Is it worth turning off your TV?

Is it worth turning your TV off?

Simple enough question but something we’re all looking at nowadays.

Can you actually save money by turning items off at the plug?

So here’s a short guide to current costs in 2022.

In October 2022 the post-price cap cost to run a TV is on average between £46 and £77; working on a daily usage of 4 hours per day (Thank you Which? For those stats…)

The standby usage for these TVs is roughly 1.3 watts per hour. So approximately £11/year.

Given the importance of appliances being able to update automatically overnight and the convenience of them being ‘ready for use’ this cost seems relatively reasonable.

But what’s the real standby cost?

Assuming you aren’t completely minimalist then you may well have more than just your TV plugged in drawing power in the corner of the room. So what’s the overall cost we’re looking at for the set up?

Estimated standby Costs

Average TV                                                                                                >£11

Sky/Virgin/Recorder                                                                        >£30-60

Router                                                                                                          >£20

VCR                                                                                                               >£28

DVD                                                                                                            >£5

Soundbar                                                                                                      >£8

Games consoles                                                                                    >40-50

So a realistic yearly standby cost of these items together would be around the £100-180 mark- not an insignificant amount! If there are multiple units around the house then this could in fact be much higher.

But is it practical to be turning all these items on solely as and when we need them? In short, probably not. The time taken for routers and recorders to boot-up, up to 10 minutes for some, is worth far more than the daily savings available.

So is there a better way? Yes. There is. A timer socket and switched multi-plug.

With these two items (together around £20) we can effectively leave our infrequently used items (DVD, VCR, games console etc) off completely when not in use ( group 1) and have our frequent equipment automatically turn on/on to standby only during usages hours; router, sky/virgin box and TV (group 2)

Conclusion;

For the sake of unplugging items we don’t use frequently, it’s certainly worth it changing our habits-if not only for the environment cost. Installing a switched multi-plug makes these changes convenient and easy-especially if they are labelled.

Timer switches are also worthwhile for the extra savings-especially when feeding a multiplug board. For maximum flexibility  across differing weekdays consider a digital timer, rather than the traditional push down analogue type.

The future; Skynet

In short, this problem of ‘wasted energy’ should be something technology itself solves.

As ‘Smart home’ moves forward –connecting all devices with the ‘internet of things’ (from fridges and kettles to baths and boilers!) we will begin to see more home assistant type devices managing all of our appliances. Once this happens and begins to replace ‘manual’ appliance management we should be able to benefit from the most efficient use of power in the home.

Until that day comes we’ll just have to make do with the off and switch!