At the bottom of this page, we provide the chapter summary for this portion of 'How to Live a Low-Carbon Life'. This provides some of the main conclusions from the material covered in the main text. In the rest of this page, we comment on new products, research findings and offer feedback from customers.
Hard disc DVD recorders
£200 buys you a DVD recorder with a hard disc, capable of storing hours of TV programming. These machines use about 40-60 watts when in use. Standby power levels are difficult to ascertain, but generally seem to run at about 5 watts, or a tenth of the consumption when the machine is recording. These numbers are not unusual for consumer electronics. But simple arithmetic shows that if the recorder is used two hours a day it consumes more electricity when on standby than when in use. A 50w machine used two hours a day will use 36kwh a year (about 15kg of carbon) and the standby periods will add another 40kwh. At the request of a visitor to this web site, I looked for the lowest standby power I could find. The Panasonic range has idle power consumption of about 2 watts (eg the DMR EX 77 EB K) Consumer electronics such as DVD recorders combined with hard discs should be able to operate in standby at below 1w. The components cost a bit more than higher power use machines. Within ten years, DVD recorders with hard discs are going to be in most British homes. It makes good sense for us to campaign to force manufacturers to spend the extra £5 to use low power components. Bye Bye Standby
A small Oxfordshire firm is launching a new device to cut wasteful standby use. This small piece of electronics plugs into a wall socket. The user then puts the plug of a consumer electronics device or, say, a four-way strip into the back of the electronic device.
Ignore the square plastic product on the left. The middle photograph showst the front of the device that plugs into the wall socket. The right hand picture shows the back, into which the plug for the TV, the computer or other product fits.
When activated, this small box cuts all the power. As is becoming increasingly well known, many electronic devices are taking small amounts of power from the wall even when they are 'off'. Set-top boxes and computers are the worst offenders. In the case of set-top boxes, the usage can be about 17 continous watts (about 155 kwh a year, or about 4% of the average household's electricity bill).
Bye Bye Standby uses a radio remote control to cut the power. I have one and it works well. I could install it in several plugs in my house and it would probably save 10 to 15 watts of power. (We have a Freeview set-top box, but it is always turned off at the socket, so the obvious saving is not present).
Why is this product interesting? First of all, it is relatively cheap. The manufacturer is hoping to sell it for £25 in supermarkets for a pack of three plugs and a remote control. (The remote control 'off' and 'on' switches can either be operate individual plugs or all of them together). Very roughly one watt of continuous standby power is worth £1 a year, so a home with a set-top box, a computer, a games console and a couple of others devices such as mobile phone chargers can hope to save £40 a year. This makes the decision to buy a pack a good financial investment.
But I am much more interested in a second use of this technology. UK offices represent a much larger potential market. The problem facing the office managers of large companies is that they cannot be expected to go round several floors each night turining off computers, moniotrs, printers and fax machines that have been left on. Unsurprisingly, electricity use in offices is growing. The typical office worker contributes more to climate change from his or her electricity use at work than at home. This is despite the fact that most people are in the office for less than a quarter of the hours in the week.
The company that makes this device tells me that an office version of this product will be available soon. This will allow the office manager to automatically turn off all office equipment that is not in active use. So, for example, a PC that was recalculating a large spreadsheet overnight, and using 100w to do so, would not turn off, but one that was humming along with a screensaver and using 40w would be switched off.
I think this may be a very large market - particularly if the cost per PC fell to £3 or so - and we could save reasonable quantities of carbon dioxide using this simple technology. Any company wanting to fund the expansion of the small manufacturing company behind this device and help them get into the corporate market would be welcome to contact me. (Chris Goodall c.goodall@which.net)
Digital set-top boxes
A new set-top box bought to view Freeview services may add 2 or 3 per cent to the electricity consumption of the typical home. (12watts operating power, 10watts on standby). Many boxes are now better than this.
Which? recently recommended (12th January 2007) the Philips DTR320 as having the best energy consumption figures for standby use. The magazine says it uses 4w when not in use. In use, the number is about 6w. These are good figures and equate to about 35khw a year, only 1% of the average home's electricity use.
As far as I can see, Philips has removed this product from the market. It now sells only two boxes, both with higher power use than the DTR250. The DTR 2520/05 uses 10w when in use and 5w when in standby. It does have a button that allows the user to move the box into 'low power' mode, using less than 3watts. This model sells for about £60.
Unfortunately, Philips' other box on sale today is £20 cheaper (DTR 210/05). This set-top runs at 12 watts when in use and 6 watts when in standby. It does not have a 'low power mode'. We cannot know for certain, but this machines probably captures 80% of Philips sales in this segment, despite the fact that it can neither be turned into 'deep' standby, nor can it match the average working energy consumption on earlier models.
Reducing the power consumption of consumer electronics is an urgent requirement. The climate-savvy buyer would purchase the Philips 2520/05. But not only would she pay £20 more, but she would need to switch the machine into lower power mode every night. Spend twenty pounds less, and she would spend a little more on electricity each year, but not have to worry about turning a button off. I know which most people are going to choose.
Chapter Summary
The biggest users of electricity around the home are the tumble dryer, the refrigerator and the washing machine. New fridge freezers – provided that they are not American-style behemoths – can save up to 50 per cent of the energy use of old machine. If you feel you must use a tumble dryer, buy a gas-powered one or one with a heat exchanger. The extra cost will be perhaps £150 and the carbon saving is about 100kg per year.
The next greediest device is the television. The rule here is simple – buy a small liquid crystal display (LCD) screen to replace your old cathode ray tube-based TV. It will save the household 60kg per year in emissions, or about 25kg per person in the average 2.3 person family group. Big flat-screen TVs are prodigious consumers of electricity – avoid them. Sky boxes are insidious users of power, even when not actually working. If you can get rid of digital satellite or cable, do so and replace it with Freeview. Buy a box with low standby power consumption, or make a religionof turning the box off at all times when not in use.
Other steps to improve electricity use can easily reduce consumption by another 10 per cent (simply turning everything off at the wall when not in use may save 10 per cent by itself in the average household). In an ordinary house, emissions from electricity can be reduced to below 0.6 tonnes per person with very little cost in terms of lifestyle.
