The Power of Standing By

As someone who has previously unquestioningly followed this, The Impressionist was inspired to test the claims. In the light of Parris' article The Impressionist felt that he couldn't really trust any of the published documents or 'authorities' and so an empirical approach was necessary. The Impressionist wired up his trusty multimeter and directly measured the power used by devices on standby.

This does not purport to be a rigorous result - just a guy with a multimeter and some domestic entertainment devices. The multimeter was wired up to measure the current consumed by a device when it was on standby. As this current is quite low several devices were used in parallel to reduce the measurement errors.

A small TV, DVD player, and Freeview box (all on standby) consumed 0.12A (Amps) in total. Different devices used slightly more or less as shown by unplugging them in turn.

0.12A at 250VAC (our supply) equates to a power consumption of 30W (Watts). So each device uses around 10W on standby. There are 8760 hours in a year and this equates to 8760 times 10 times 0.001 = 87.6 kWh per year.

Our most recent electricity bill shows we used 3928kWh last year. So each device would consume about 2.20f our annual usage if it were on standby all the time.

Your house might consume more or less electricity in total or might have more standby devices.

How much energy is 87.6kWh? Well, you'd have to run about 750 miles to expend the same amount - around 10 miles a day if you have 5 devices.

The Impressionist finds it easier to rise from his couch and change the channel using a button.