Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Thank you, Marconi, For This Wasteful Device...


I've known for years that watching television was a empty pursuit. Vacuous programming has a way of sapping valuable hours from your life in a most insidious manner. But little did I know that, all these years, the boob tube was actually wasting more than just my time.

In trying to figure out where to put my new Belkin surge protector, I've been putting my Kill-A-Watt in overdrive. Yesterday, I connected the television, DVD player, and signal amplifier that we use in our bedroom. I wanted to figure out how much standby power was being consumed by all three. After 24 hours of monitoring, here's the result:

All three units consume a combined 0.04 kWh of energy per day while dormant. Not as much as I might have expected, considering how much more standby power I logged from a handful of small chargers. And yet, even though it translates to only about 14 kWh per year, it still seems excessive for powering nothing but a blank screen, no? 

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