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Standby for Christmas

The cost of standing by
It is difficult to measure the standby cost for individual businesses. But for homes, The Energy Savings Trust claims that around £80 per year is wasted due to household appliances being left on standby. In office blocks, for example, where many of the same devices are plugged in for much longer periods of time, and these costs can quickly spiral out of control.The worst offenders
At home the devices that are the worst offenders in terms of their standby cost are televisions, set top boxes and mobile phone chargers. Almost everybody knows that switching these off at the walls is the best way to cut the power supply, but only a small proportion of people switch off at the mains when they are finished. A typical place of business will have many of these same offenders. If you leave a mobile phone or laptop charger permanently plugged in at work then 95% of the energy it uses is going to waste, and only about 5% of the power will power your device. There are other culprits in businesses too. Office workers an awful tendency to leave desktop computers switched on overnight. The Energy Saving Trust estimates that even a PC monitor will waste enough energy to laser print 500 pages if left on overnight. Meanwhile, The Carbon Trust estimates that leaving a computer on every night for a year will create enough CO2 to fill a double-decker bus. Photocopiers are another major culprit, turning a good size photocopier or printer from ‘standby’ to ‘off’ overnight will save enough energy to power an LCD TV and refrigerator. If a photocopier is left on all day and used for 20% of that time, it will account for about £350 of energy each year.Switch off standby and other easy energy saving tips

Published by Utility Helpline on (modified )
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