When I go to bed at night I like to put the house to bed too. Close the curtains (if they're not already closed), turn off the lights, close the doors and leave things ready for the morning. And so, when I fall asleep, the house is quiet and still, or at least that is how it feels to me.
In reality the house is still buzzing. Upstairs things are quite good; my phone charger is unplugged unless it's in use, the lights are all off but my radio must be on some sort of standby as I can turn it on with a remote when I wake up. Downstairs things aren't as serene. In the kitchen the fridge and freezer both buzz throughout the night. Even though they're both A rated it still uses energy, but it's infeasible to turn these off overnight. The living room is the main culprit of night time energy use. The television, PlayStation and sometimes DVD player too are all on standby. I hate this about our television, that it is so hard to easily turn off completely. We plan to have a rearrange next week and get an extension cable so that all the different machines can be switched on and off separately. Also in the living room is the internet and phone lines, again running throughout the night. I've no idea if you should turn these off at night. And as hard as we try, sometime laptops are left charging or a phone is left plugged in.
So, when I think about it, my quiet, peaceful home is gobbling up energy almost as much as when I'm awake using it. It's this sort of background energy use that could be stopped so easily and start making a big impact if everyone stopped it. If we turned off all appliances that are on standby overnight then surely we'd be saving about 10 hours of our daily energy and that's got to add up. If everyone in the country did this I bet you'd see a difference in the national grid numbers. It's not even something we'd be missing, when I'm asleep it doesn't matter to me whether the TVs on standby or off, but it would probably make a difference to my bills.
So when you fall asleep, think about the rest of your house. Is it quiet and peaceful, ready for a good nights rest or is it buzzing and flashing through the night?
Latest research from the Energy Saving Trust suggest as much as 16% of domestic energy consumption is uses by 'stand-by'...not in our house it isn't!
ReplyDeleteEither electricity is still too cheap and/or people aren't getting the message that the climate is changing gespite this rancid summer we're having! In britain we suffer too much weather to know what the climate is doing!
Cheers
Davo