Since the Countrie Bumpkin and myself have had a few discussions lately about power usage (and the bastard has robbed me of a few watts by having his UPS back fully charged), I’ve added a category: Energy, and while I’n not going in for tree-hugging hippy crap, any of my further rants and observations about energy use will go there.

Observation for the day: if you thought switching your telewest cable box to standby was better than leaving it on, you are right, but not very right.

blueyonder.discussion.digitaltv said: [snipped]

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From: "Ron"
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Subject: Re: digital box power consumption
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Date: Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:38:45 GMT


Hi I bought one of those "plug in power monitors" and started measuring the 
power consumption of all my electrical devices. I won't bore you with the 
details except for my telewest pace digital box.

When switched on 25 watts, when in standby 24 watts. Guess what is getting 
switched off at the mains when not used for 18 hours a day?
Ron
p.s. I have a queue waiting to borrow the plug in power monitor, what do you 
think I should charge for hiring it out?:-)  smiley just kidding

Incidentally, as part of the terms and conditions, you shouldn’t turn telewest equipment off. How many subscribers times 24 watts? Thats 210 units of electricity in a year or about 30 quid, if you never take it out of standby.

Now, not all of that is wasted. Most of it is radiated as heat, as you’ll feel if you put your hand on it. Assuming you heat you home, some of those watts will warm you home slightly, taking some of the load off your central heating ;-).