Standby Power Consumption

Towards the end of August 2022, I tested the standby power consumption of the majority of my home electrical items and was able to reduce my daily energy consumption from around 6.5kWh to nearer 5kWh by switching off or unplugging items instead of leaving them on standby. The grey plot in the chart below shows the drop on August 30th.

The Freesat PVR was the worse culprit – taking 7 W for the box itself plus another 5 W to power the dish/LNB – a total of 12 Watts whilst on standby. Some items, such as the fridge and the Freeview PVR need to stay running 24 hours a day but the rest were switched off until required.

I was able to power down the TV automatically using an E-on power-down plug which, unfortunately seems to be no longer available.

Thanks to a friend who understands spreadsheets better than I do, I was able to list the electrical items and work out the annual cost.

I’ve just updated the spreadsheet to include the current electrical unit rate (36.45p/kWh) :

Leaving all those items on standby would have cost a massive £425.63 a year.