Another night in Johannesburg?
I recently found this site which gives you the financial implications of leaving your TV, gaming console or even a radio. If you look at the site, you’ll see a computer uses about 311 kilowatt hours when it is passive standby mode (the computer is off but the internal clock is still ticking to keep time). Electricity costs roughly 44 cents per kilowatt hour in South Africa which means a cost of R136.84 per year simply to keep the computer off but with the outlet it is plugged into still on. The moral: turn the power off when you don’t need the computer and not just the machine, unplug it from the wall or turn off the power strip.
If you thought that was a lot of electricity, take a look at the Plasma screen and how much power it draws. In active standby mode (which it stays in so it can power up faster) the screen uses as much as 1,452 kilowatt hours. Translated into a rand value this costs around R639 a year.
While each individual amount might not seem like that much (since I’ve used the two biggest items in terms of wastage) each item in a house such as a microwave, VCR, DVD, Video game console, Fridge and Cellphone charger that are all sucking power and costing you money. In total you could save over a grand a year on electricity bills. This might not seem like a lot of money but considering how often our power seems to be going off theses days, Eskom could use all the savings we can give them.
All this power use is known as “Vampire Power” and is simply wasted on items that do not require power unless being used. Turn off the devices and you’ll save the environment one bit at a time. If everyone turned off one of these items there would be a huge surge in available power.
Shut it down and save not only money but the environment, it simply makes sense.
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