Energy Usage
Rick has an interesting post about his experiences measuring electricity use of various components in his home. I’ve been curious about this myself for some time, but haven’t had the tools or time to track it. I think I’ll pick up one of these usage monitors (like Rick did) and of course (eventually) report my findings. I’m thinking I’ll pick it up for the office, so it’ll be a business expense… Plus we have a ton of things using power at the office, including a fridge and a microwave, a projector, and of course computers, printers, etc. Be cool if this gadget logged usage to a memory stick and you could download it into Excel or something rather… not sure how advanced that end of it is, but I’m thinking not very.
One of the things Rick bemoans, which I think stinks and many others have also complained about, is the energy consumption of various appliances while they’re in “off” or “standby” mode. Hooking things up to power strips is one way to address this, but the convenience factor of getting to the power strip behind the entertainment center is pretty lame. Are there any remote controls out there for power strips to address this issue? I’m sure there must be – any recommendations?
Comments
Martin Hinshelwood said on 08 Dec 2008 at 11:32 AM
A problem though is that many of these "Always on" appliancies, like my cable blog, have limited on/off power cycles. My aunt always turned hers off at the plug every night and wondered why you needed a new box every three months...
You can't tell intill you do it which appliancies are which, unless you read the fine print in the manual, and you may have to fork out a considerable amount for repairs...
G. Andrew Duthie said on 08 Dec 2008 at 12:46 PM
So...if the power strip had a remote control...wouldn't it need to use at least some power to be prepared to respond to the remote, thus somewhat defeating the purpose of turning the stuff off in the first place? ;-)
Doug H said on 08 Dec 2008 at 1:07 PM
I always mounted the power strip in a convient location in the rear of the entertainment center. All it takes is a couple of screws. You could be more elaborate and wire a less obvious switch toward the front of the entainment center. For a wireless socket, try this: www.greatergoods.com/.../prod_259.html
ssmith said on 08 Dec 2008 at 1:43 PM
@G. Andrew Duthie,
Trading a bunch of electronics for one still seems like a net win, right? Gotta believe the power strip would use way less power than my receiver or other entertainment center items.
ssmith said on 08 Dec 2008 at 2:46 PM
@Martin,
I was unaware some products had such limited on/off cycle restrictions. That's good to know, and I guess the pennies of electricity required for a router or cable modem are worth it if it means not replacing it quarterly. And in my case, I'd never be turning those off anyway since all kinds of things are using my net connection even when I sleep (TiVo, JungleDisk, WHS, Outlook, RSS feeds, probably more...).