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We've previously covered how standby mode in game consoles suck. Well, it seems like many devices across the US are sucking a whole lot of power--$19 Billion/yr worth. That is just the US estimation, it is not extrapolated out across the globe.
Approximately $19 billion worth of electricity, equal to the output of 50 large power plants, is devoured annually by U.S. household electronics, appliances, and other equipment when consumers are not actively using them, according to a ground breaking study released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The report, "Home Idle Load: Devices Wasting Huge Amounts of Electricity When Not in Active Use," found most of the devices either plugged in or hard-wired into America's homes consume electricity around-the-clock, even when the owners are not using them or think they are turned off. The annual cost for this vampire energy drain, which provides little benefit to consumers, ranges from $165 per U.S. household on average to as high as $440 under some utilities' top-tier rates.
"One reason for such high idle energy levels is that many previously purely mechanical devices have gone digital: Appliances like washers, dryers, and fridges now have displays, electronic controls, and increasingly even Internet connectivity, for example," says Pierre Delforge, the report's author and NRDC's director of high-tech sector energy efficiency. "In many cases, they are using far more electricity than necessary."
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday May 08 2015, @08:56PM
LEDs, actually, not CFLs, but the thing about CFLs and similar kinds of energy-efficient lighting is that those things last forever. As in, I'm still using light bulbs I installed about 10 years ago. That makes them both more efficient and cheaper than incandescents.
But yes, shutting stuff off, by which I mean really truly off, which usually means unplugged at the wall, makes a significant difference too. The fact that we have lots of things that think they're so important that they need to include a digital clock is just wrong.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday May 08 2015, @10:16PM
The CFLs from 10 years ago were manufactured to much higher standards, they were competing with cheap incandescents and trying to get accepted.
Now that incandescents are banned, the lifetime of a CFL is between two months and two years depending on switch and duty cycles.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by goodie on Monday May 11 2015, @12:21AM
I don't know if that's the reason but I have some lights in my ceiling that were burning all the time. We thought it could be because they were running too hot because the contractor originally did not leave enough clearance in the ceiling. So we tried lower wattage etc. And then I finally decided to bite the bullet and try the LEDs despite their ridiculous price. Too bad those burned too :(. Now we're looking at some sort of short or excess power sent to those lights to figure out what the hell is happening up there.