Martin Brown used his keyboard to write :
The other less obvious one is some computer sound systems really do consume
as much power when "off" as they do when "on". They are best put on a smart
peripheral switch off device so that when the PC is off they are physically
disconnected from the mains.

I used one of those on desktop PC, to switch all of its peripherals off
when the PC goes off. I also had one on the TV, to switch off its
sound-bar and a sat system. As sat is now built in to the new TV, I
have removed the sat system.


Knowing your base load is a useful contribution to saving power on an annual
basis since every 10W wasted continuously amounts to around 1kWh every four
days or 90kWh per year (approx £12 pa at current prices).

I agree, but I likely still have a large base load than I would like,
which would be difficult to improve upon without causing inconvenience.
LAN routers, time clocks, occupation switches, fridge and fridge/
freezer.

I once worked for a company, which put money and effort into trying to
reduce its base load. The company had many thousands of printers
scattered around its many offices. Some energy advice external company
had come up with the bright idea to issue and install thousands of plug
in timers, so the printers were powered down outside normal office
hours.

The scheme had several gotchas - Staff sometimes needed to work and use
the printers out of hours, hence there was much fiddling with the
time-clocks when print was needed, by less than savvy staff who
initally assumed their printers had gone faulty.

A power cut would also often cause chaos, when an office full of
printer would then suddenly fail to work at all. All of the printers
were modern anyway and modern printers if unused for while, go into a
very low power standby mode. The standby mode consumed less than the
time clocks and when the clocks switched on, the printers would waste
power initialising and running the heaters.