AZ Nomad wrote in message
...
On Mon, 2 Nov 2009 09:00:58 -0800, William Sommerwerck
wrote:
Its been pointed that you don't really need a watt or watt-hour meter to
save money -- you just turn off things you're not using.

This is not altogether true.

My electric bill was ridiculous, so I started checking. I'd been too lazy
to
regularly turn off my A/V system's equipment, which includes a number of
vampire devices.

I was surprised to discover that the Parasound controller pulled 30VA,
even
when not turned on. And a Lexicon CP-3plus drew 20VA, simply in standby.
As
I rarely use it, I turned the standby switch to "off".

Most of the vampire devices are items I don't use regularly. I'm going to
move them to their own strip, so that they will always be off, except
when
actually being used.

You can get an idea just from the temperature of the device when it is
on standby. Cold devices can be ignored. I've found the worst
offender in all my AV equipment is the cable box.


I bought a set-top box (UK Freeview) and thought to myself
"hang on a bit the box is as warm with green LED on as on red standby"
I measured consumed watts in both states and standby is 80 percent of the on
state. I put in a hard on/off switch , data held in EEProm or whatever and
no difference in function except programme info pages takes a couple of
minutes to gather


--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/