Standby Saver System???

tonsai

if you google '1010 savasocket' you'll see they are giving 25 of them away.........

tonsai

A new report Energy Saving Trust have reported that Brtons waste £1.3 billiion a year on standby power. To see the report just google 'Energy Saving Trust: households waste £1.3bn for leaving gadget switched on - Telegraph'

Between £50 and £86 per household on standby waste! That's more than 10% of my annual electricity bill. Time to buy another one of the savasocket things I think.

zeupater

tonsai wrote: »

A new report Energy Saving Trust have reported that Brtons waste £1.3 billiion a year on standby power. To see the report just google 'Energy Saving Trust: households waste £1.3bn for leaving gadget switched on - Telegraph'

Between £50 and £86 per household on standby waste! That's more than 10% of my annual electricity bill. Time to buy another one of the savasocket things I think.

Or available from the EST here .... (http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Publications2/Corporate/Research-and-insights/Powering-the-nation-household-electricity-using-habits-revealed)

An annual cost of standby items of £86 would represent a lot more than 10% to us, more like >45% on average, but then again unlike the 'average' of the report we don't squander energy unnecessarily .... this being without resorting to standby power saving sockets - there is such a thing as a switch on the wall for most household items ...

I personally have a number of reservations on the report, from it's participant selection methodology to it's conclusions - some look good at first sight but with a little thought can certainly be open to serious question, especially from a non-partisan viewpoint ... it must also be noted that the continual reference to 'average' relates to averages in a year with both atypically cold winter temperatures and an atypically dull summer .... so as the terms atypical & average don't really sit well together I wonder why this isn't really highlighted ...

One thing I don't really understand is the seemingly total resistance to change in the sample selected ... if our household was part of the investigation then I'd certainly become much more aware of energy usage patterns, I just couldn't take a different approach, especially as I'd been interested enough to take part in the trial in the first place ... so the only way I wouldn't attempt to change the consumption patterns is if I had been told not to do so as part of the process .... that then leads me to contemplate whether the same sample set of households would now be encouraged to buy (/given ? - don't you just love sweeteners ) a substantial amount of low energy alternative products and some energy saving advice then continue the research for a further 12 months to it's inevitable conclusion, being a report leading to another media headline on 'average' savings which could be available .....

Anyway .... If anyone from the EST is reading, send me a pm if you're doing some more research and are looking to provide sweeteners ... solar pv, LSHP, high efficiency heating, high insulation levels, reasonably low energy products already installed ... but we could be interested in a long term test on moving from our large diesel 'lump' to an augmented range electric vehicle such as an Ampera if you have any going for free, I'm sure we can make the 'averages' look good ... :rotfl:

HTH
Z

Fred_Bear_2

tonsai wrote: »

A new report Energy Saving Trust have reported that Brtons waste £1.3 billiion a year on standby power. To see the report just google 'Energy Saving Trust: households waste £1.3bn for leaving gadget switched on - Telegraph'

Between £50 and £86 per household on standby waste!

I found the Energy Saving Trust report interesting, but the Daily Telegraph inevitably got some of their figures wrong. The report states that £24 is spent on electricity for washing machines whereas the DT says £80, and the correct figure for dishwashers was £42 (DT says £160).

The DT seems to be implying that it's the fault of consumers for wasting electricity on standby. Whilst this is partly true, it is also true that manufacturers have produced equipment that has used unnecessarily large amounts of electricity on standby and kept the figures hidden from consumers. Fortunately things are improving.
For example my previous cooker used 5.9 watts on standby and the new one uses 1.3 watts. Previous washing machine 4.7 watts, new one 0.0 watts.

Findings that surprised me from the report:
Single person householders use more electricity than households with children for both lighting and (if they have a one) the washing machine.
On average only 24% of lamps are CFLs.

Martyn1981

Fred_Bear wrote: »

The DT seems to be implying that it's the fault of consumers for wasting electricity on standby. Whilst this is partly true, it is also true that manufacturers have produced equipment that has used unnecessarily large amounts of electricity on standby and kept the figures hidden from consumers. Fortunately things are improving.

Totally agree. I think putting pressure on manufactures to reduce stand-by levels has worked well. My monitor now has a stand-by of 0.5W.

I still have a small bugbear (any relation Fred?), and that's with fake offs. I couldn't believe that the flimsy and tiny movement of the off button was actually mechanically doing much, so I checked the manual and it said that 'off' consumption was 0.34W, unless switched off at the mains. Grrrrr.

Mart.

Fred_Bear_2

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I still have a small bugbear (any relation Fred?)
Mart.

Yes, but we don't usually talk about him.

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

I personally have a number of reservations on the report, from it's participant selection methodology to it's conclusions - some look good at first sight but with a little thought can certainly be open to serious question, especially from a non-partisan viewpoint ...

In support of that statement, let us take their information on Tumble dryers. The EST report states:

The average annual
consumption for clothes dryers, typically tumble dryers, was 394 kWh, and the
average number of cycles was 260 a year. The report analysed each household for
the number of washes that were followed by a tumble drying cycle and found that
this occurred in approximately 80 per cent of cases.

This is higher than estimated in Market Transformation
Programme’s (MTP) current models (60 per cent34). This could be an indication
that people are not fully utilising any outdoor space they may have available to
dry their laundry in the warmer, drier months.

So only an average of 1.5kWh per cycle(15 pence per cycle with Electricity @ 10p/kWh)


I have been doing some research on tumble dryers prior to buying a new one; and as usual looked at the comprehensive WHICH report and Sust-it.

'Sust it' list all tumble dryers on sale and state their figures are based on:

148 6kg (888kg) drying cycles per year (UK average usage)
Standard dry
cotton cycle

There are a couple of the very latest models that are around 1.5kWh a cycle but the average consumption per cycle is around 4kWh - say 40pence.

With WHICH, the annual running costs of their 'Best Buy' models was generally in £100 to £110 region. That figure is produced from

Energy costs (£)

Annual energy costs based on
drying 3 full-capacity loads per week

WHICH's costs, from 156 cycles per year, are on average in excess of 60p a cycle.

Something's odd.

Fred_Bear_2

Cardew wrote: »

Something's odd.

I agree - it's very confusing, but I think I can partly explain it.

I looked at the Which? best buy C-rated Bosch WTV74105.
The sust-it website is excellent as they explain exactly how their figures are calculated. 1 cycle uses 3.24 kWh @ 14.3p/kWh. Cost 46p/cycle
Which? says 182 cycles cost £94 = 52p/cycle (kWh price not given). Not so different.

As you say, the EST report gives a figure of 1.5kWh/cycle. This could be because in the real world people are not using full loads. I would think the electricity consumption of a drying cycle is fairly proportional to the load.

What surprised me from sust-it and Which? is the vast difference in efficiency between different models. Annual costs go from £40 to £131.

Cardew

Fred_Bear wrote: »

I agree - it's very confusing, but I think I can partly explain it.

I looked at the Which? best buy C-rated Bosch WTV74105.
The sust-it website is excellent as they explain exactly how their figures are calculated. 1 cycle uses 3.24 kWh @ 14.3p/kWh. Cost 46p/cycle
Which? says 182 cycles cost £94 = 52p/cycle (kWh price not given). Not so different.

As you say, the EST report gives a figure of 1.5kWh/cycle. This could be because in the real world people are not using full loads. I would think the electricity consumption of a drying cycle is fairly proportional to the load.

What surprised me from sust-it and Which? is the vast difference in efficiency between different models. Annual costs go from £40 to £131.

Just a point on the WHICH tests - they say 3 cycles a week which is 156 a year(not 182) so for £94 that is 60p a cycle. So by any sensible pricing of electricity that is over 4kWh and IMO 5kWh would be realistic.(12p/kWh)

I agree that part loads would use less electricity.

The vast difference in running costs these days is mainly due to the introduction of dryers with heat pumps. I have just bought one - the Meile T8966 condenser dryer(which is the bigger version of the T8826 which came top of the Which best buys)

The handbook has a detailed table of consumption data. The highest consumption shown is 2.3kWh for a full 8kg load of cottons, spun at 'only' 1,000rpm and thus 60% residual moisture. Spin it at 1,600rpm(the latest Miele washer achieves that) and the same load uses 1.75kWh. That is for 'normal' dryness - ready for hand ironing uses about 25% less electricity.

However the overall point is that it seems to me that the EST estimates of dryer running costs are way out of line.

Fred_Bear_2

Cardew wrote: »

Just a point on the WHICH tests - they say 3 cycles a week which is 156 a year(not 182) so for £94 that is 60p a cycle. So by any sensible pricing of electricity that is over 4kWh and IMO 5kWh would be realistic.(12p/kWh)

Yes you are quite right about the Which? figures.
If you click on "Tumble dryer energy costs" then scroll down to "How tumble dryers compare on energy efficiency" It says that the Bosch WTW84360GB costs £26 per annum based on 1 load every 2 days (182 per annum). On another page it says this same machine costs £40 per annum based on 3 loads per week (156 per annum). That's what confused me.

Cardew wrote: »

However the overall point is that it seems to me that the EST estimates of dryer running costs are way out of line.

The EST figures are not estimates but actual results from monitoring users homes. Surely the only explanation is that people must be using part loads. Apparently, from the report, people sometimes wash one garment at a time.