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19 comments on Electricity Consumption Around the Home

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Eco Wolf on July 6, 2006 - 9:48am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
A thought has struck me and I would be interested in your comments.

Would reducing our standby consumption really reduce the number of power stations we need? My point is that we are talking about standby consumption:- when people get home in the evening and turn on their TVs, HiFis, PCs etc much of this standby consumption turns into full load consumption. Hence reducing standby consumption may reduce our overall energy use, but have little effect on peak energy requirement. As the total number of power stations is governed more by peak energy demand, reducing standby consumption may not remove the need for replacing our aging fleet of nuclear power stations (complete with cracking cores http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5149650.stm ).

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RalphW on July 7, 2006 - 11:14am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Not all the gadgets on standby will be in full operation at the same time
even at peak demand times.  The number of gadgets on standby in
many houses exceed the number of people in the house, so it seems likely
that this will not be a significant factor.  I would not be surprised if
75% of the items are STILL on standby at any given time even at peak
demand, but I just picked that number out of the air.  I'm sure a
fairly simple survey could be done to get an accurate figure.    

I am very much of the opinion we will need dynamic demand management
to avoid rolling blackouts, whatever generation policy we chose,  and
from a GW perspective, the standby power wastage is unforgivable.

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