The BBC has an article on how much extra energy devices, such as televisions, consume and the amount of emissions they generate when left in standby mode.
Estimated annual CO2 emissions from devices left on standby:
- Stereos – 1,600,000 tonnes
- Videos – 960,000 tonnes
- TVs – 480,000 tonnes
- Consoles – 390,000 tonnes
- DVD players – 100,000 tonnes
- Set-top boxes – 60,000 tonnes
I didn’t think it would be difficult to keep something in a sleep state, just enough to allow the remote control to power it back on, but guess I was wrong. Until now, I also thought the standby mode was an efficient thing and always left the TV on standby. The SunTV box connected to it didn’t even get that much and was always left on. Will be more careful from now.
3 thoughts on “Don’t touch that standby button”
I once worked on a circuit for a notebook which had a sleep mode. You might try initially just cutting off the power to the chips that you don’t need but the behaviour of chips have when their 5 volts is disconnected is usually not specified. Maybe they will allow current to flow through them in strange ways when they have no power. It’s a nightmare.
A good way would be for everyone to buy a digital watt meter which shows the power consumption of devices plugged into it. By going around your house and checking out all your electrical equipment you should be able to find the worse culprits and decide if you can turn them off.
Good idea, though I doubt an average consumer (me probably included) would bother with all that. Best just to remove the standby option, at least from bigger, more power hungry items.
Wow, I guess it’s a good thing the ACPI on my laptop doesn’t jive well with Linux. That’s the one device I always have to shut down after use.
The numbers don’t really surprise me too much. I have felt that the temperature on my DVD player is around the same whether I have it on standby or running.
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