Standby power

You can measure the power bring used by your appliances when on "standby" (or in use) by borrowing or buying a cheap power meter, such as an £18 "Plug-in Electricity Consumption Monitor" from HomeEnergySaving.co.uk.  "Standby" means ready-to-receive-remote-signal from hand control unit.  This is how I produced the numbers below - yours might be slightly different.

Electricity costs in autumn '07 were 13 pence per unit (kWh), so all W figures can be divided by 75 to become pence per hour.

Thus a 60W light bulb costs 0.8 pence per hour and a 1 kW one-bar fire costs 13 pence per hour.  Night rates are about 40% of this.

Appliance                                                                                                    Operating                     Standby/"Off"

Desktop computer                                                                                       90-105W                          12W

 Laptop computer (when word processing)                                                     30-45W

 Transformer alone, not plugged into computer                                                                                        7 W

"Sleep" mode                                                                                                                                        10W

"Shut down" (= transformer alone, 15/25W when charging battery)                                                          7W

Broadband interface (transformer alone = 12W)                                                  15W

Phone base station (same whether in use or not)                                                    7W                             7W

 (10W when charging hand set)

Phone secondary station                                                                    less than 0.01W unless charging hand set

Digital radio                                                                                                          8W                            8W

Old analogue radio                                                                             less than 0.01W                            0W

Old "stereo music centre"                                                                                    41W

 "Off" = clock only                                                                                                               less than 0.01W

Old style TV                                                                                                       82W                          10W

Set-top box= terrestrial free-to-air receiver                                                         10W                           10W

 (No on/off switch provided)

CD player                                                                                                           10W                           7W

DVD player                                                                                                        42W                          12W

VCR in operation                                                                                          27-30W

 "On", but no action                                                                                                                              22W

 "Off" (Actually "standby")                                                                                                                    15W

Christmas lights (modest!)                                                                                   32W

Main comments:

   - Digital clocks on devices draw less than 0.01W unless they also have "standby".

   - Typically each 7W appliance costs about £8 a year if left on "standby".