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19 comments on Electricity Consumption Around the Home

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zceb90 on July 3, 2006 - 11:46am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Chris, a most timely post on a subject about which we will doubtless hear a lot more of in future.  Today's Daily Telegraph has an article detailing the potential impact of the rising ownership of household electronic equipment on UK power consumption, in particular the consequences of the switch from analogue to digital TV: Analogue swtich-off blamed for energy crisis

Here's an extract:

Household electricity use is rising, with the share used by electronic goods -televisions, digital boxes and chargers - expected to double by 2010, according to a report published today....The main reason for the rising electricity demand from electronic goods identified by the report is the Government's decision to switch off analogue TV signals by 2012, requiring everyone to fit digital set-top boxes or find sets obsolete..

The real concern I have is the virtual absence of regulatory action which has allowed the sale (or more accurately 'give away' upon taking out a 12 month Sky TV contract) of digi-boxes with such a poor standby power specification.  While it's technically feasible to produce equipment with (say) a 1 watt standby power consumption corners have effectively been cut with result that standby power demand is some 10 or 20 times what is achievable.  To compound the situation consumers have been replacing more traditional TV's with plasma screen models (and with much larger screens) with the net result that such TV's consume up to 4x power of earlier models.

UK plc and consumers are going to pay an extremely heavy price for such lax consideration of domestic energy consumption.  As we have discussed on other threads the lead time for power stations is such that most of the extra energy required to drive all this extra household equipment will have to be imported....and at prices which may well reach $100/boe.  The ongoing march of UK N Sea oil and gas declines could well increase UK's annual import bill by £16m per day from now thru 2014; the only real question here is 'how soon will the (economic) music stop?'

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Chris Vernon on July 3, 2006 - 12:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
The real concern I have is the virtual absence of regulatory action...

Indeed, I'm hoping the Energy Review will say something in this area. In the PowerSwitch response to the consultation we wrote this:

All appliances sold in the UK must be of the highest energy efficiency rating. There is no excuse for marketing poor efficiency appliances when high efficiency products are available. Standby modes of appliances represent 6% of household electricity consumption; similarly there is no excuse for marketing appliances which consume more than 1W in standby mode. Incandescent light bulbs should also be banned and grants made available for the replacement of any restrictive light fittings. Any EU or WTO limitations on the restrictions the UK can impose on products must be challenged.
Link pdf
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zceb90 on July 4, 2006 - 3:05am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Assuming the Energy Review endorses such proposals for greatly reduced power requirements for equipment in standby mode, banning of incandescent light bulbs etc we must expect manufacturers to lobby heavily for lenghty timescales to phase-in such changes.  There is also a major (and fast growing) problem of legacy household electronic equipment - one would hardly expect to see BSkyB voluntarily giving away replacement digi-boxes to existing subscriber base which I recall is already around 9m with 10m target in relatively near term.  Not least many on this forum, including myself, see recession as a likely outcome of the ongoing energy situation and in a recession households will be much less able to afford replacement of equipment which still has years of useful life.

Incidentally the problem of legacy equipment is potentially even worse for domestic gas fired boilers which are much longer lasting and considerably more expensive to replace than consumer electronics; furthermore they are more vital in that one can more readily do without electronic equipment than heating.  As UK gas supplies become more expensive and potentially scarcer recession-hit households are likely to experience difficulties funding increased gas charges.

The recommendations submitted by PowerSwitch to the Energy Review should be implemented without delay; such action should have been taken years ago before such a large base of energy hungry legacy equipment was allowed to accumulate.  We need to go much further and introduce inverted energy tariffs now whereby households are allocated a block of gas / electricity units up to 50% of average domestic consumption at a low tariff with rates for units in excess of this level incurring progressively much higher tariffs.  In this way households using (say) 200% of average consumption will find themselves paying 400% of average bills versus current c80%.  This change would eliminate the abusrd situation where currently proliferate consumption is rewarded by lower unit tariffs.

On a practical level I've wired my PC and peripherals via a 13 socket strip with the switch in easy reach thus everything can be turned off when not in use.  Achieving the same result for digi-boxes, VCR and DVD recorders etc is far more problematic as the equipment is designed to be powered 24/7 - digiboxes actually go thru a lengthy power up sequence including a system demo and I can't see many households being prepared to sit through such a start-up sequence every day not to mention having to reset preferences on recording equipment etc.  Even so, inverted energy tariffs and rising utility bills may well focus the mind!

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Adam1 on July 4, 2006 - 7:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I have a cable box (20W on standby) and a freeview box (16W on standby); the former takes ca. 30 seconds to boot up and the latter 0 seconds. As well as requiring much stricter standby energy use standards, there should be standards for start-up time. This will be more important when we start getting interruptions in the power supply, that said, maybe we'll have other, more pressing concerns by then.
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Eco Wolf on July 19, 2006 - 11:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
My understanding is that compact fluorescents do not work with dimmer switches. This makes an outright ban a little tricky. Is there another low consumption light bulb out there that does operate with a dimmer switch?
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