« Yes, we have no internet | Main | Broadband filter problems »
The myth of standby
Regarding your article "Switched on PCs cost the earth" and the general concern about equipment on stand-by, it is quite wrong to say that it 'wastes' electricity. What happens to all that power? It's converted to heat which heats the building.
This means that the heating system will run less. In addition. leaving equipment on standby can improves reliability. Components are not stressed so much. this means equipment will last longer, so less electronic equipment will be scrapped.
The point I am trying to make is that it's not just a simple case of wasting power if equipment is left on standby, it is much more complex equation which should be looked at thoroughly before any generalisations can be made.
If I switch off all my electronic equipment in the house, my central heating system will compensate by running longer. If I save 1KW of electricity, the central heating will have to produce the equivalent amount of heat. Which KW creates the most carbon dioxide? The one generated by the power station or the one generated by my central heating system??
Sandy Norval
How many people have central heating on all day long?
I only have my central heating on for four months a year anyway.
You're also assuming that producing electricity is as efficient as producing thermal heat (which it isn't).
Carbon dioxide aside (I really don't know!) a boiler can now have efficiencies of up to 90%, whereas gas power stations are only approaching 55%.
Posted by Roger Moore | November 30, 2006 11:05 AM
Ok, foolish mistake on my behalf.
I meant thermal energy. Not thermal heat (since heat is simply a transfer of energy).
But I still think your argument is very, very wrong!
Posted by Roger Moore | November 30, 2006 11:11 AM
If 100% of the power going into the PC was converted to heat then what makes the PC work?
I know there's not much work for it to do on standby but it still has to do something otherwise it'd be off.
When people go on hols in Winter they often leave the central heating on for an hour a day to keep the frost out of the system and air the house. You don't leave your PC on standby in order to warm the room it's in.
Posted by Damon | December 4, 2006 11:41 AM
A long time ago i was working at an establishment where the heating broke down in the middle of winter (send them home just because its freezing ? Never!!!) and i went into the computer room as it was the warmest place. But it was still damned cold. I suspect the argument about switching off equipment in standby to save energy is cumulative across households rather than making any significant impact on your bill and likewise the heat from a single PC with respect to heating your house.
Posted by Ian Turner | December 4, 2006 12:40 PM
Are you sure about this 'piece'. I hope there is some hard evidence to back up these claims. Energy use and misuse is a serious issue that could do well to avoid unfounded conjecture like this. Pathetic Sandy
Posted by herbert | December 5, 2006 8:55 AM
Putting a computer on standby saves huge amounts of power. The two most power hungry components are given a rest. These are your hard drive(s) and processor(s). It therefore reduces energy consumption by a fair old whack, so heating a room with it looks dubious. All it does on standby is power the RAM, and that needs barely any power at all.
Here's a better idea; hibernate the damn thing!
Posted by Darren Day | December 11, 2006 7:02 PM
If you keep abusing that whiskey, you'll both think you're warmer AND that a PC is an efficient heater.
Posted by Ben | December 15, 2006 2:43 AM
The replies are very interesting. I think some of you have mis-read my article slightly. I have to restate my original point that switching equipment from 'standby' to 'off' may not have an overall beneficial effect on the environment. It is a generilised claim, which has not been proven.
Equipment reliability is directly proportional to the stress the components encounter. Switching equipment on from cold is the highest stress the components will encounter. This will reduce the life of the equipment. Equipment nowadays is throw away, so lets take the scenario of a TV which is not left on standby, but switched on from cold every time it is used. The equipment will fail sooner because of the stress. So...what happens then?? you dump the TV and buy a new one. What is the environmental impact of that??? more TVs have to be made and dumped.
100% of the power which goes into any equipment is 'eventually' turned into heat. A PC is an electrical heater which happens to be able to do some other things as well.
Someone somewhere has made a statement that switching equipment from standby to off has a overall beneficial effect on the environment. It is my opinion that this has not been thought through. I believe that there is an argument that it will increase equipment failure rate, hence require that more electronic equipment has to be made. I believe that the total manufacturing cycle for, say a TV has a very negative environmental effect.
Posted by Sandy Norval | February 25, 2007 10:57 PM
"Equipment reliability is directly proportional to the stress the components encounter" is, again, a mis-informed statement as regards using standby.
In most standby states, including the Windows standby setting, the CPU isn't powered, nor is most of the system apart from Ram. So the cold-to-hot stress still happens when you pull it out of standby.
Secondly, an electrical heater can NEVER be more than 55 per cent efficient, because power stations and power lines aren't that efficient.
Gas boilers, on the other hand, can be over 90 per cent efficient, so it's incredibly un-efficient to heat your home with electronics!
Additionally, gas-powered heating burns a lot cleaner than oil-generated electricity; 0.9kg per kilowatt hour vs 0.3kg per kilowatt hour for environmentalist-tech-heads out there!
Finally in the PCW labs we've found desktop PCs can draw 5W when turned off, only going to zero when the PC is switched off at the wall; the motherboard always draws a little bit of power when switched on at the wall.
On standby the power draw increases by 1-2W on a typical PC.
Posted by Emil Larsen | March 20, 2007 12:23 PM
computers are a different issue altogether beacuse computers are built to save electricity when they are in the stand by mode; therefore not using nearly as much if they were on. it's TV's that use up to 95% of what they would use if they were off compared to being on
Posted by Jimmock | March 20, 2007 5:23 PM