OK, the TV programme on BBC moaning about people leaving things on standby!
They are highlighting things like laptops hibernating. My laptop serious uses fuck all when on standby.
Also, they completely forgot that half the year (and certainly this time of year) every Watt of electricity is actually running 100% efficient heater which heats the house and so saves the heating system doing so. Yes, gas vs electric as efficient heating is a possible issue, but it means the whole issue of power supposedly wasted is missing quite a lot of the point.
2009-12-03
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I don't remember the reference but there was a study that concluded that low-energy lightbulbs are pointless IN HOMES* in a climate like the UK where heating is required most of the time that lights are on (ie. October to March, when <12 hours of daylight).
ReplyDelete* Offices are obviously different as they use light during the day (and that's another argument altogether)
I hadn't considered the heater side of the equation.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, it's *more* environmentally responsible to leave things switched on during winter, because all my electricity is from renewables, while my heating runs on gas!
I thought that for a whole family they weren't using a heck of a lot of power anyway. None of what they did was really unnecessary, apart from perhaps the TV.
ReplyDeleteFunny they repeatedtly played down the power usage of the TV when it is (for me) the single largest user of electricity apart from room heaters. A kettle is on for 2 minutes max.. a TV is on for hours so uses much more.
Power usage does not directly generate CO2 anyway.., power generation does, and a decent combination of nuclear plus renewables will do more to solve that problem than unplugging a TV in standby that's probably using about 1w.
At the moment 1.5 room heaters (one only being on overnight) is adding 12Kwh a day just to keep 2 rooms usable - and that's increasing as it gets colder. Devices on standby don't even come close.
Oh and the chicken thing.. funny they wouldn't let you see inside the box. They were trying to prove that a 100W lightbulb could cook a chicken in 45 minutes? Doubt it.. I'm sure the physicists around could do the maths on that but I reckon there were probably about 20 of them, providing 2kw of heat (OK less because some is given off as light) which would be enough.
Which programme was this? I'd like to grab it on iPlayer and have a laugh.
ReplyDeleteSome thing on BBC about "human power station".
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