Standby appliances suck up electricity
By Robert Sanders
If you need proof that your appliances are sucking energy even when they're sitting unused, turn out the lights some evening. Watch the glowing red dots and flashing digital clocks. It is a clear sign - your household appliances are spending your money while you sleep.
A recent study by students and scientists at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed that eliminating "standby" electricity loss from home appliances could produce substantial savings on electricity bills.
Last spring, graduate student J.P. Ross studied ten homes in northern California of varying size, the number of occupants and income level. Checking every appliance in each house, he and co-author Alan Meier of Lawrence Berkeley Lab found that standby energy used an average 67 watts per household, more than you would waste by burning a 60-watt bulb day and night all year long. Standby usage ranged from six percent to 26 percent of the homes' annual electricity use.
Leaking electricity
in an average household
|
SOURCE
|
WATTS
|
Desktop computer
|
1.5 |
Monitor
|
6.9
|
Notebook computer
|
6.2
|
Cell phone
|
0.3 |
Compact stereo
|
3.1 |
Television
|
6.4 |
VCR
|
12.0 |
Clock radio
|
3.2 |
Cordless phone (x3)
|
8.7 |
CO sensor
|
1.6
|
Baby monitor (x2)
|
2.0 |
Modem
|
7.1 |
Answering machine (x2)
|
4.6 |
Battery charger (x2)
|
5.1 |
Radio
|
0.6 |
Portable vacuum
|
1.2 |
Microwave oven
|
3.0 |
Portable heater
|
0.9 |
TOTAL LEAKING
|
74.4 |
% of average household load
|
8% |
"It's a significant quantity of electricity being wasted," Ross said. "Typically, the larger the house, the more appliances and the greater the standby energy use." On average, each of the 10 homes contained 19 appliances using standby power. One of the biggest energy gobblers were the transformers that continuously recharged cell phones, powered computer peripherals and kept hand-held Game Boys ready for use.
The study was small and localized, considering there are more than 10 million households in the state, but Ross said the message is unambiguous - more needs to be done to reduce leaking electricity.
"One solution is to unplug appliances when not in use," said Daniel Kammen, professor of energy and resources at UC Berkeley and director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. An alternative is to group appliances on one surge protector or power strip so that all can be turned off at once. This works well for entertainment systems or for a computer and its associated printers, scanners and other peripheral devices. Computer printers are one of the big energy wasters, some of them drawing 11.5 watts when idling. Some TVs and videocassette recorders draw almost as much, while set-top cable boxes can draw twice that. The most wasteful Ross found drew 23 watts when the box was off. And one of the newest appliances on the market, personal video recorders meant to replace VCRs, can draw 500 watts when "off", he said.
A permanent solution, however, is in the hands of appliance manufacturers. While it is often impossible to turn off American appliances, in Europe many come with two "off" buttons: one a remote ready and another that actually turns the appliance off. Rechargers, on the other hand, could include a feedback circuit that shuts off the transformer when a battery is fully charged. The range of standby waste in similar appliances shows that it is possible to reduce standby waste substantially with no loss of function. Meier and Ross advocate a standard of one-watt standby usage for energy efficient appliances.
"Our model predicts you could get a 68 percent reduction in standby usage if all appliances drew only one watt when not in use," Ross said. This shouldn't be to hard for industry to achieve, he added.
For now, homeowners need to take a close look of their energy leakage. Ross found it was possible to reduce his own household standby usage to 14 watts by getting rid of his cell phone, unplugging his "powerless" power tools and unplugging other appliances when not in use. "We don't have to buy into the current paradigm of ever increasing power usage," Ross said. "We should all question how much power we are using."
For information on standby power consumption visit
http://eetd.lbl.gov/leaking/ or
http://HomeEnergySaver.lbl.gov, a website developed by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory to help consumers identify technologies that will save them the most energy and money. Visit
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/ for information on UC Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory.
