Stop wasting electricity… make “standby” the same as off.

I already knew about the power wasted by household devices in “standby” mode. Upon reading Monbiot’s HEAT it has become painfully obvious that there really is huge wastage in this when you scale things up to the level of countries.

“According to the British government, around one million tonnes of carbon emissions a year are caused by equipment in homes and offices left in ‘standby’ mode: plugged into the wall but not operating. This uses about 2 per cent of all our electricity.” (Monbiot, HEAT)

I’m sure the government figures don’t just mean “standby” state but also devices left idling, i.e. computers just left to be (maybe in “power saver” mode).

Well I found this at our local green shop, it’s a mains extension board with anti-surge and automatic power down for dependent devices! You plug in your main device, say a computer, into a specially marked black master socket. All the other sockets automatically power down (and up) when the “master” device is drawing operating-level power.

It mentions only computers on the packaging, but I have this working with our TV as the master, and DVD and set top box as “slaves”. It only costs £30

In truth this only saves you having to switch off your devices at the wall, but given that most of us do not remember to do this or cannot get to the sockets easily, it is a huge saving. I’m getting another one for my desktop computer shorly, to have it power down my speakers, screen and printer when not in use.

The device itself still draws current when everything is off but its very low – the die hard solution is to turn everything off at the mains, always. However this works even with standby mode (at least with the TV) i.e. you put the TV into standby with the remote and the other devices go off. Obviously in this scenario the TV is still wasting power in its inevitably inefficient standby state. Press the physical off button on it (IF there is one these days) and it goes dead and saves you more money.

Still, we have to think about the cooker, washing machine, dishwasher et al that are just sitting there waiting for a job to do, burning the electricity away for nothing.

…and of course even when you’re using your computer if you’re not listening to music or not printing stuff out etc, the devices should be turned off directly. I suppose this device is a nod to the fact that none of us are perfect and we can’t spend our lives remembering to turn everything on and off only when we need it. Roll on very efficient standby modes!