One of the solar panel installers mentioned to me that 20% of household electricity is consumed by devices in a standby state, meaning they appear off, or in some non-use state, yet they continue to use power. 20% struck me as higher than expected.
I recently came across a table prepared by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory laying out the power consumption of common household appliances. The table lays out average, minimum and maximum values for each device tested.
I looked through the table, then started to count up the devices we have in our house to calculate the power they consume in their standby state. Interestingly, using the average figures from the table, it came to 20%. The installer was right! The minimum and maximum range was 11-44%.
The followup question asks what is practical? That is can all these devices really be completely unplugged so they don’t consume any [standby] power? Some examples of those in question include: clock-radios; furnace; telephones; answering machines; irrigation timers; garage-door openers, among others.
Looking at the list of candidate standby power consumers there are some that need to stay in a standby state in order to function. For example, a telephone answering machine is not particularly useful if unplugged. There are others that are for convenience, for example, a networked printer, means you don’t have to power it on, then off, when needed.
Removing from the list of candidate device all those that cease to meet their functional requirements, the savings comes down to about 4%.
It looks like the best strategy is to include the standby power consumption of devices as part of one’s total cost of ownership calculation that all of us do when buying electrical devices.
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