And so my survey began: A small three-piece speaker system, with the speakers turned off, 6 watts. A larger three-piece system, also turned off, 12W. The router, 6W; the cable modem, 7.5W. An IBM "dogbone" laptop charger with no computer plugged in was using 2.5W; with a fully charged computer, 3W; with a running computer, 16W. My iPod charger consumed a commendable 0.6W when nothing was connected to it; it used 2W to 3W when charging the player.

The HP OfficeJet multifunction printer was using 7W. A 19-inch Dell Trinitron monitor was also eating up 7W in standby, and when I turned it off with the power switch, it dropped one whole watt. It drew ten times as much power (70W) when it was on, but you still have to wonder—what's the point of the switch? Likewise, the HP Pavilion desktop drew 6W when it was "off" and nary a light was glowing. Compared with the 70W startup power and 60W running power, that's not bad. But if these devices are not remote powered, why aren't they truly off when they're off?

All told, I had about 80 watts' worth of computer stuff running day and night, whether I had turned it off or not. Depending on how many laptops and other devices were plugged in at a given time, the number could range up to 100W.


You might think that 80 or 100 watts is no big deal in the grand scheme of things. But it is precisely in the grand scheme of things where those 100W bulbs add up. That's 876 kilowatt-hours per year, or just over 9 percent of my total electric bill—and I'm just counting computer gear, not home electronics. At local rates, I'm paying about $100 per year for the convenience. Maybe it's worth it, or maybe I'd like to halve it and take my wife out to dinner with the savings instead.

Figures from the Energy Saving Trust on standby power use in the UK home are astonishing:


Stereos on standby cost £290m and produce 1.6 million tonnes of CO2
VCRs and DVD cost £263m and produce 1.06 million tonnes of CO2
TVs on standby cost £88m and produce 480,000 tonnes of CO2
It means that in one year, in the UK alone, our equipment on standby produces a total of 3.1 million tonnes of CO2.

But there is a bigger culprit out there: the personal computer, as Scott Richards from power supply manufacturer Antec explains.

If you really want to be green with your PC, when you're done using it turn it off

Scott Richards, power supply manufacturer
"The PC is a special case because if you don't turn it off completely, in other words pull the switch on the back, it's always drawing some kind of power.

"And depending on what kind of mode you're in that power can be anywhere between five watts to 60 and beyond.

"If a million PC users switched to a more efficient power supply, it would save almost the equivalent of 250 thousand litres of gasoline a day."