kWh / year

Taking the average household electricity consumption as 3,880 kWh per year this indicates that standby power is responsible for 13% of home power consumption. The associated costs for a three bedroom flat are estimated at £35.70

I have a couple of gadgets which I find useful.
One is a remote control box which I aim the hi-fi remote at and it switches the power on to the hi-fi and then I press again and the HI-fi comes on. Came from Lidl's
I've also got a master socket/slave extension which when I power up the computer detects the electricity going to the PC and then fires up the speakers/printer/modem so those transformers aren't using any power if the PC is off.

bunking_off

Have to say that although the principle may be correct, I'm highly sceptical about Strathclyde University's figures:

- Bedroom : Bulk of usage in "best case scenario" is for leaving a scanner on all the time...I'm sure everyone has one of these left on. On the worst case situation, they appear to be saying that a TV is getting through 200KWH in a year, which is 22W standby power usage. That doesn't match with the figures for my own TV.

- Kitchen : I struggle to believe that the clock on an oven could be using 18W as they suggest (unless you leave the oven light on permanently)

- TV : they have the "average" TV at 4.5W...which is wildly at odds with my own TV

Robert5988

bunking_off wrote:

Have to say that although the principle may be correct, I'm highly sceptical about Strathclyde University's figures:

- Bedroom : Bulk of usage in "best case scenario" is for leaving a scanner on all the time...I'm sure everyone has one of these left on. On the worst case situation, they appear to be saying that a TV is getting through 200KWH in a year, which is 22W standby power usage. That doesn't match with the figures for my own TV.

- Kitchen : I struggle to believe that the clock on an oven could be using 18W as they suggest (unless you leave the oven light on permanently)

- TV : they have the "average" TV at 4.5W...which is wildly at odds with my own TV

I agree with you absolutely about the overestimation of standby consumption.

All my TV's are under 1 watt on standby and if you research on the web you will see that typical consumptions for new sets are now in the order of 0.4 watts. 22watts on standby is from an bygone era.

We should get this 'saving' in perspective. Boiling a surplus 1/2 cup of water in a kettle occasionally will 'waste' far more more power than leaving devices on standby.

Before the inevitable 'safety' issue is raised - that is largely bunk. If you are concerned about that level of safety you should switch off all circuits not in use at the fuse box.

DSmiffy

On the TV program No Waste Like Home last week, it was stated that electrical appliances such as DVD players, TV's radios etc left on standby used up 80%, yes 80% !!! of the electricity it would use if it were switched on.
I say switch 'em off.

buglawton

I think you are correct - most low current mains gadgets consume nearly as much in Standby as in use. The Govt could so easily legislate to oblige manufacturers to design intelligent mains units (including wall-wart type) that sense when power is needed and only consume 0.005 W in standby. I am not an electronics engineer but if you are one please confirm!

paul_h

DSmiffy wrote:

On the TV program No Waste Like Home last week, it was stated that electrical appliances such as DVD players, TV's radios etc left on standby used up 80%, yes 80% !!! of the electricity it would use if it were switched on.
I say switch 'em off.

80% for DVDs TVs and radios? I don't think so...

You can soon check this by looking at the manual - they should now give a figure for power consumption and standby consumption. As the other posters have said, the standby consumption figures are very low now on most modern equipment.

The worst offender however is the satellite digibox - these have a high standby consumption as they are not really in 'standby' - only the outputs are powered down. The lnb, and the receiver and processor circuits are still powered enabling the box to receive overnight software and programming updates. You could switch it off at the socket, but power cycling these devices (turning power off and on daily) is not recommended and could lead to premature failure.

paul_h

buglawton wrote:

The Govt could so easily legislate to oblige manufacturers to design intelligent mains units (including wall-wart type) that sense when power is needed and only consume 0.005 W in standby. I am not an electronics engineer but if you are one please confirm!

I agree that Govts should legislate to control things like this, and I believe Japan already has - you will find that many of the goods sold in, or originating from Japan have very low standby consumption now.

Realistically, the minimum standby consumption acheivable is currently in the 0.5W area as power is required for the the remote circuits and some sort of low level signal processing to detect the correct remote key press.