Pull those plugs out - ghost energy consumptions

Energy is one of those things that you can’t avoid talking about when you talk about environment in general and global warming in particular.

Air travel, transportation, industry, agriculture, mining. They all need energy and lots of it. If you look at emissions or energy statistics, however, you realise that our houses, offices, stores, etc are directly responsible for a big chunk of all the energy that gets used up.

(If you’re interested in learning more I personally like the UK’s government DEFRA website, which has a lot of easy to read info www.defra.gov.uk; the US’s EIA www.eia.doe.gov/ is also pretty informative; and wikipedia has loads of info to cross check if you query things like greenhouse gases, or global warming).

If we add heating, lighting and ventilation; houses, offices, stores, etc use up 45% of all the energy generated. This means that changing those little things we have all experienced or done, like leaving all the lights on, having the heat too high or the air conditioning set too cool, at home and at work, are pretty important if we wanna make a difference.

But then, sometimes we use up a lot of energy without even noticing. And this is what I’ll be writing about.

There are a few things, namely, appliances and devices in your house, that use up energy without letting you know they are doing it.

Ironically, in the world we live in, which is increasingly preoccupied with energy saving and global warming, the number of things guzzling up energy in your house without you being aware are multiplying instead of decreasing in number.

This happens because of two modes that manufacturers increasingly build in to devices as substitutes for the good old-fashioned OFF button:

Stand-by mode

Off-Power mode

Stand by

It’s the mode in which the device is using up energy without performing any role and during which there is some indication of energy consumption (like a presence light of the type one sees on TVs when you switch them off with a remote)

Off-power

The device is using up energy, without performing any role, and without any indication of consumption (yes, such things exist)

The following table, which I’m taking out of an NGO’s newspaper (Quercus March/April 2008), shows how much energy devices usually use up for doing absolutely nothing. It’s pretty self explanatory and surprising.

Device	Off-Power (Watts)	Stand-By (Watts)
DVD player	9	17
Stereos	16	25
Television	16	30
Video player	9	18
Computer	14	25
Printer	16	20
Computer Speakers	8	11
Scanner	6	21

(NB: the same sort of data is often available from all sorts of governmental and non-governmental organizations, but i liked this one since it covers most of the devices in a house in a simple manner)

So, for example, if you leave your PC, scanner, printer and speakers on Stand-by you’re doing the same as leaving on a 75 Watt lamp (equivalent to a strong incandescent light bulb) or 6 savings lamps!

If, after a TV session, you shut down with remote controls (which only put things on standby) your TV, DVD player, sound system and video player, you’re wasting 85 Watts. It’s like leaving all the lights in your house on day and night (assuming you have savings lamps)

You use up over 170 Watts permanently if you leave all of these devices on stand-by and over 100 Watts even if they are on off-power!

As a result, on average, 8% of a house’s energy bill is used up in this type of ghost consumptions: doing nothing!

What to do?

Well, besides it being a waste, I find it simply lazy to not spend a few seconds after using a device getting rid of these ghost consumptions. It could hardly be simpler, after all.

Here’s what you have to do (also advice from the same newspaper):

- Plug devices onto a plug or extension with a switch. They cost next to nothing and allow you to just step on the button and cut all of those consumptions in one single half-second move. It can’t get any simpler than that. Besides, it will save your devices from any power spike that might occur.

- Alternatively, if you have no plugs with a power-cut switch, just pull the plug out of the socket.

- Avoid switching off devices just with the remote control. I personally switch off the TV with the remote first and then pull it out of the socket to avoid magnetising the screen. I don’t know if the risk of that happening is real but someone told me that it could happen if I simply pulled the plug out, so, better safe than sorry...

- In the case of desktops, switch off the monitor on the button too, because if you just switch off the computer the monitor simply goes into standby

- laptops and desktops can save energy by activating hibernation. If you are in the middle of something it is not always handy to save, shut-down and then restart and get back to where you were (not to mention it uses up energy shutting down and booting up). Put the system on hibernation which saves a reasonable amount of power, and set the automatic hibernation settings in case you forget to do it before you leave.

- printers, scanners, speakers, etc – don’t start them together with the computer if you’re not about to use them. And keep their power supply off (remember the table above)

- and lastly, the fax machine. It is going to be on standby all the time, unless you only plug it in to send faxes (like I do). So, make sure you check the standby energy consumptions when buying your fax machine, because it will make a difference on you electricity bills after a while.

Well, and that’s really it. I’m sure other things could be added, but this is what comes to mind at the moment. All together it should make a little dent on your energy consumption without demanding almost any effort. It becomes automatic after barely a couple of days. It will also save you money and save the world greenhouse gas emissions from power production.