In article ,
NT wrote:
On Sep 14, 10:43*pm, "alexander.keys1"
wrote:
There have been a lot of comments recently about the waste of energy
due to appliances being left on standby, and various gizmo's that are
on offer to turn them off automatically, or otherwise purporting to
save energy. What everybody seems to be forgetting is that an energy-
saving device comes with most UK socket outlets, it's called a
'switch', and when put into the 'off' position, power cosumption is
zero! None of my appliances, including computers, digital TV
receivers, etc. have come to harm through this practice, I always
switch off at the wall, back in the day when there were fewer
appliances this was standard procedure to avoid fire risk.


The phantom power issue is much over stated. In most cases it isn't
worth getting up to switch things off.

Indeed. See e.g.:

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/charger/

I did the power meter thing a year or 2 ago - went round the house
meansuring everything. The only real surprise was my HP Colour Laser
printer. In it's "low-power" idle mode it's sucking 30W. That now gets
turned off. Nothing else does because it's not worth the effort.

Another eye opener is my freesat (or whatever it's called) box - that
sucks 4 watts when on, and ... 4 watts on standby too, so no point even
pushing the button on the remote. The newer ones may be better, but I bet
they suck more when on (to spin up a hard drive) and the same when off.

Gordon