On Thu, Nov 24, 2011 at 08:45:47PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
I wouldn't have seen the faulty/unused and amazingly power hungry TV booster in the loft because I didn't know it was there (last house was rented) that was costing me 20 quid a year to do nothing ! Only found it when trying to track down the last bit of power sink in a house where I was sure everything was unplugged....so that alone paid for the monitor....then I think eventually I managed to shave over 100W from my "idle" consumption with little to no effort or cost...good saving.
That's why ours was so useful, being able to see what we were using helped us identify both usage patterns where we were wasting electricity and look at our overall consumption. Once you get to a certain level you know you can't reduce any more without changing appliances which isn't going to happen here until they fail and need replacement as the cost of that replacement doesn't cover the benefits. We found that with a bit of work we managed to make sure that certain appliances were no longer left on standby and a bit of jiggery pokery with our computing equipment meant we ended up saving nearly £100 a year. I've already got plans for saving a bit more energy but it means I need one of my routers to fail before it becomes cost effective as the saving will be about £50 a year but a replacement router is about £100.
Adam