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posted by CoolHand on Friday May 08 2015, @04:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the giant-sucking-sound dept.

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."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @11:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 08 2015, @11:20PM (#180549)

    Who cares about your opinion on this either. At least the person you are responding to doesn't pretend to know everything and raises relevant questions that need answering before drawing conclusions. What have you contributed. You haven't given us any sourced answers or data to go by, just the unsourced opinion of some anonymous internet user. I found his post useful. If you're so sure you have the answers and perhaps he just didn't come across them then feel free to provide us a reference. Help us out instead of criticizing someone for simply pointing out that we can't draw any conclusions without relevant data first and he doesn't have said data to draw any conclusions.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:22AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 09 2015, @12:22AM (#180573)

    Pssh. We all know it is you. You trying to game the system to save face is not the slightest bit hidden.