Power strip boosts energy savings on everyday electronics

Tag : and electronics

Published: July 13, 2008 05:03 am PrintThis
Power strip boosts energy savings on everyday electronics By Al Gordon
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Who knew? It turns out one of the "greenest" tools for yourconsumer electronics is an old-fashioned power strip, while remotecontrols are serious energy hogs.
A comprehensive study for the Consumer Electronics Associationusing 2006 data put the number at 11 percent of residentialelectricity and 7.3 percent of total residential energyconsumption. Given the trade association financing of the report,prudence dictated checking another source. The CEA data isconsistent with a study for the U.S. Department of Energy by twoscientists at Berkeley National Laboratory that found consumerelectronics accounted for 10 percent of the nation's residentialelectricity use in 1999. Both studies concluded that TVs were atthe top of the list with personal computers a close second.
By way of comparison, that share of energy consumption iscomparable to that for appliances or lighting.
Two points leap out from the CEA study:
First, consumer electronics' share of the nation's energy demand isgoing up sharply because Americans are opting for high-consumptiondevices: ever-wider-screen TVs, more powerful computers, and thegame console explosion.
Second, according to the study, nearly a third of consumerelectronics' energy consumption takes place when devices are not inuse. A quarter of the electricity, in fact, is used when theequipment ostensibly is "off."
How could that be?
Very simple. In order for your TV, stereo or whatever to turnitself on when you hit the device's remote control "on" button, theunit has to be running in a standby mode so that the remote'sreceiver can respond to the signal. If it were totally shut off,the remote would be trying to communicate with a dead device.
The federal EnergyStar® energy efficiency program has led todecreases in consumption for new units. But those gains have beenswallowed up by the sheer growth of the consumer electronicsmarket. Plus, not all devices have EnergyStar standards —cable boxes, for example.
Nor is there any readily available data archive to check on adevice's energy consumption. So when I replaced my old conventionalTV with an HD LCD and swapped out the old digital cable box for theHD version, there is no immediate way to tell whether I increasedor decreased my energy consumption. We tend to assume that newequipment has to be more efficient than old, but per the CEA study,that may not necessarily be the case.
When you shut down a computer, it does shut down entirely. However,with modern operating systems that let Macs and PCs run stably forlong stretches of time, many users — I confess, I was one ofthem — prefer to put their units into "sleep" mode, whichessentially creates the same kind of lower, but still consumingstate as a remote-ready TV.
Furthermore, computers have wide varieties of peripherals attached,which consume energy as well. My home computer is an iMac, so intheory I start off with one less component since my monitor and CPUare in the same box. Minimal help. Among other things attached tomy computer are powered speakers, a TV tuner unit, a"multifunction" (printer/scanner/fax/photo card reader) device, acouple of external hard drives, a label printer and a USB hub. Allof these have those ubiquitous power bricks connected to them. Onesimply needs to reach over and feel the heat coming off the bricksto know that even when the devices are idle they are consumingpower.
As oil prices soar and the cost of energy becomes a major drag onthe U.S. economy as well as our pocketbooks, the consumerelectronics industry will have to be more responsive. Energyratings should be posted on computer and entertainment goods thesame way they are on refrigerators. Designs should be moreefficient. "Off" should really mean off. Do we really need to havea different "brick" for each piece of equipment when a common powersource might consume less energy? Cable boxes are particularlynotorious because shutting them down wipes out much of their data,requiring a reset when turned back on.
But there is a simple step we can all take now to reduce ourconsumer electronics energy footprint: turn stuff off.
It was an age-old argument in consumer electronics as to whetherthe longevity of a device was reduced by repeated off-and-oncycles. The truth is that most of today's gizmos are hopelesslyobsolete long before they fail, so this debate is pointless. Justshut the thing down. That's where power strips help: Instead ofhaving to turn off or unplug (because so many units lack offswitches) multiple devices, I plug mine into a power strip and turnthem off with a single flick of a switch.
It isn't a perfect solution. But in the much-quoted words of theChinese philosopher Lao-tzu: A journey of a thousand miles beginswith a single step.
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Al Gordon is a Massachusetts-based writer who specializes intechnology and consumer electronics. You can read more of hisarticles at www.algordon.com/techblog.html and e-mail him ateagle@algordon.com. PrintThis More stories from the Business section View the forum thread. Comments powered by Disqus