In Perspective - Home Plug-in Devices
February 28, 2010 Harry Applin
Last week the topic was the refrigerator, EnergyStar, Clunker Appliance rebates, and of course saving money by saving energy. But what about all of those other things, you know things like the TV, computer, stereo, DVD and VCR.
What is surprising is that all of these devices, and others, are continually using electricity whether they are on or not. I was surprised to learn that things like the X-Box or Playstation use almost the same amount of electricity when they are off as they do when they are on. These gaming devices use 200-300 watts. I was also surprised that the Wii game console uses 19 watts, so in comparison, the Wii uses the energy 10% of the other consoles.
Audio systems make up 5% of the total home energy use and most of that is used while on stand-by. These units will use 20-50 watts while they sit there doing nothing. DVD and VCR's are another source of, what some call, vampire appliances. Each of these units uses up to 10 watts sitting there doing nothing. The standby power wasted varies among electronic equipment, but the cost to consumers and businesses for the electricity lost to vampire power is estimated to be $4 billion annually.
TV's are a bit different. The television is in a major revolution with the new Plasma, LCD, and Projection versions besides the typical, common CRT. The CRT uses 100-200 watts depending on size and will use up to 10 watts while off. The LCD uses around 200 watts depending on size and like the CRT the bigger the more electricity used. The plasma TV is the big energy user with some running close to 400 watts. The projection TV's use about 175 watts but fortunately the new EnergyStar models have reduced the vampire draw of these units are about 5-10 watts.
Nowadays, we have the personal computer and all of its peripherals. A lot of people are now connected to the internet 24 hours a day and are leaving their computers on all of the time. Most of these computers are using at least 180 watts of electricity. The trick here if you are not going to turn the system off is to use the built in energy management. This could cut the overall energy use by 50-60%.
Now all of the other things could just be unplugged which will save half or more electricity over a year. But that is inconvenient. There are a couple of other things that could help. The typical power strip is a great option. Not only do they have a single off/on switch but they usually have surge protection. This is protection from power surges typical of lightning strikes and inconsistent power from transformers. The newer power strips now have remote controls for more convenience. Others use the control of one device to shut off other devices. These are great for computer systems where you would shut off the CPU and all of the peripherals like the monitor, printer, or scanner would shut off automatically. When you turn on the CPU all of the other equipment then turns on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standby_power