Saving electricity

[hammerman]

To save electricity, you are supposed to turn things off completely....at the plug.

But this is often impractical so i turn things off by the switch on the device.

How is this using electricity ?...there are no components working and the little red/orange/green light is not on.

Any ideas ?

[Ethel]

That's fine - but a lot of electrical devices do not switch off - they go on to standby.

Two televisions I have bought recently do this - if I want to switch them off completely, I have to switch them off at the plug. It's a nuisance.

My washing machine, tumble drier, cooker, microwave all use electricity if they are not switched off at the plug - the clock keeps going. As with the dvd player, video recorder, digibox and virgin box.

I accept that the amount of power used is tiny, but it must add up over the year.

[beryllium]

I did read it costs around �25.00 a year if you leave your phone charger or any charger in the plug not turned off. This was a bone of contention with me and mr B lol.... if it remains hot to the touch it must be still using electricity.

The same goes with those playstation things.

On the technical side? what is used to stop the circuit in normal circumstances and why is it missing that when a charger is plugged in?

[Matheous]

There is a device which I saw on TV which consists of a 13amp extension socket which comes with a remote control that does actually cut the power to whatever has been plugged in. Costs about thirty pounds.

[gina32]

if i switch things off at the plug such as my sky + how am i supposed to record programmes???

[Figi]

Precisely - there are so many home-entertainment gadgets around today which, if you turn them off at the plug, you lose all the pre-sets and have to re-programme them from scratch. Who has the time or energy to do that?

[pidgoe]

a electrical device left on standby uses 80% of the enery that it uses when switched on.