I Mead Mine

How to cut your high tech energy bill

Posted on 01. Jan, 2009 by Rob in Apple, Computing, Cuttings, Gadgets, Grand Designs, Hi-Fi and AV, Technology

Great energy saving ideas for your gadget habit – you could even help the planet too

The Brits spend more money per head on gadgets than any other nation on earth – or at least we did until the credit crunch hit last year.

We spent a staggering £24 billion on the things in 2007 [Source: Euromonitor], beating Germany, France and even Japan. Per capita we event spent more money on gadgets than the Americans – whose total spent was £81 billion, despite having five times the population.

Now while we can completely understand our obsession it does have some tangible consequences. A survey published by the Energy Saving Trust last October showed that we’re also the worst nation in Europe when it comes to wasted energy from high tech devices. We splurge £900 million a year on leaving our TVs and PCs switched on over night, generating the same amount of CO2 as driving around the world 19,000 times.

So what can we do about it?

There’s no such thing as ‘off’

The obvious answer, of course, is to switch our TVs and PCs off overnight, but that’s not as easy as you might think. A lot of modern TVs simply don’t have an ‘off’ switch – simply flicking the TV into standby, when you press the power button on your remote.

It just goes to show how much of a novelty one has become that Toshiba highlighted it as a feature on its range of 2008 Regza TVs, where it’s known as Full Power Down.

Actually turning most TVs off these days involves a trip to the wall socket, which isn’t always very conveniently located.

If that’s the case in your home, you might want to invest in an energy saving power brick or strip into which you plug all of your electronic devices. Switching off one device on the strip – your PC say – switches all the associated peripherals off at the same time.

We particularly like the Standby Buster from Ivy Energy Saving Ltd. It sits between the wall socket and a power strip and  comes with a remote control – enabling you to switch everything off at once.

The remote – which uses wireless RF technology – also enables you to control up to four different zones – so you could have your lounge-based TV, DVD player, home stereo in one zone, lamps in another, and devices in another room in a third. Kits are available from just £14.95.

Smart sensors

Another way to cut your energy use is to choose a TV with an ambient light sensor. This measures the amount of light in a room and then adjusts the brightness and contrast of the display accordingly, potentially saving you money every time that you watch TV.

Sony, Samsung and Philips are just some of the companies which are introducing ambient light sensors in their TV ranges (more details below). Bang & Olufsen TVs have, of course, included them for years.

We’d also recommend that you use a real radio rather than your digital TV’s set-top box (STB) to listen to Radio 4 on. The Energy Saving Trust says digital set-top boxes require 50 times more energy to run as analogue radios – that’s 100W on average for an STB, compared to 2W for an analogue radio.

Cut your computer’s CO2

Dealing with our other night-time offender – the home PC – is more problematic. Aside from taking some of the measures above, there’s a limit to what you can do – chiefly because many PCs are all about brute force processing power, extreme graphics and streaming vast amounts of data via Wi-Fi.

Any computer you own – whether that’s a laptop or desktop – should ideally be run in Energy Saver mode. This should automatically dim or power down the display when your computer’s not been used for period, while you can also set the hard disk to spin down too.

Some set ups also enable to regulate the processor speed – you don’t really need it to be thundering away when you’re writing an email, do you? You can also set your Mac or PC to automatically enter sleep mode, when it’s not been used for a while – Microsoft estimates doing so using Windows Vista could save you between £35 and £44 per year.

Wireless wasters

Wireless technology is another big drain on your home energy. Wherever and whenever possible, always switch things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off, and try to reduce the broadcast range of your Wi-Fi setup, if possible. This should not only help reduce the amount of power it consumes, but also won’t broadcast the presence of your broadband router to everyone in the street – which may help keep you safe from hackers.

A future version of Wi-Fi, dubbed 802.11v, will enable your router to switch off its radio transceiver automatically when not being used. The good news is that it maybe available as a free firmware upgrade to existing devices when it’s adopted as an industry standard in 2010.

Thinking the unthinkable

The easiest and cheapest way to cut your power bill, of course, is to buy less gadgets – do you really, honestly need to watch TV in the bath or shower? Could you live without having a PC in every room?

If nothing else, switching such devices off when you’ve finished using them would be a great way to start. You should also take a look at Sust-It.net, which enables you to compare the energy demands and CO2 footprint for up to 3,000 different products.

Products

Sony Bravia 32W4000
£899 • Sony 08705 111999 • www.sonystyle.co.uk
This 32-inch widescreen LCD TV from Bravia’s W range has all the features we’ve come to expect from modern TVs – including a built-in Freeview tuner and support for 1080p Full HD video sources via HDMI. None of that would matter if the 32W4000 wasn’t eco-friendly too, but it consumes just 120W per hour while in use (not much more than a standard incandescent bulb), slashing that to 0.19W on standby.

 

Apple MacBook
£949-£1,149 • Apple, Inc 0800 039 1010 • www.apple.com/uk/macbook
Winner of a gold EPEAT award, this latest gen laptop packs eco credentials aplenty. It’s largely fashioned from totally recyclable aluminium and arsenic-free glass, while Apple has also managed to banish nasties like brominated fire retardants, from its production. It’s also Energy Star approved, which means it has low energy used when at sleep (1.18W) or idle (14.1W). Oh and it’s also powerful, sleek and very, very pretty.

Sagem DTR 67160T Eco
£199.99  • Sagem 08702 405613 • www.sagem-communications.com
With energy use pegged at 15W per hour during use and 2W on standby, this Freeview digital video recorder is one of the most eco-friendly around. Key features include a 160GB hard disk for recording your favourite programmes, twin Scart sockets and an HDMI port for hooking up to a TV. Sagem says over a year the DTR 67160T will consume 38.9kWh of energy, compared to 92.1kWh used by standard digital set top boxes.

 

D-Link DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router
£100 • D-Link UK 020 8955 9000  • www.dlink.co.uk
Truly green Wi-Fi may not be with us yet, but D-Link is offering the next best thing. For this Wi-Fi router comes with a built-in scheduler that enables you decide when you want its built-in transceiver to switch on and off. It also promises reduced power consumption in general, without cutting performance.

Green Gadget

Owl Wireless Energy Monitor
£34.95 • Good Energy 01249 766090  • www.theowl.com
One of the easiest ways to keep tabs on your energy use is to get a monitor like this one – all you need to do is clip the transceiver to your mains electricity cable and then watch your consumption in pounds and pence on its large, easy-to-read display. New features in this version include the ability to factor in different tariffs (Economy 7, etc), see accumulated costs over time, and 18 months’ battery life.

Best Blu-ray players for £500 or less

High definition is here to stay – so why not make the most of it?

Panasonic DMP-BD55
£399 • Panasonic UK 0844 844 3852 • www.panasonic.co.uk
This slim, black Blu-ray player comes with proprietary processing technology optimises every pixel of your movie of the best high def experience. Goodies include BD-Live, offering interactive features on some Blu-ray discs, and an SD card slot for viewing digital photos and video stored on compatible flash memory cards.

Samsung BD-P2500
£399 • Samsung UK 01932 455000  • www.samsung.co.uk
Like most of its rivals, the Samsung BD-P2500 includes all the latest Blu-ray features, including BD-Live and 7.1-channel Dolby Digital and DTS audio. Like its rivals, the player also includes an Ethernet and USB ports – enabling you to update the player with new Blu-ray features in future.

Sony BDP-S550B
£299 • Sony UK 08705 111999 • www.sony.co.uk
Both affordable and stylish, the BDP-S550B offers 1080/24p playback for cinema-quality video, as well as a video upscaler for those old-fashioned DVDs. Like most Blu-ray players the S550B also packs in Dolby Digital True HD and DTS-HD decoders for stunning surround sound. It also include the same Xcross Media bar interface found on Sony Bravia LCD TVs and the PlayStation 3 games console.

LG BD300
£TBC  • LG 0870 873 5454 • uk.lge.com
Fashionably finished in gloss black,  this Blu-ray player comes a built-in video upscaler to enhance to help old DVDs look their best on modern flat panel TVs. It also includes Simplink – LG’s proprietary take on HDMI-CEC – a protocol that enables devices connected over HDMI to ‘talk’ to each other, enabling you to use the remote from one to control another.

 

Originally published in the January 2009
issue of Grand Designs Magazine.

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1. How to turn your home into a high tech hideaway
2. Are you still a high tech junkie? Prove it!
3. CES 2009: the hottest trends in tech
4. 21 of the stupidest high tech predictions
5. The pros and cons of TV tech: from CRT to plasma

Tags: blu-ray, energy, home automation, lg, panasonic, sagem, sony, televisions, wi-fi