Bob Eager wrote:
On Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:17:28 UTC, "John"
wrote:

At the place where I work they are embarking on a campaign on energy
reduction (no issues here) but they keep beating on about TVs left on
standby. Apparently it is going to destroy the planet.

Yet the publicity being used claims £50 per household for stuff on standby.

I get very annoyed about this figure, which is (a) probably ancient (b)
wrong to start with. Proably worked out once (wrongly) in the past, and
forever quoted.

Our 28 inch (sorry!) TV uses nominally 8 watts on standby. Seems to be
in that ball park if I measure it. Let's call it 10W.

OK, that's approximately 250Wh over 24 hours, or 1kWh over 4 days.
That's approximately 90kWh a year.

Take an approximate cost of 10p per kWh. This will vary, but again a
ballpark figure. That makes £9.00 per year - let's round it up to £10 as
the cost per kWh is a little low, perhaps.

So, £10 per year if you leave the TV on standby ALL of the time. In
reality, some of that time, it will be switched on; let's say about 5
hours a day on average, or 20% of the time. You can't count that time as
'wasted standby' time, so that brings the cost per year down to £8. Even
lower if you actually turn it off for the night.

Now, that's only for one appliance, but it's the one everyone quotes and
indeed seems to imply that it's responsible for £50 on it's own.
Selective quoting. It's also the most power hungry.

The figures given are total greenwash. Not to say you shouldn't turn it
off (we do) but let's get there by quoting truthful figures.

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The BBC had a feature on this on the news web site so it might be worth
searching for. The figures are from memory so don't quote me. 23% of
co2 in the UK comes from homes of which about 60% is heating and 20% is
hot water. About 10% was domestic electrical appliances. In essence the
amount used by appliances on standby is bugger all compared to heating
costs.
Another factor I find amazing is that if global warming is due to air
travel and car use why is air travel only responsible for 2% of global
co2 and car use responsible for 3.5% globally.
Seems somebody is telling porky pies here.

Kevin