- Wasting energy standing by. “Britons waste the equivalent of around two power stations’ worth of electricity each year by leaving TV sets and other gadgets on standby.”
- Dashboard computer candidate? Old 486 Futitsu Tablet PCs for $59-$99. (8MB Ram…wooo hooo!) Surplus Sales also has a pile-o-motors and meters (250 amp shunt for $25)
- Energy Blog has a follow-up article on flow batteries, this one featuring Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries
- John’s Prius Site. I must say this is one of the more extensive, exhaustively documented car sites out there. Well done!
Re: Prius site… Another really good one, packed with technical and experimental information is privatenrg.com – the layout leaves a lot to be desired, but there’s tons of good info there. The site owner is one of the group of guys who drove the 2nd gen Prius to a fuel economy record of 109.3 MPG (US) last year.
thanks for the surplus link as well. I have just ordered a tachometer for 9 dollars.
Lets just hope that they can ship it to me in England.
The standby thing irritates me. Always has. I have even gone to the trouble of making a big master switch for all my computer equipment so I know it’s really off. It’s a one-touch operation, there’s a 12V auto relay keeps the switch closed while the computer shuts down. THen it all goes off with a satifying click
Correction to my previous comment: the privatenrg.com site owner is not one of the group of drivers in the prius efficiency record.
I have a power strip on the equipment at the office and some at home, but there’s a bunch of stuff I’m missing.
Saw this article about smart strips a while back.
Also, anyone interested in measuring idle current (or not-so-idle) should get a Kill-a-Watt.
Here’s a neet calculator for electric appliances and such. webwinder.com/wwhtmbin/jelectri.html
[I edited some of the comments to turn the URLS into links.]
Of course wasting energy with standby circuits isn’t a British phenomenon. Another article from last year on Pulling the plug on electricity leaks and, if you have the time/stomach for it, a Slashdot thread.
Also a paper from 2002, Reducing Standby Power Waste to Less than 1 Watt
The stand-by feature is really not much different than “instant on” in terms of energy useage (waste is a better term).
There SHOULD be regulations on “stand by” power consumption. Current EPA ratings for appliances ONLY count “on time”, and ignore the constant parasitic draws that nearly every appliance has.
Disabeling these parasitic draws either by unplugging or switching them off remotely can save 5%-10% of the electric bill, depending on your overall energy use patterns.
I like the power strip approach: power it off at the source.
Most surge-protected power strips used to power computer equipment use varistors. As these components age, they need to be replaced. Most people replace the whole strip, leaving a surplus of power strips useful for other things.