Optimising the energy demand of my room

In the past weeks I measured my energy demand in my room, how much I use and how I tried to optimise it.

All began when I realized that I did not switch off my amplifier when going to bed. It is connected with my Laptop and my CD Player so that I can listen to music.
But that I forget to switch it off each night was quite disturbing and I wanted to know how much can be saved when the amplifier is switched off over night.

In the internet I found a plug assembly which can be controlled via USB. I bought this one in combination with a measuring facility and started several weeks of measuring my power demand of my room, where I changed the test structure after the second week (see the reason below).

In the first week I measured how much energy I was using when I did not switch off my facilities and use it over 24h per day. The facilities measured were printer, computer, amplifier and CD-Player. Here the measured value was 6,09 kWh.

In the second week I switched off the amplifier over night, while the measured facilities remained the same. The value decreased on 4,64 kWh.

I made further investigations. As the measuring facility displays the current power demand I was interested in how much power the computer, amplifier, CD-Player etc are consuming when they are sitched on, in Stand-by mode and when they are switched off.
The table below illustrates my findings.

After finding out that my printer and my keyboard are consuming electricity although they are switched off, I changed the positions and the setting of what I was measuring.
The printer was completey removed from the fuse. But as I wanted to know how much electricity I was using I put the measuring facility so that I can measure everything what I consume. Therefore in the third and fourth week the consumption was measured from the computer, amplifier, light on desk and the CD-Player. The time was switched off again from 1am to 9am. The result of the third week was a consumption of 4,37 kWh

In the fourth week I only consumed 3,94 kWh. But this is most probably due to my higher awareness so that I pay attention that I switch off my equipments when I do not use it.

So how can these findings help you to safe electricity:

• First of all get to know your consumption with a measuring facility for power. In some countries you can borrow them from energy companies, otherwise you can buy them in a shop.
• Go and find consumers in your home, which consume electricity although they are switched off (like my printer and my keyboard).
• Use a plug facility which you can switch off via a circuit breaker.
• Place the plug facility within your eyesight, near your work place. My amplifier is in a rack near the bottom of my room. Therefore it is easy to forget that this device is still switched on
• Be aware that these finding are increasing the energy efficiency but do not necessary lead to high savings. In this example the saving per year would be (first week - fourth week) *52 weeks = (6,09 kWh - 3,94 kWh)*52 = 111,8 kWh. With a tariff of 28 ct/kWh you would lose 3,15 € per year, if you do not do anything and keep everything like it is. But if you find several places with stand-by usage and switch off the saving would be higher.

USB plug device

Result first week

Results of measuring the devices