Dolphin’s Dock

Green Tip Tuesday

July 15, 2008

Turn off your electronics.

Leaving your electronics on or in standby mode when not in use can really add up in energy usage. If you plug them all into a surge protector, you can kill and restore power to them with a single flip of a switch. Not only will your electric bill go down, but you will be increasing the lifespan of your electronic devices.

posted by dolphin at 10:00 am

2 Responses to “Green Tip Tuesday”

Slartibartfast on July 16, 2008 at 8:18 am

If you tell me how to make this work when one of the devices is a DVR, I’d do it.

I tried it a few weeks ago and discovered that nothing recorded any more.
dolphin on July 16, 2008 at 10:21 am

Well Slarti, if something needs to turn on at a set time while unattended, it may be best to just go ahead and leave it in standby and just unplug everything else (for instance your tv could be unplugged and the DVR would still record).

If you did really want to get serious about it though, you could plug your DVR into a plugin timer. They range in cost from $5->$100 but the $5 ones work fine if you want the timer to work on the same schedule every day (I used to use one in college to cut the lights on my fish tank on in the morning and off in the evening). Just set the timer to come on maybe five minutes before your scheduled recording is to start (to give the DVR time to boot up and give it some wiggle room before the start time). The timers of course draw a negligible ghost load themselves, but it’s much less than an advanced piece of electronics like a DVR would draw.