Michaelwagner Wrote: > I think Radish has a point. Standby power is important, because it's > 24/7, but for a lot of appliances, it's dwarfed by the power usage when > the unit is on. > > Someone mentioned the standby power of a microwave. I can't imagine it > has any standby requirement. I don't have a remote for my microwave. > Unless there's a clock in the microwave, none of it runs when it's in > standby. > > Televisions have a standby power consumption so that they can respond > to IR codes from your remote, but more importantly, the picture tube is > kept slightly warm to cut down on startup time. I'm actually old enough > to remember when this wasn't true, and picture tubes took like 30 > seconds to start up. The IR receiver power consumption is trivial - > it's the standby current to the filaments of the video tube that's > important. > > The SB shuts essentially none of itself down, other than dimming the > screen. I suppose it could do more. But even in the small picture of > the SB, server & amplifier, the SB itself is small potatoes. > > But in the larger picture of how we spend our whole lives, we spend > much more power (electricity and other forms of energy) than that by > refrigerating things that don't need it, by not insulating our houses > properly, by not planting trees to shade our houses and cut down on air > conditioning, by living so far from work and commuting so far every day, > by living in houses with 5 external surfaces to radiate heat in the > winter, rather than apartments with 1 or 2, by having a car per person, > a cell phone per person, by not having skylights in our houses and then > turning on the lights in the middle of the day, etc, etc, etc. > > So, as Radish says, it would be more useful if we dealt with the larger > issues rather than the smaller ones. Even a small improvement in a large > issue yields more benefit than a large improvement in a trivial power > consumption.
Yes! Do things that will actually make a real difference! - use compact fluorescent lights. A 13W CF replaces a 60W incandescent, I think you use 11W CFs to replace 40W incandescents. - rather than using the large oven, use the microwave or the toaster oven. - consider newer, more efficient appliances, particularly refrigerators. My utility actually has a buyback program for old refrigerators used as secondary/beer fridges. And try to get rid of those old chest freezers. - upgrade windows - upgrade insulation. A cheap, easy thing to do is to install foam gaskets around outlets and put safety caps on outlets when not in use. These things will actually make a difference unlike a measly savings of a few watts on a Squeezebox. It's all a matter of perspective. There's a term out there, "penny wise, pound foolish". Saving power on a Squeezebox while ignoring the much, much larger items certainly qualifies. -- Mark Lanctot ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mark Lanctot's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2071 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=25100 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
