Letters to the Editor
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Yes, it is a good thing to do
And not just TV's - wouldn't work in my house as I'm an insomniac and the southing tones of documentaries helps put me to sleep, so if I balance out the inexpensive cost of turning the TV on in the middle of the night against the cost of sleeping pills. Hmm. TiVo stays ON.
But there are other small things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint around the house.
Still. I'm loving the Dems energy proposals - that seem to perpetuate the belief that by doing these things we can somehow, magically, reduce our energy needs by 20% or more as a nation. (The biggest consumer of electricity is NOT ordinary people living ordinary lives in their ordinary houses.) It's good and it's necessary and we need to be more efficient, yes, I totally agree. But it's not the solution to ANY of our real energy needs.
(On a slightly related, but really off the wall note: I do love the suggestion that if we don't send our nuclear waste to Yucca we could send it to New Hampshire. I laughed forever at that one. I suspect that would change a lot of fence leaning New Englanders viewpoint on the topic really face - NIMBY trumps idealism, after all.)
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human power
Living in the woods without power reading Sherlock Holmes by lantern light does not actually make you holier than anyone, just more of an arrogant and smug Luddite. Not everyone has the kind of affluent lifestyle that allows for that kind of extended camping trip.
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My power company wants to control my thermostat
All in the name of 'conservation' I guess. More likely its all in the name of something else. So yeah, let's do that. Let's just turn the power off for 4 hrs a day or so just like our comrades in the 3rd world.
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Electronic Amnesia & The Real Problem
The solution to the power-vampire problem is power conditioner strips with switches on them so you turn everything fully "OFF" when not in use.
And just turn off the computer and monitor if you're going to be away for more than a halfhour or so.
BUT
Some programmed devices, like certain models of TVs and VCRs, will "forget" all their settings if disconnected from power for more than a certain amount of time, which may range from a few minutes to a few hours. So the power strip solution isn't universal.
Wattmeters can be a useful tool *if* they reading watts and not volt-amperes. Some loads have low power factors and do not use as many watts as their volts-times-amps would indicate.
Someone mentioned big buildings leaving the lights on and other energy-wasters. What's forgotten is that there are few if any incandescents in commercial lighting. More important, someone else's wastefulness doesn't justify mine - or yours.
The Real Problem is that too few Americans *really* understand electrical energy, its costs, sources, calculations, etc. Also, information about things like which CFLs are the best, which appliances can be unplugged without getting amnesia, etc., is in short supply. It's almost as if somebody doesn't want you to know...
I pay about fourteen cents per kilowatt hour, some of which comes from wind through a sign-up program here in SE Pennsylvania. How much do *you* pay?
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Oh!
I thought this was an article about Facebook and all the stupid vampire biting and zombie eating. I fully support getting rid of those vampire appliances.
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Turn your computer printer off with the button, not the power strip
Inkjet printers need to shut themselves down and park the print heads over a seal to keep the ink nozzles from drying out and clogging up. Depending on your model of printer, that either means replacing the print cartridges (Lexmark, Hewlett Packard) or replacing the entire printer if the print heads are built in (Canon, Epson).
Either way, you'll be spending a lot more than $300 a year if you carelessly shut off your printer with a strip instead of a power button (Caviot: Most inkjects will put the heads back in a parked position soon after printing a job, but the delay varies. It isn't worth taking a chance).
Use the power button!
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i'd like a better explanation too
How exactly do devices which are turned off use electricity?
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they know better than you do, bozo
These devices are generally smarter than their owners and so should be trusted to make these power decisions.
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waste heat? ha
it's the middle of winter here and fuel oil is like a thousand dollars a gallon so i have the thermostat set at 33 degrees. i am huddling around the socket where the rechargers are plugged in, trying to warm myself from their friendly radiance.
seriously; in a country where half the population spends at least half the year trying to add heat to their dwellings and workplaces, the various costs of replacing the 'waste heat' electronics, incandescent bulbs, etc. give off have to be factored into the savings from eliminating the 'waste'.
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Sylvain - power use
I know it seems pretty obvious that when we turn something off, it should be... off. Unfortunately, it's not the case. There are a number of common power "vampires" out there, most of them draw energy when an item is off, either due to a design flaw, some sort of resting mode to inefficiently save data or due to an unnecessary feature.
Example: On your cell charger (or baby monitor or whatever) there is that blob over the plug that, even if you have your cell phone unplugged or the monitor off, continues to draw power. You can tell because it remains warm the whole time it is in the socket. Same goes for those black boxes ("power conditioners) that are somewhere collecting dust between your computer/printers and the wall outlet.
Your t.v., vcr, etc. all draw power even when off. Some emit heat, many have unnecessary off lights or clocks. In fact, unnecessary digital clocks (How many clocks do we need? Seriously!) draw a huge amount of energy. Same goes for old appliances.
I went through all of my stuff, and the things that require truly annoying reprograming, I left plugged directly to the socket. Everything else is on power strips. To be safe, I always shut down items before I turn off the power strip (it doesn't sub for a proper power-down) and I unplug all of those chargers whenever I am not using them. I turn off my lights in my office every night, and I shut down my business equipment. Contrary to urban myth, if properly done, it causes no harm.
I know, it's a drop in the bucket, but it's my drop.