Au Revoir Standby?
04/05/2008
The impact of society’s ever-increasing energy consumption is
something we are all becoming acutely aware of, and something we as individuals should consider seriously. We are of course taking this very seriously here at Grahams and have been designing and planning many of our installations more recently to take energy efficiency and consumption into account.
Within our homes, items such as cookers, lights, and heaters are obvious consumers of large amounts of energy, but other less obvious things cumulatively make a significant impact. Our whole house control systems allow intelligent control of lighting which can save vast amounts of energy. We are now starting to put “economy” buttons on our touch screens which can reduce lighting loads across the whole house at the press of one button.
We are also looking at all products we sell to identify their power consumption both in use and in standby so we can decide which items in our systems should and could be usefully powered down when not in use.
Many manufacturers often do not publish comprehensive information on the ‘in standby’ consumption of their products, suggesting that they do not consider it relevant, at least not yet. This may in time change due to increasing consumer awareness and desire for this sort of information, but for the time being we are measuring this ourselves.
So what do things really cost to run?
A useful item for comparison is a fridge freezer. Typically, an A+ rated fridge freezer costs around £33 per year to run.
Stereo and multi-channel amplifiers rated at around 100w per channel cost about £100 a year to run. There appeared to be little difference between the cost to run amplifiers with two channels and those with five.
An LCD TV costs around £11 a year to use; a plasma cost £50. In use, LCD clearly beats plasma with regards to power consumption. However, the situation was reversed when ‘in standby’ power consumption was considered. A Pioneer plasma costs less than a pound to leave on standby for a year; this may, in part, be due to Pioneer’s specific commitment to reduce power consumed by standby.
However, it is not quite as clear-cut as just switching equipment off when not 
in use as there are downsides to this approach. Electricals often perform at their best when they are warm and stable. Your Sky+ box won’t be able to record if you unplug it from the mains and you will also start getting letters from Sky to say the box is not connected to a phone line when it tries to do updates over night. There is some concern that regularly switching electrical items on and off stresses the components within them, and significantly reduces their lifespan. This means they could fail sooner and have to be disposed of. This might have a higher financial and environmental cost than if the item had been left on standby and had had a longer lifespan.
The recently introduced “Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment” (WEEE) directive has put the onus on manufacturers to contribute towards re-cycling costs. As a distributor, Grahams is a fully paid up member of the Distributor Take-back Scheme (DTS), operated by Valpak, which supports and enhances a network of collection facilities where consumers can return their old EEE for recycling free-of-charge. More information on these facilities can be found via www.recycle-more.co.uk.
In conclusion, if an item is being used regularly, it is probably best to leave it in standby between uses. This will ensure it performs at its best and lasts longer. But, if an item is to be left for an extended period of time, switch it off to reduce energy wastage.
Perhaps not quite time for ‘au revoir standby’, but its aims are sound and manufacturers appear to be taking heed; Pioneer’s plasmas being a good example. At Grahams you can be assured that we are taking this very seriously and want to play our part.
